Klimt is one of the most famous artists of the Art Nouveau (“new art”) period – the most popular decorative arts movement from 1890 to 1910. Art Nouveau gained enthusiasts throughout Europe and is also known as Jugendstil. They aimed to modernize design and to escape the diverse historical styles that had formerly been so popular. Artists gained inspiration from organic and geometric forms, producing delicate designs that unified angular contours with natural forms. (The Art Story, 2015) Art Nouveau was an international style of modern art and promoted the idea of art and design as part of everyday life, an idea that I will elaborate in this essay. The aim of this essay is to understand and locate an object within a historical context by identifying …show more content…
The man wears an intense gold robe with irregularly placed black and white rectangles and spirals while the woman is shown in a tight fitted dress with multi-coloured oval motifs on a gold background. He builds the gold up in layers and the ovals on her dress rises off the surface, creating a relief effect and catches the light much like how the gold was tooled in medieval paintings. (Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 2015) He creates a conflict between the two- and three-dimensionality that was fundamental to the work of the other modernists. They are kneeling at the edge of a flower bed with both warm and cool toned flowers and the gold stem-like lines over her feet makes it appear as if they are growing out of the flower bed, directly springing from Earth, reflected in the erect nature of their posture. The woman’s face is framed by a halo-like circle of flowers (sprinkled in her hair and under her chin like a necklace) which highlights her face and the man is wearing a crown of vines and leaves. (Klimt, 2015) The recurring floral motifs frame the couple in nature, so that they are part of nature, not just connected to