Gottfried Fliedl

Considering that I just took a fictitious jaunt through historical Vienna alongside Klimt by way of Christopher Moore’s new novel, I figured that this was good incentive to pick up one of my many languishing art books and get into a slightly more academic treatise. Fortunately, any book that contains Klimt is guaranteed to have a certain level of glitz and glam thanks to the vibrancy of his artwork, and this book was no exception. Filled from cover to cover with Taschen’s signature show more high-quality reproductions, we are treated to a wealth of the artist’s output - even though the size of this volume can’t come close to the sheer heft of their definitive (and backbreaking) tome that was later released. What this volume may lack in completion, it more than makes up for in accessibility. It’s just the right size to reproduce and represent the artwork well, without getting over-wieldy to handle, and I was pleasantly surprised at how readable the text was. While the author clearly has an academic art history background and occasionally delved into minutiae that could have been ignored (though sometimes served as borderline-juicy historical gossip), the narrative was well constructed and sketched a well-cited overview of Klimt, his work, and the time period in which he was working. My only real complaint with this volume is that (in typical fashion) the artworks being discussed sometimes fell pages away from their discussion - but then again, I’m familiar enough at this point with Klimt’s work that it has become less of an actual complaint and more of a flittering eye-roll-inducing annoyance. show less

Eu sempre fui fascinada por Art Nouveau, e sempre adorei Klimt. Passei tanto tempo olhando para suas obras que fiquei muito feliz comigo mesma quando comecei a entendê-las melhor, notando, por exemplo, a influência japonesa em suas pinturas. Ler um livro de um especialista foi maravilhoso. Pude confirmar algumas idéias e, principalmente, aprender muito sobre sua arte e sua época.
A única crítica que eu tenho a esse livro - que talvez seja uma crítica à edição que eu li - é que as show more pinturas nunca estavam na página em que eram descritas, o que tornava bastante desconfortável olhar os detalhes descritos.

Já sonhei em criar um híbrido perfeito entre esse livro e o da Rachel Barnes, mas eu jamais teria coragem de por essa idéia em prática. show less

Got this book cheaply at a library book sale. I like the art of Gustav Klimt (even if I find him kind of pervy). He had aesthetic sense, a command of color and human likeness. This is one of those art coffee table books but I don't really want my kids to read it so it is on a shelf behind my bedroom door(which is still safe from them for the moment).

Nice large format images...