Stolen Beauty

by Laurie Lico Albanese

  “I think Klimt is already doing it,” I finally said.

  “Well then,” Ferdinand said. Then he fell silent, too.

  We spent a month in Paris. We did not return to the Moulin Rouge, and I did not pick up Schopenhauer again. By the time we returned home in February, I was nineteen years old, and a show was about to open at the new Secession gallery. I felt sufficiently prepared to join society as a woman of substance—and I was sure that Gustav Klimt and Berta Zuckerkandl were exactly the people I wanted to know.

  The white building on the Vienna River is finished. It stands directly over the Ottakring stream, where its foundations are eight meters deep and held in place with large concrete weights. Olbrich’s exhibition pavilion cost a mere 120,000 crowns because all the artists worked without payment. The dome is a bower crowned by a gigantic laurel tree painted in gold leaf, with 3,000 leaves and 700 berries. It is an enchanting sight. Through the gaps in the dome branches one can see the sky above and the townscape below. Herman Bahr’s words round the exhibition hall run thus: “Let the artist show his world, the beauty that was born with him, that never was before and never will be again.”

  A novelty is the interior walls, which can be shifted around at will. Even the great columns that separate the middle room from the back are removable. Thanks to this flexibility it will be possible for Klimt and the other artists to have a new ground plan each year over the next ten years. Even the lighting can be varied from overhead to side. Naturally, it will take time for public judgments to settle out feelings of confusion and perplexity, but as a whole the Secession gallery stands ready to host the young artist’s first international exhibition of new works.

  —LUDWIG HEVESI, FEUILLETONIST AND ART CRITIC, VIENNA 1900

  ADELE

  1900

  After my bath, I settled on a sleeveless green and gold-trimmed cocktail dress. The evening was to be my debut as a married woman in Vienna, and I wanted to strike just the right balance: rarified, but also bright and modern.

  I powdered myself carefully, surprised at how much effort it took to make my underarms smooth. My new dressing maid was even younger than I, and she was nervous, too. I tried not to rush or jangle at her as she slipped the dress over my head and lifted my hair so that nothing would catch in the necklace clasp.

  The heavy gold choker by Koloman Moser was a wedding gift from Ferdinand, and I was glad for the chance to show it off.

  “Radiant,” Ferry said when we met in the foyer. “Just beautiful.”

  “Moser will be there tonight,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see I’m wearing his piece.”

  “I meant you,” Ferdinand said. “You are beautiful.”

  As we’d done that first day of our courtship, we took Ferdinand’s carriage across the Ring to the gleaming new Secession gallery. We were early, which I preferred. There were two footmen at the doors, and Ferdinand and I climbed the red-carpeted steps slowly, passing beneath the motto above the doorway in gold letters that read, To Every Age Its Art; To Art Its Freedom.

  The Zuckerkandls were waiting for us beside the reception table. Berta wore a loose turquoise dress and a colorful turban around her hair. I said I was certain no one would rival her daring costume, not even the Flöge sisters.

  “And you look ravishing,” Berta said. “The dress is perfect on you.”

  All the important artists would be there—Klimt, of course, and also Carl Moll, who acted as the painter’s agent in all matters of commissions and sales, Josef Hoffmann, Olbrich, and maybe even the elusive Albin Lang. I was looking forward to meeting them, but I was also intimidated. I’d done my best to read up on the Secessionists, but while I knew the artists concerned themselves primarily with truth in art, I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

  “Relax,” Berta said, as if she could read my mind. “Everyone will love you.”

  Just then Koloman Moser hurried toward me and nearly bowed. I wanted to laugh, but it would have been unsuitable.

  “Frau Bloch-Bauer, how happy I am to see you,” he said. He was a handsome man, with a pencil-thin mustache.

  “I’m thrilled to be wearing your exquisite necklace,” I said, fingering the gold at my throat. “It’s stunning craftsmanship, and so uniquely Viennese.”

  It was an expected formality, but also the truth.

  “Your beauty does it great justice,” he said.

