Episode #74: Art Auction Audacity-- Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer I (Season 8, Episode 6)
In our eighth season, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold, considering why they garnered so much money, and discovering their backstories. Today: Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
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Episode Credits:
Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Additional writing and research by Joce Mallin.
ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.
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Links and further resources
Artnet: Oprah Sells Famed Gustav Klimt Portrait for $150 Million
Los Angeles Times: Court Awards Nazi-Looted Artworks to L.A. Woman
New York Times: Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait
LACMA exhibition page: Gustav Klimt: Five Paintings from the Collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer
Episode Transcript
I often like to reminisce about my first-ever experience with a true blockbuster art exhibition, because it really stuck with me. It’s one I mentioned at the beginning of my episode on the death of Vincent van Gogh, which you--ArtCurious’s audience--recently voted as your favorite episode of this show. This exhibition all about Van Gogh, but especially focusing in on his portraits, was my first blockbuster show, and I did all the things you had to do when facing such a huge proposition: I waited in a long, winding line to walk through the museum door, stood in unbearably crowded galleries, craning my neck to get a good view of the colorful canvases before me. But all of this, to me, was worth it-- I got to see so many incredible works of art in one place, and could experience them personally. There’s nothing like that opportunity to connect, or commune with, a work of art in person. I loved it. But it wasn’t my favorite experience with a blockbuster exhibition. My actual favorite blockbuster show was held at the same museum almost a decade later. Like I had done before, I crept through galleries buzzing with excitement and this time, wore some nice, sensible, comfy shoes to manage all that standing around. But this time, I wasn’t there to see room after room of canvas after canvas, like I was for the Van Gogh event. I was here to see only five paintings. Five paintings that had never before been shown in the United States, and that had very recently been the centerpieces of a huge legal battle about art restitution in our post-World War II era. When I turned into the darkened gallery, I was met with a glow, a golden light that seemed to radiate from the surface of the work around me, and from one painting in particular-- a painting now lovingly nicknamed the “Woman in Gold.”
Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. This season, season eight, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold and considering why they garnered so much money, continuing with Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.
Born near Vienna, Austria, in 1862, Gustav Klimt was one of seven children born into an artsy family. His mother, Anna, had early ambitions of being a musician before raising her family, and his father, Ernst Klimt the Elder, was a goldsmith and engraver originally hailing from Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic. So the arts, in multiple forms, inspired and surrounded young Gustav throughout his childhood. He was educated in Vienna at the University of Applied Arts, where he originally studied architectural painting before moving in a direction that further emphasized the human figure. In the early 1880s, alongside his younger brother, Ernest Klimt junior, as well as a like-minded pal named Franz Matsch, who was a painter and sculptor, Klimt opened his own independent arts studio through which they received various commissions--so working artists they quickly became. For Klimt himself, his commissions mainly involved painting murals on the walls and ceilings of several large public buildings in and around Vienna, including, but not limited to, the Vienna Burgtheater-- or the national theater of Austria, as well as the famed Kunsthistorisches Museum, one of the most acclaimed art museums in Europe, and certainly in the entire world as well. And his wonderful works for these spaces shot him quickly to fame-- in 1888, the Austrio-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph the First awarded him the coveted Golden Order of Merit for the work done at the Burgtheater, and he was made an honorary member of both the University of Munich and the University of Vienna. So things were on the up-and-up, career-wise, but in 1892, dual personal tragedies hit: both his father, Ernst the Elder, and his beloved younger brother, Ernest, died, and suddenly, Gustav was left struggling as he attempted to care for his mother, but also for his brother’s family as well. One can imagine that this took a serious toll on Gustav Klimt, and historians have noted that it also vastly affected his artistic career, marking a turning point towards more personal, and more meaningful artworks.
