The Neue Galerie built “Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age, 1900–1918” around the radiant Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), embedded in the ornamented wall on its second floor. The exhibition includes an astute selection of the female portraits that Gustav Klimt completed in the mature phase of his life. The portraits were paid commissions that supported Klimt’s work on the allegorical images for which he is usually known, as well as his inimical, tesselated landscape paintings. Klimt nevertheless approached them with the utmost artistic seriousness. A suite of his preparatory drawings fills the anteroom. (Klimt painted slowly, but drew prolifically.)
The Neue has a winner of a concept here and could have done with a simpler show. That it produced a 400-page monograph for an exhibition of, essentially, a dozen paintings tells you what happened instead. There are hats and dresses by the contemporary artist Brett McCormack on mannequins stationed around the rooms. Klimt’s companion, the fashion designer Emile Flöge, ostensibly inspired them. The argument is that Klimt influences the art of the present, but the effect is trivializing, just as when one of the catalogue authors detects a visual relation between Klimt’s Japoniste backgrounds and the overrated work of Kehinde Wiley.
The Neue has a winner of a concept and could have done with a simpler show.
The catalogue delves further into Art-Nouveau jewelry and furniture, Klimtesque couture by Oscar de la Renta and others, and photographs of a