Friday, July 22, 2011

"Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt"

Jorie Graham uses ekphrasis poetry to describe the works of Gustav Klimt.  Graham describes two Klimt paintings, one that is incomplete that Klimt will never be able to share his finished product with the world and a Klimt painting of beech trees and compares the nature of the painting to Buchenwald, a German concentration camp where millions of Jews were slaughtered.  In this painting, Graham describes the glittering on the trees as "the injustice of the world" and again compares "the chips on the bark of each beech tree" to the millions slaughtered.  Graham describes the scene at a concentration camp where Jews would "stand in rows, anonymous" and "in gaseous light..."  This painting is absolutely beautiful.  You can see how the light is trying to get through the trees.  The colors are outstanding.  What a wonderful talent Klimt possessed.
Beech Forest Buchenwald I - Gustav Klimt - www.klimtgallery.org

2 comments:

  1. just linked this article on my Facebook account. it’s a very interesting article for all.


    Gustav Klimt Paintings

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  2. How are we looking at the paintings of Mark Rothko these days?
    Is he old hat, replaced in America by more contemporary concerns? Looking at his minimal canvases and their enticing floating squares of subdued paint live at the MOMA recently, I had to stop to wonder whether he still communicates to a modern and younger audience.
    Wahooart, the site that sells good canvas prints to order from their database of digital images, has many Rothko prints. I ordered this one, Blue and grey, http://EN.WahooArt.com/A55A04/w.nsf/OPRA/BRUE-8BWU7F, that I have now hanging in my study. I can spend a long time looking at this elusive image that takes me to some other place not in this world.

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