  Moser had also designed the stained glass window that dominated the gallery lobby. I asked him about the colors, and we enjoyed a lively conversation as the room filled. New people flooded in, and fashionable women were everywhere. I saw them turn to look at my dress, but it was Alma Schindler, holding forth about the libido and the death drive, who’d soon attracted a small circle around her.

  “Eros and Thanatos,” Alma said in a high, bright voice. “Dr. Freud understands what no one has dared to grasp before.”

  I leaned into Alma’s circle and looked at the women gathered around her. Some appeared shocked; others looked frightened or confused. One, a widow, was smiling slyly. Dr. Freud’s new ideas about sex and desire had brought people to blows, and I was both stunned and amazed by Alma’s brazenness. It was hard to believe that only a few years ago I had been forbidden to study anatomy and now people—women!—were talking openly and in public about sensual appetite. Ferdinand’s fuss at the Moulin Rouge seemed pedestrian in the face of it.

  “Here you are.” Ferdinand tapped my shoulder. He handed me a catalog of the show, and I missed whatever it was that Alma said next.

  Berta appeared behind me, and threaded her arm through mine.

  “Let’s go in,” she said.

  I took a deep breath and stepped into Vienna’s avant-garde in my sleeveless green dress, with my heart thrumming.

  “There are two hundred pieces here,” Berta said, tugging me close. “Besides Klimt’s mural—the centerpiece of the show, of course—he has some wonderful landscapes, and there are bold new pieces by the Belgian Symbolists, too.”

  The Secessionists wanted the exhibition to be an experience that pleased as many senses and sensibilities as possible—a complete art work of art, music, color, sculpture, and nature. A string quartet was playing Mozart in the center room, and the show had been divided into smaller areas that looked like intimate galleries or parlors. There was sleek, modern furniture designed by Josef Hoffmann, and electric light fixtures over tables arranged with flowers and sculptures.

  “I’d like a garden mural painted on my dining room walls,” I heard a woman with silver hair say. Her friend, who was staring at a pair of stiff white chairs, nodded. “And some of those Mackintosh chairs, too.”

  Beyond the small, stylized spaces there were four movable panels hung with large, colorful pieces. Berta and I stopped in front of a frightening painting of a bird-woman against a black sea background.

  “Jan Toorop’s Medusa.” She tapped a pencil against a slip of paper where she was jotting some notes. “What do you think, Adele?”

  I whispered that it seemed like two ideas mixed together into the grotesque. She liked that, and made a note.

  “I prefer this one,” I said, looking at a larger piece that showed three brides preparing for a procession. The women’s faces were alternately European and Egyptian, regal and exotic.

  “So do I,” Berta agreed. “It’s like Vienna right now, poised between the old and the new.”

  The dressmakers Emilie and Helene Flöge made a late entrance and caused a stir with dazzling new dresses that showed their ankles. Soon, Berta and I found ourselves in front of Klimt’s landscapes. Right away I fell under their spell. With their turquoise water and crooked, lively rooftops I felt as if I’d stepped right into the countryside.

  “And what’s behind there?” I pointed toward an enormous blue curtain that hung floor to ceiling. Two of the emperor’s soldiers were standing in front of it, on guard.

  “The new mural,” Berta said. “Klimt will open the curtain around nine o’clock, just when ev
eryone is dying of curiosity. He has a flair for theatrics,” she added with a smile. “But we can see it now, if you’d like.”

  My friend slid a brown ticket out of her purse and showed it to a guard. The press pass had the date—March 4, 1900—stamped in large black print, and was signed by Gustav Klimt in a flourished hand.

  The guard studied the pass and gave us a nod.

  “The mural is going to the Paris Exposition after this,” Berta said as we slipped through an opening in the curtain. The blue fabric covered my face, and for a moment I was lost in a sea of velvet.

  “Of course it is,” I said, my voice strangely muffled. “Everything exciting is in Paris.”

  “That’s not true.” Berta put a warm hand on my bare arm, and spoke with a sense of urgency. “What the Secessionists are doing in Vienna is worlds ahead of anything that’s happening in Paris. I can promise you that what’s happening here will shape the art world for a very long time.”

