The Man of Contradictions

Gustav Klimt is an ambiguous personality. Even while he was alive, he was revered as the most famous Viennese painter. Yet his personality was accorded a mythical status even then. The more famous he became, the shyer he became. As he grew older, the artist increasingly retreated to the solitude of his studio. His life was full of contradictions, and his personality was marked with great ambivalence.

His ambivalence, perhaps even turmoil, is undoubtedly an important facet of Klimt's personality, which has always been puzzling. Just as his works of art, his personality will forever be mysterious.

For Klimt, the role of spokesman and defendant of the Secession's mission, as well as that of his own art, was an extremely uncomfortable task. This type of confrontation completely contradicted his personal, introverted nature. Instead, he much preferred to retreat to his studio and be detached from it all. Keeping a regular daily routine that allowed him enough time for his work seemed more important to him than the many social obligations and public appearances, which he saw as a waste of time, and which prevented him from maintaining a regular rhythm to his work.

Another reason why Klimt held back from appearing in worldly Viennese society was his poor, suburban heritage, on which he could never quite turn his back. His father, who worked as a self-employed gold engraver, had lost various investments during the stock crisis of 1873 and had to see to it that he could provide for his large family (Gustav Klimt had six siblings).

Klimt's use of the Viennese dialect seemed quite noticeable to authors of the time, especially those who were not confident in it themselves. There are also occasional reports of Klimt's openly crude, colloquial manners, and his tendency towards familiar behavior, often stretching to a characterization of Klimt as a country bumpkin. Klimt's use of dialect and his tendency toward simple manners are an indication that Klimt was never quite able let go of his origins in the Viennese suburbs.

Since Klimt well knew the fate of a simple, if not poor, heritage, he was very conscious of the debt he owed to the finer levels of society. He made efforts to conform to the class and status consciousness of the city's prominent inhabitants. In nearly all of the photographs that Klimt had taken for formal portraits or at social occasions, the artist is wearing good-quality clothes, the correct outfit for the occasion, and the obligatory white shirt with stand-up collar.

Such an official appearance is in stark contrast to his private and work life, which was almost exclusively played out in his studio. Up until 1911, Klimt used a first-floor building, which was located in the back yard of a rented apartment building on Josefstädter Strasse in the city center. From 1911 onwards, his studio was a small, first-floor building situated in the middle of a large garden on Feldmühlgasse in the Viennese suburb of Hietzing. Inside the studio, where he met only with his portrait clients and nude models, the artist wore a comfortable, long smock. This garment served as functional work attire, but could also be interpreted as an expression of Klimt's own self-image, as a prophet on the outskirts of society.

At every official occasion, dinner, evening concert, or theater visit, it was important to Klimt to have the one person by his side who played the most important role in his life besides his mother, namely, Emilie Flöge.

The painter had a close, life-long friendship with Emilie Flöge. Klimt met Emilie, who was 12 years his junior, at the time of his brother Ernst's marriage to her sister Helene in October 1891, or possibly even before. Emilie came from a wealthy, middle-class background. In 1904, she founded the "Flöge Sisters" fashion store along with her sisters, which over many years became one of the leading fashion houses in Vienna, employing up to 80 staff in its heyday. The Flöge sisters' fashion store was often frequented by high society women, who tended to also be Klimt's patrons for his female portraits. Emilie Flöge was a very successful proponent of the so-called "reform" fashion and acted as a demonstration model for her own creations, as documented by countless photographs.

On the other hand, Klimt's relationship with Emilie Flöge was unusual. They were not married, had no children together, and did not live in the same apartment. Emilie lived with her sisters and her mother, as did Gustav with his. Their relationship also had strong familial aspects. Klimt often spent the evening playing cards with the Flöge family. From 1897, Klimt and the Flöge family even went away together regularly on vacation, mostly to Lake Attersee in the Salzkammergut region of Austria.

In addition to his partnership with Emilie Flöge, Klimt also established other relationships, which were of both an amorous and familial nature. However, they took place on a completely different social level. It was no secret to Emilie Flöge or to Klimt's friends that the artist had a string of love affairs with his models. His contact with some of the models solidified into close relationships, which also bore children. However, unlike with Emilie Flöge, Klimt was never seen out in public with the mothers of his illegitimate children. These relationships took place more or less in secret. They would meet at Klimt's studio or in the apartments that Klimt financed for his companions.

In later biographies of Klimt, these affairs were deemed a scandal, and it was reported that, at his funeral, claims were made on his estate for fourteen children. It is now documented and undisputed, however, that Klimt had six children altogether, from three relationships.

Klimt kept exact records of which models he ordered to his studio on which occasions, and he paid them a comparably high fee. The models did not spend time in the same room, however, that Klimt used to paint the portraits of noble Viennese ladies. Friederike Maria Beer, on whose portrait Klimt worked for many months, recalled of the sittings for her portrait, that they always took a long time, and that Klimt would often take a break in between.

During these breaks, he would go into the adjoining room, to relax in conversation with the models, while drawing them at the same time. These swift pencil drawings clearly offered the artist respite from his hard work at the easel.

Finally, Klimt was also provided with entertainment by the many cats that inhabited his studio. Those who knew him at the time report that there were at least six cats living in the studio at any one time. The many sketches and studies left lying around on the floor of the studio were not kept out of the cats' reach. They often tore up sheets of paper, which didn't bother the artist too much. One of the nicest photographs of Klimt that we know of is the one showing him in front of his studio holding a cat.