Visiting Vienna, via the Berkshires, for the landscapes of Gustav Klimt. Most people who know Klimt don’t about this side of his work. The man who painted “The Kiss,” and other lush, erotic female figures had another dimension. In the Austrian countryside – painting for no one but himself – Klimt painted fields and trees, flowers and cottages, often the water, but seldom the sky — landscapes now on exhibit at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. Who was this man we see in hundred-year-old photographs — the contemporary of Freud and Mahler – the rebel against the academy, who dressed in a muumuu? And what do an artist’s landscapes tell us about his inner geography?
Guests:
Jane Kallir, Art Historian, Co-director of Galerie Saint Etienne in New York City, and author of a number of books on early 20th Century Austrian Art, including “Egon Schiele: The Complete Works,” and “Gustav Klimt”
Richard Rand, Senior Curator of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which is now showing Gustav Klimt’s Lanscapes.