The tragic losses of his father and brother weren’t the only major occurrences in Klimt’s life in the 1890s-- it was also the time in which he found love with a woman who would go on to be his lifelong partner, Emilie Louise Floge, a fashion designer and a businesswoman who was introduced to Gustav by her sister, Helene, who had been married to Ernest Klimt the younger. If you’re familiar with any of Klimt’s paintings, then you know Emilie--- because his seminal work from around 1907, The Kiss, reportedly shows Emilie entwined with Gustav, her eyes closed and enrobed beautifully in gold and jewel tones. This is one of the key works from the artist’s so-called “golden phase,” a period during which today’s star painting was also created, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Because before all this came the Vienna Secession movement in 1897.
The Secessionists were a group of artists who were troubled by the overly traditional style approved by officially-sanctioned organizations, like the Association of Austrian Artists. Like the Impressionists in France before them, they sought a support system for experimentation and community for younger, emerging artists-- all without hoping to narrow themselves down to one particular style or medium (though they are typically more aligned with the art nouveau movement than anything else). All were welcome: sculptors, painters, architects, designers, and you didn’t have to live in Vienna, or even Austria as a whole, to be part of the Viennese Secession, though most did. Their goal was to promote and publish the work of artists from all over who were doing interesting work, to be shown right there in the center of town in their specially-built exhibition hall. As the literary critic Hermann Bahr, himself a Secessionist, wrote in the premiere issue of their art journal, Ver Sacrum, or Sacred Spring, quote, "Our art is not a combat of modern artists against those of the past, but the promotion of the arts against the peddlers who pose as artists and who have a commercial interest in not letting art bloom. The choice between commerce and art is the issue at stake in our Secession. It is not a debate over aesthetics, but a confrontation between two different spiritual states." Unquote.
Gustav Klimt remained extremely active within the Secessionists, even acting as the first president of the group all the way until he left in 1905, alongside several others, after protesting a move wherein the group would give more prominence to painting over equal treatment of all arts, including decorative arts and architecture-- an equality that Klimt himself wishes to maintain. When Klimt and his partners were overruled, they officially resigned from the group. But no matter. Even though he had completed some incredibly influential projects during his association with the Secessionists, including a then-scandalous set of three paintings exploring the themes of Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, many of the best works of his life were still to come.
Enter that much-beloved Gold Period. It’s assumed that though Klimt wasn’t a big traveler, two particular jaunts to Italy-- especially visits to Venice and to Ravenna--were instrumental in the development of this new, and forevermore to become his most famous, artistic period. If you’ve seen images or have had the good fortune to imagine the glowing, golden mosaics of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, or the jeweled mosaics of Emperor Justinian and his wife, the Empress Theodora, in Ravenna, then you get it-- you can see that flattened body styling and prolific use of gold leaf and understand almost immediately that these works shook Klimt and carried him through the rest of his life. Conceived with extremely precise and bold lines and highlighted with intricate areas of decoration, surrounded by layer upon layer of delicate gold leaf, it is these gold works that we envision when we think of Gustav Klimt and his sensual, rosy-cheeked, hooded-eyed women, like his partner, Emilie, his Viennese patron Fritza Riedler, and so many others, including the wealthy Adele Bloch-Bauer.
Coming up next: it’s the dawn of the golden age for Gustav Klimt, and the birth of the “Woman in Gold.” Stay with us.
Welcome back to ArtCurious.
Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of the wealthy banker and industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Czech-Austrian who was a great supporter of contemporary art in Vienna beginning at the turn of the 20th century. He commissioned Klimt to paint two portraits of his wife, and we’re focusing on the first of the two, the one more typically lauded--known to us as Adele Bloch-Bauer I. It is the pinnacle of Klimt’s gold period achievements, juxtaposing Adele’s beautiful, naturally-delineated features with that typical Klimtian exuberant ornamentation. It’s truly a sight to behold, and even a bit of a difficult sight to behold, because the sitter is so surrounded, encompassed really, by gold that her own decorative golden dress blends so supremely with the background, and you have to look a bit closer than you think to determine where the figure of Adele begins and ends. As such, Adele Bloch-Bauer feels separate from us, as she doesn’t inhabit our world or our space. She’s somewhere else entirely, and the image becomes less of a straightforward portrait and almost a devotional icon-- more golden Byzantine Madonna than Viennese socialite. It makes perfect sense that this painting has been given the nickname “The Woman in Gold.” Frank Whitford’s 1990 book, Klimt, one of the first deep studies of the artist and his works, writes that Klimt’s use of gold here practically serves, quote, “to remove Adele Bloch-Bauer from the earthly plane, transform the flesh and blood into an apparition from a dream of sensuality and self-indulgence.” Unquote. Even the various decorations surrounding Bloch-Bauer read like symbols of her otherworldliness, or, perhaps, her belonging in various times and spaces. As Whitford writes, quote, “the gold is like that in Byzantine mosaics; the eyes on the dress are Egyptian, the repeated coils and whorls Mycenaean, while other decorative devices, based on the initial letters of the sitter's name, are vaguely Greek.” Unquote.
Though Adele Bloch-Bauer I is much loved today, it was… not so when it first premiered in 1907, nor when it was shown again the following year, 1908. Critics called the painting “bizarre” and “vulgar,” and one even went so far as to proclaim that the painting was a direct challenge to the, quote, “autonomy of art.” And people didn’t like all of that gold surrounding her because, yes, she looked more like a religious icon, and some complained that there was no sense of individuality or personality in the painting. I disagree, but, then again, I’m not an art critic from 1908. Regardless, the painting was a special one for the Bloch-Bauer family, as it was commissioned as a gift from Ferdinand to his wife in celebration of their wedding anniversary. It hung on the wall, alongside its sister painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer II, in the couple’s Vienna apartment, outliving both the artist, who died in 1918 from a double-whammy of a stroke and complications from the flu pandemic circulating globally at that time; and outliving Adele herself, who passed away in 1925. These two paintings, by the way, were apparently moved to her bedroom as a shrine to her after her death by her grieving husband.
The two portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer remained in the Bloch-Bauer family throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and it was occasionally lent for exhibition during this period, but dark clouds were building all across Europe at this time, and as the 30s progressed, things for Jewish citizens in Austria weren’t safe, to say the least. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer fled for safety first in Czechoslovakia, then to Paris, and finally, to Switzerland, and after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Bloch-Bauer’s property was seized and the portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer were part of the stolen property. After falling into the hands of the Nazi party, especially a Nazi lawyer, and it ended up for a long period at the Belvedere Palace, a former Hapsburg palace that had been transformed into a museum highlighting the artistic achievements of Austria since the Middle Ages. It makes sense that works by Gustav Klimt, one of the best Austrian artists of the 20th century, would end up there-- and indeed, The Kiss, and other famed works by Klimt, such as his take on the Old Testament tale of Judith and Holofernes (hollaback to our lady love Artemisia Gentileschi from Episode #42), are housed there today. But what was definitely not cool is that the works remained in the hands of the Austrian state, even after Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer’s 1945 death left his entire estate--including the Klimt works--to his nephew and two nieces. And this is where things get really interesting.
