expectancy Raffaella Terrible
Gustav Klimt
Hope I, II
(1903, 1907)
La presentazione al public Hope I was on the occasion of Kunstschau of 1909, six years after its creation: the Vienna right-thinking person would hardly be accepted as a rough, and this consideration dall'esporre deterred the artist's work at his exhibition personnel organized in 1903 by secession, prudence clearly justified, given that his first owner, the industrialist Fritz Wärndorfer, financier of the Wiener Werkstätte , he kept covered to prevent scandals. Klimt has accustomed us to disturbing female characters, with the morbid atmosphere, but this goes in a clear manner in the direction of a reversal of values positive traditional, expected from the title and subject. Hope is allegorically represented in the figure of a young pregnant woman, completely naked, supposedly full of promise and a future image that hints at the same time intimate encounter took place in and out of her. Meeting of love from which it arose that her body now contains in its, tradition dictates that the soft warm, opulent, a poetic exaltation of female flesh, soft ground of expectation and wonder. Here we do not find any of this. The woman is a thin and pale unhealthy: under a mass of red hair, the face looks bony, prominent cheekbones, eyes rimmed, her lips tightened. Breast is small and slightly lowered, arms and legs are thin, even dug the buttocks. On the whole show a disproportionately prominent belly, lifted from the position profile, foreign to the rest of the body. The woman picks up her arms around his breast, clasps his hands in a gesture of protection and defense and not in the usual pose of future mothers, who support his hands on his belly in an act of spontaneous stroke. The head is turned, the sky-blue eyes focused on the observer, the serious expression, the nakedness of the pubis exposed, if not performed. Motherhood sweetness that does not know this, but that is pervaded by a vague sense of unease, denounced the irregularities that are perceived in the body, gesture, in her eyes. Behind her, on the silken ripple of precious colored fabrics, three looming presences, female faces, more or less deformed, and a skull up to the cloud of red hair of the woman: "demons of life" to Ludwig Hevesi, dark threats the life of the unborn child, but not entirely unrelated to the same mother, who ambiguously wears a crown of white flowers, a symbol of purity, a flaming foliage, typical of Klimt's women-sirens. His dark presence, which recall those of a painting of a few years earlier, Love of 1895 (a cross between the theme of Vanitas and that of ages of man, addressed in 1905 with the famous work The three stages of life), could represent the Fates, in solemn position of waiting before starting to weave the thread of life of the unborn child, a life is certainly not easy, not of joy but of anxiety and discomfort . But to await the birth of the child is also a black monster, the serpent's tail, a "big eater" who takes in a string ankles of the mother, towards its belly horrible clawed paw. The head of the monster a row of small white flowers: a metamorphosis, a harbinger of the transformation of the unconscious woman? In a rather curious, this figure seems to anticipate a few years of the Great Mother archetype of Jung (1912): on one hand the positive pole of femininity which embodies fertility, nourishment, protection (good mother), on the other the negative: the abyss, the secret, the dark, the world of the dead, what seduces, eats, gas (bad mother), the symbol of restlessness and shadows of the unconscious. The skull hanging over the head of the woman, with her own inclination, suggests a disturbing parallel, which can not be accidental. Ludwig Hevesi, who knew from near Klimt and his ideas, speaks of "symbolic painting, modern version of the pattern from Albrecht Dürer in The Knight, Death and the Devil among the most famous works and best known of the sixteenth century German, where, following an idea of \u200b\u200bErasmus of Rotterdam, Dürer represented a monumental Christian knight who proceeds by ignoring the death (with hourglass in hand) and the devil who is approaching from behind, holding a pike. In any case, designed in the Viennese Secession in a climate of general emancipation, Klimt's work might be read as an attack on the mentality of the conservative and respectable Viennese society at the time, scandalous in the topic, painful compression - in a vertical format - more disturbing figures traits. Stylistically its infancy stage "gold" and followed the trip to Ravenna of 1903, the painting has a deep accent which anticipates the typical features of expression: in the head by a deformed face in the top left, a young artist and desperate, discovered by the same Klimt, find a source of inspiration which will be his distinctive stylistic: Egon Schiele.
Four years later, takes up the theme with
Klimt Hope II , accompanied by the subtitle
Vision, fruitfulness, legend. A Copernican revolution is absolutely antithetical to a vision of motherhood, apparently. The canvas is square in shape, typical of the years the maturity of the artist, as is the typical background of gold dots, which nullifies the perception of real physical space by placing the figure in a setting "cosmic" to be used with the famous Kiss
the same period. The figure of the mother is in a central location, unique character, an attitude of suspension: the face in profile, looking down on her stomach, her breasts exposed but the body is wrapped in fine fabrics arabesque, a mosaic composed of the precious pieces that denounce the 'encounter with the gold and glass paste mosaics of Ravenna. The right hand is raised slightly, as measured with a gesture to mark the words of a silent dialogue between mother and son. The gold background, the colors on, the sweet and meditative attitude of the mother are as far removed as can be the first version of this theme. But when you look down at the bottom of the painting turns out some elements that lead back to the work of 1903: among the arabesques apparel three women, an attitude of sorrowful prayer, head bowed, eyes closed, hands raised to take the face. And again, going back on their mother's womb, here you find a skull suspended without warning, just resting, as it were, reduced to mere decoration but evident. The figure, built largely of stones with floral dall'incastro stylized, it loses its strength, especially its psychological dimension, meditation demurely. A vision of motherhood, therefore, less desperate, less disturbing, but always permeated by the dark presence of an inescapable destiny, an omen of impending ill, and a poignant beauty in which the "melancholy harmonies of pale colors, ashen, pearls" ( Argan) are mixed with vivid flashes of gold, silver, gems, enamel. Precious art, pagan, symbolic of the Klimt, crossing the beautiful and bloodless Byzantine art in a season with the limits of the end of an era, after which it will be the Vanguards to trace the path of a new civilization. Exhibited in 1909 at
Kunstschau alongside works by Egon Schiele,
Hope II observers showed her apparently with the female figures of the latter, brown, pale and wan, highlighting the power of dialogue between the two protagonists Vienna Secession.
My comment:
Splendido this post, and admirably detailed exposure analysis and designers feelings. Attention to aesthetic and ideal of the period. The Wiener Werkstätte was inspired by the English Arts & Crafts, Morris Ruskin. I keep strictly different issues of The Studio in 1909 and have those that refer to Kunstschau. Symbolism, the key word, symbol of the prominent belly to win the stage and looks to the left border of the visual looks to the past ... the inspiration, the unconscious, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites ... A dreamlike lyrical and poetic. Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was published in German in 1899, the black wings of the eater, black Klimt could be the death of the gravedigger (year 1890) by Carlos Schwabe .. the poetry of Mallarme and Emile Verhaeren. Thanks for the inspiration.
And much much more.
Diego Valeri (Wikipedia) 
