
Klimt's Women, Real and on Canvas - prismatic
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/design/klimts-women-real-and-on-canvas.html
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dexwiz
I recently spent several days in Vienna looking at art. The Hapsburgs were
avid art collectors, and have a massive collection. I highly recommend Vienna
to any aspiring art historians.

Klimt had a rather conservative art training. He was essentially a court
painter, painting murals in various palaces and museums around Vienna. His
founding of the Vienna Secession was a big turn from the centuries long legacy
of professional court painters producing landscapes, portraits, and
allegorical depictions of Hapsburg empire to "Art for Art's Sake." This was a
switch from art as a profession to art as an expression.

In Mad Men, Don Draper is regularly ridiculed as a sell out, because his art
is for a salary. Somehow this was seen as heretical. But art has a long
history of being a profession of propaganda production for ruling class
patrons. Klimt help break this mold in Vienna, and is definitely one of the
most influential artists of the last century. The Secession produced artists
that would go on to influence Surrealism and Modernist, which ultimately shape
the way our world looks today.

