Rainbows of fabric – a detail from The Virgin (1913) by Gustav Klimt,
which will feature in an exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum
I was stuck for something to write about this week, but then along came an email from Jenna at Artsy, an organisation whose mission is to make all the world’s art accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Even if we aren’t buyers or sellers, we can still look! Artsy currently has 800,000 images of art in its database.
Artsy hopes to publicise the work of Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) and an upcoming exhibition at The Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco. The show is called Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter, and will run from October 14 until January 28 next year.
An image of the Legion of Honor at night by Frank Schulenburg on Wikipedia – the building is a full-scale replica of the French Pavilion at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which in turn was a three-quarter-scale version of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris, by Pierre Rousseau (1782)
Demonstrating the power of internet research, Jenna came across a blog post of mine from 2011, about peacocks in art. I hadn’t even featured a Klimt picture, but mentioned that this image reminded me of the style of Klimt…
NOT a Klimt – a symbolist peacock design by Patricia Ariel in my “designer birds” blog post attracted Artsy’s attention
Jenna points out that Artsy’s Gustav Klimt page provides visitors with Klimt’s bio, more than 150 of his works, exclusive articles and up-to-date Klimt exhibition listings.
Peacock-like patchwork – a detail from Baby (Cradle) (1917-1918) by Gustav Klimt, one of the works featured in the Artsy database
Finally, Jenna includes this quote from Gustav Klimt:
“Whoever wants to know something about me — as an artist which alone is significant — they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize.”
I have now signed up for Artsy updates – maybe you will be interested, too…
The Squirrelbasket 
Klimt nails it in his quotation, doesn’t he? And I think it can be applied to all the arts.
Indeed, what you see is what you get. Maybe there is too much analysis these days.
Thank you for dropping by 🙂
Klimt has always been a favourite of mine – all that exuberant colour!
Yes, as I think I hint, there is something very textile-like in his paintings, also stained-glass-like or mosaic-like, I suppose.
Thanks for the comment 🙂
The www may create some problems but the pluses far out weigh them.
Ha-ha, indeed!
Amazing what you find, or what finds you 🙂