“Once considered pornographic and deviant,” Klimt’s was later “put on display in one of the imperial palaces” - and even today, on the other side of the world and in a much humbler context, it retains its romantic power. He also traces the aesthetic roots of The Kiss through Edvard’s Munch’s eponymous painting, and Auguste Rodin’s even earlier sculpture.
Here the “deliberate contrast between the realistically rendered flesh and the two-dimensional abstract ornamentation creates an effect almost like photo montage.” The figures’ clothes offer “a visual metaphor for the emotional and physical expression of erotic love,” and their close framing echoes Japanese woodblock prints, from which Payne notes that Klimt (like Van Gogh) drew great inspiration. Completed in 1908, the painting shows both the artist’s penchant for “allegory and symbolism” carried over from his younger days, as well as his mature ability to transform allegory and symbolism “into a new language that was more overtly sexual and more disturbing.” For these and other reasons - its nearly life-size dimensions, its liberal use of actual gold - The Kiss has for more than a century been an un-ignorable work of art, even “an icon for the post-religious age.”Īs in his other fifteen-minute videos, Payne manages to discuss both technique and context.