On this podcast, I’ve done an entire season on art and World War II, so if you’ve listened back to those episodes, you’ll know that there’s still, to this day, an ongoing process of cultural restitution and reclamation for artworks that had been looted during World War II, especially by the Nazis. (Be sure to go back and listen to Episode #31 for more details on that endeavor.) After the war, works began to make their way back to the various members of the Bloch-Bauer family, but the Klimt paintings-- not only the dual portraits of Adele, but several other Klimts originally owned by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer-- remained at the Galerie Belvedere, mostly due to a technicality involving the disparate wills of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and Adele Bloch-Bauer. In the late 1990s, though, art restitution again came to the forefront of importance in Austria and beyond, and the inheritors of the Bloch-Bauer estate, primarily one of Ferdinand’s nieces, a woman named Maria Altmann, was moved to action. She was going to have the paintings returned for her family, after a half-century of absence. Living in the U.S. and working with a lawyer to make her case, Altmann requested the return of six looted paintings, including Adele Bloch-Bauer I, but the Austrian government balked, because of that technicality involving the wills of the Bloch-Bauers. In Adele’s will, she asked that her Klimt portraits be given to the Austrian State Gallery upon the death of her husband, Ferdinand. But Ferdinand, who outlived his wife by twenty years and was the technical owner of the paintings since he commissioned and purchased them, stipulated that these works be included in his entire state, which as we noted, went to his nieces and nephews. In short: it was a mess. But Maria Altmann wasn’t one to give up, and in 2000, she filed a civil claim against the Austrian government and the Galerie Belvedere, suing them via her lawyer, E. Randol Schoenberg, in U.S. courts in order to avoid paying an exorbitant fee and to limit the length of the trial and arbitration processes. Nevertheless, the proceedings lasted several years, and it was finally brought before the Supreme Court as the case formally known as the Republic of Austria v. Altmann. In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Altmann, declaring once and for all that the painting had indeed been stolen and that Altmann had a right to claim its return-- but interestingly enough, they made no ruling about the ownership of the painting itself. That final issue didn’t get resolved for another year and a half, and in January 2006, after further arbitration, it was agreed that five of the six Bloch-Bauer haul, including the now-iconic Adele Bloch-Bauer I, be returned to the Bloch-Bauer family.
When asked about the ultimate fate of the Klimt paintings, Maria Altmann told a New York Times reporter that it didn’t make practical sense for her, or her family, to privately retain the works of art, probably due to insurance purposes. So what did make sense was to sell them. Originally many Austrians hoped that the works would stay in their home country, but by the 21st century, Gustav Klimt had become such a beloved artist, a hometown hero, that prices for his works had jumped into the millions, and the Austrian government felt the potential price of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and the other works would just be too plain high-- and, truly, they were probably right. Prices for artworks of this magnitude are typically out of reach for many cultural organizations, even state-sponsored ones. Even so, Altmann said, quote, “I would not want any private person to buy these paintings ... It is very meaningful to me that they are seen by anybody who wants to see them, because that would have been the wish of my aunt." Unquote. That may have been the dual wish of both Maria Altmann and her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, but the going rate for Klimt works of this magnitude were simply impossible for anyone but a private collector to manage. Which is how, after that spectacular blockbuster showcase at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in mid-2006, Adele Bloch-Bauer I was sold to collector Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, for what was then the record price of $135 million-- surpassing what was the previous world record for the highest price ever paid for a work of art, a title held at that time by Pablo Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe. But here’s the good catch about this purchase-- yes, technically Ronald Lauder was a private collector, but he had a trick up his sleeve-- Lauder is the co-founder of the Neue Galerie, a museum that’s situated right across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And the Neue Galerie’s specialty, you may ask? German and Austrian art from the first half of the 20th century. So works by Gustav Klimt would fit perfectly within its walls, and that is where Adele Bloch-Bauer I went, and where it remains, even to this day. It’s the best of both worlds, in a rare case-- a private collector who immediately returns a painting to the public eye. It was a fate that, sadly, did not follow for the other four Bloch-Bauer family Klimts that were returned to Maria Altmann and her family-- all four of them sold for millions upon millions of dollars to private collections. A brief interesting coda here-- the sister painting to the star of today’s show, the painting known as Adele Bloch-Bauer II, was sold in 2006 for $87.9 million to a private collector. When the work showed back up on the art market ten years later, it sold for a whopping $150 million, surpassing the amount paid for its sister painting by Ronald Lauder. That’s quite a return on investment for its owner. That owner, incidentally? In 2017, it was revealed that Adele Bloch-Bauer II’s owner had been none other than Oprah Winfrey.
Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Joce Mallin. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Audio production services are provided by Kaboonki, the silliest name in superb podcasts and video. Let them help you too at kaboonki.com. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.
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Check back with us in two weeks when we explore the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful in the most expensive works ever sold in art history.