  Berta didn’t promise things lightly, and I felt a shiver of nervous excitement as she guided me into the center hall. There were two others in front of the mural: I recognized the critic Karl Kraus and the writer Peter Altenberg, but they were standing shoulder to shoulder and barely seemed to notice us.

  Klimt’s Philosophy was thick and dense—taller than four men and as wide as three. Red and blue figures seemed to swim across the canvas, and there were dark lava swirls and twisted naked bodies clutching their heads or crouching in fear. It was overpowering and terrifying, and I had to stare at it for a long time before I saw a ghostly face burning in the center of the canvas—a shimmering sylph looking coolly above the suffering without giving it thought.

  “But it’s ugly,” I heard Kraus murmur.

  Altenberg said nothing. Berta frowned.

  There was more in the mural than I’d seen at first: a gaunt, naked man straining toward nothing with his arms above his head; a nude woman, bending toward the outer edge of the frame where she could find no escape; bare, spackled space filled with a red and golden haze like the fires of hell or the expanses of heaven and the whole world a roiling, uncontained place of misery and mystery.

  It made Adam and Eve seem like a child’s primer.

  “Well?” Berta asked at last. The others had left, and we were alone. “Do you think it’s ugly?”

  “It’s terrible and magnificent,” I breathed. “It’s astonishing.”

  When I was young, I’d searched the sky for God’s face or closed my eyes and tried to pray him into my heart, but I’d always failed. When Karl got sick, God didn’t answer my prayers—he’d let Karl die, and I’d decided right then that if God existed, he was a phantom in the sky looking past our suffering, never hearing our supplications. Since we didn’t go to synagogue and we certainly didn’t attend church, no one had contradicted my beliefs; no one had even asked.

  Klimt’s unblinking honesty in the face of human suffering was a truth I understood—and as I stared into his swirling eternity I saw the certainty of my life rise up to the glass ceiling, hover for a moment, and vanish. I felt the circle of time open into a possibility I had never dreamt of. In that moment, I saw exactly what Klimt meant by truth in art.

  “It’s everything I believe about God and suffering,” I said.

  “Is that a good thing, Frau Bloch-Bauer?” a man asked.

  I turned to find Gustav Klimt standing right behind me. We’d never met, and I was very pleased that he knew who I was.

  “Herr Klimt,” I said. My throat filled, and no more words came.

  Berta came to my rescue.

  “I think your work has made her speechless,” she said.

  “No.” I recovered myself, and cast about for phrases I’d read and heard. “It’s like music, but it’s also a meditation on . . . truth. Is that right?”

  He smiled broadly, and I liked him right away. Quite a few men at the party, especially the painters, had a sickly look about them. Klimt was robust, with curly brown hair and wide shoulders. He was handsome, close to forty years old, with an elfin beard that came to a trim point. His fine three-piece suit was perfectly tailored, and his muscles were evident beneath the tweedy fabric. Although we’d not seen the sun in Vienna for most of February, his complexion was ruddy and healthy.

  “I try not to make my work a meditation on anything,” he said. “I like to think about color and balance.”

  He touched the gold necklace at my throat. I noticed bits of blue paint under his fingernails. Up close he smelled of the turquoise air in the countryside, blue water and snow, and the suggestion of animals waking from hibernation.

  “I look for things that are in contradiction but are somehow in harmony,” he said. I could feel the heat from his fingers, and did not let my eyes leave his. “Like this gold on your shoulders, and the glow against your dark hair.”

  Klimt’s charisma was exceptional. I stammered out something about the woman’s face staring out from the corner of the mural.

  “She looks wise and fierce, to me,” I said.

  “If you’ve read Wagner’s essay on Beethoven, I’m sure you’ll know who she is,” Berta chimed in. She was a dear: she knew I’d read the essay, and thought about it deeply.

  “I have,” I said to Klimt. “I’ve just come from my honeymoon in Paris, where I did read Wagner’s essay.”

  I cast about for something more to say. I wanted to sound clever.

  “We saw art there, too,” I added. “Some of the images here tonight put me in mind of Munch, especially the mermaid.”

