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| Gustav Klimt, “The Kiss,” 1907–1908. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna. |
A couple kneels entwined at the edge of a flowered meadow, entirely enclosed inside a single flat sheet of gold leaf, silver, and platinum. Klimt applied the metal directly to the canvas, a technique borrowed partly from Byzantine mosaics he had studied on a trip to Ravenna.
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“All art is erotic.”
Gustav Klimt
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Look closely and the two robes carry deliberately different patterns: rectangles and hard lines on the man, circles and soft flowers on the woman, a visual shorthand for masculine and feminine that art historians still debate the full meaning of. Here is a closer look at exactly that detail.
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| Detail of the robes’ contrasting patterns. |
Neither figure’s face is ever confirmed. A persistent Vienna rumor holds that Klimt painted himself and his lifelong companion Emilie Flöge, a fashion designer he never married but stayed close to until his death. The Belvedere itself, which owns the painting, states plainly that the identities were never documented and remain unproven.
I used to assume a painting this famous had to have a settled, agreed-upon story behind it. Even the museum that owns it admits the central romantic question people ask about it first has no confirmed answer.
Klimt died of a stroke in February 1918, at fifty-five, in the same year the Austro-Hungarian Empire he had spent his career painting collapsed entirely. His close contemporary, the painter Egon Schiele, died of influenza just months later.
A state that called his work obscene bought his next masterpiece before it was finished… and it has been Austria’s single most valuable cultural export ever since.
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Three Things Worth Knowing
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In 1897, Klimt and a group of fellow artists formally “seceded” from Vienna’s conservative official art establishment, founding the Vienna Secession. Their motto, carved above their new exhibition hall, read simply: “To every age its art, to art its freedom.” The word stuck to the whole movement, and to the building itself, which still stands and still exhibits contemporary art today.
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Architecture
The Palais Stoclet
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In 1910, Klimt designed a monumental mosaic frieze for the dining room of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, a private mansion designed by the architect Josef Hoffmann. The frieze, made largely of gold, marble, and semiprecious stones, is often treated as an architectural companion piece to “The Kiss,” the same golden vocabulary translated into a permanent, built interior.
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Philosophy
Eros and Civilization
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In 1955, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse argued that modern civilization survives by systematically repressing erotic instinct, channeling it into work and social order instead. Klimt’s censured university ceilings, and the golden, unrepentant sensuality of “The Kiss” that followed them, read almost like an illustrated rebuttal, made decades before Marcuse gave the argument its name.
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Connoisseur’s Diary
Worth Seeing This Week
“The Kiss” hangs in a purpose-built gallery on the first floor of the Upper Belvedere, alongside the largest Klimt collection in the world.
Where: Prinz Eugen-Straße 27, 1030 Vienna, Austria. Tickets: standard adult admission runs around €21–24; check the museum’s site for current pricing and timed-entry slots. Insider tip: weekday mornings before 11am or after 4pm are consistently the least crowded windows to see the painting without a crowd three-deep. Plan a visit at belvedere.at →
Worth Reading
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Klimt — Frank Whitford (1990). A concise, well-illustrated biography placing Klimt’s career against the final, glittering decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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Explore Further
Browse: the Belvedere’s own Open Content Policy offers free, high-resolution downloads of “The Kiss” and most of its Klimt collection, at belvedere.at/en/open-content.
Watch: the Google Arts & Culture “Klimt vs. Klimt” project offers a free interactive tour through his complete surviving body of work, at artsandculture.google.com.
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