  “I haven’t seen his mermaid, but I did see Munch’s Scream in Berlin,” Klimt said. “I think I know how that poor fellow feels.”

  He put his two thick hands alongside his mouth and pulled his face into a comical scream.

  I laughed out loud.

  In Vienna we took our ideas and ourselves very seriously. Klimt was brilliant, but he was also devilish and debonair.

  “Honestly,” he said, while we were still laughing. “What did you think of Munch’s mermaid?”

  “It was disturbing,” I admitted. The laughter had made me relax. I felt my tongue loosen. “It was provocative. It made me think. Like your painting does. Only your piece is far more exciting.”

  “I hope the others will be as generous as you are,” he said. He clapped his hands. “They’ll be seeing it soon enough.”

  Someone popped a head through the blue curtain and called for the painter. He excused himself, but turned back for an instant and smiled.

  “I hope you’ll visit my studio, Frau Bloch-Bauer,” he said. “I’d like to see you there.”

  I flushed from head to toe, and was very glad I wasn’t wearing a long-sleeved dress.

  “Well,” I said to Berta, after he’d gone. “Is he always like that?”

  “He does know how to coax a smile onto a pretty face,” Berta said.

  “And what about his fiancée?” I asked.

  Berta laughed. “Emilie Flöge? Dear, they’re like brother and sister. I thought everyone knew that.”

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  Berta explained that Emilie’s sister had been married to Klimt’s brother, and that when Ernst died, Klimt had become close to all of the Flöge women. He and Emilie weren’t engaged, she said, but people seemed to think they were, and they’d never done anything to discourage the rumors.

  I was trying to piece it all together when Berta put her arm through mine again, and pulled me close.

  “The truth is that Emilie prefers the company of women in the bedroom,” she said. A strange expression came over her face. “Although of course that’s scandalous to say, and nothing more than gossip.”

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s only hearsay.” I felt a jolt go through me, just as it had in Paris. Sexual transgressions and secrets seemed to be everywhere, and my friend’s face was very close, and very warm.

  The next hour passed with wine, cigarettes, and hors d’oeuvres. Friends who’d been at our wedding in December wante
d to talk about the ball season we’d missed, and to hear about our honeymoon in Paris.

  “We saw everything,” I told Alma. I ticked off a list of artists we’d seen on our honeymoon. “And the Moulin Rouge—Ferry took me to see the dancers.”

  Alma shook her hips and smiled knowingly.

  “I’ve been there,” she said. “It was thrilling.”

  No matter whom I was talking to, it seemed Klimt was always in my line of sight, and always surrounded by admirers. He grew more animated and enigmatic as the evening went on, as if he were flirting with men and women alike and holding the whole room enthralled. Once or twice I saw Emilie Flöge stand near him, but there was nothing that suggested anything intimate between them.

  At nine o’clock Klimt called for everyone’s attention, and the new minister of culture made a few remarks to the crowd.

  “Emperor Franz Joseph is proud and pleased to support the efforts of true Austrian art such as we see in Gustav Klimt and the new Secessionist movement,” the official said.

  Klimt shook the minister’s hand and thanked the crowd for coming. His voice was clear and strong. I thought he might make a few remarks, but he simply reached for the curtain and drew it open himself.

  “I give you Philosophy,” he said.

  In the full gallery light, the mural was even more powerful than before. The figures were gaunt and tortured; the swirling atmosphere haunted. There was a hush in the room, and a few gasps. A cry rose from the professors who’d commissioned the mural for the university’s Great Hall.

  “I don’t understand,” I heard one of the professors say. “Where is Aristotle? Where is the Greek temple?”

  “Is it an allegory?” another man asked. “I thought it would be an allegory to wisdom.”

  “Good God,” someone cried. The minister of culture backed away from the painting, but he did it slowly, inch by inch, moving in such tiny increments that the change in his position was inconspicuous.

  “They expected a party scene,” Berta said in my ear. “The philosophers through the ages, eating grapes in a sunny Austrian garden. Now they’re disappointed.”