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      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        November 2014

        Gustav Klimt. Romanbiografie

        Zeit und Leben des Wiener Künstlers Gustav Klimt

        by Karez, Patrick

        Vienna. 1862. An exceptional artist is born. Gustav Klimt. He gives birth to Modernism. New York. 2012. A recently divorced woman facing the end of her forties. She gives birth to nothing. And no one. And fails. Because of the hardness of modern life. 150 years after his birth. And around a hundred years after his death. Gustav Klimt suddenly appears in a New York diner. And there meets the frustrated and recently divorced woman facing the end of her forties… This biographic novel does not only illustrate the life and work of the exceptional artist Gustav Klimt (1862/1918) from Vienna, but it also draws a genre picture of a legendary era, the Belle Époque, that was destroyed by hail of bombs the of the First World War. While Klimt was considered scandalous and controversial during his time, because he drew erotic paintings, nowadays he is one of the best known and most popular artists of all. After a childhood full of privation, Klimt starts a meteoric career as a decoration painter in the gorgeous buildings of the new Vienna Ring Road in the early 1880’s. After this he founds his own artist association, the Vienna Secession, as well as his own remarkable art style in 1897. As the first and only artist since the medieval times Klimt brings gold back into art and gets rid of perspective and shadows. Thereby he becomes the founding father of Modernism. His ambivalent relationships to women influence his work as much as Sigmund Freud’s theories, his foreign relations and his travels – to Munich, Berlin, Venice, Ravenna, Paris, Madrid, Toledo and London. Nevertheless during his lifetime he is considered a ‘pervert’ and a ‘drawing Freud’, because he connects his church art with extremely erotic motifs. Klimt, the most misunderstood and hated artist in Vienna during the turn of the century, mainly surrounded himself with the most popular and most important artists and intellectuals of his time. Remarkable people of that time like Alma und Gustav Mahler, Auguste Rodin, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Arthur Schnitzler, Karl Kraus, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Felix Salten, Ludwig Hevesi, Hans Makart, Emil Jacob Schindler, Franz Matsch, Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Emilie Flöge, Tina Blau, Bertha Zuckerkandl, Kaiserin Elisabeth, Kaiser Franz Joseph, etc. cross his path and have a date within this book.

      • Memoirs
        March 2020

        The Private Adolf Loos

        Portrait of an Eccentric Genius

        by Claire Beck Loos; Translated by Constance C. Pontasch and Nicholas Saunders

        An intimate literary portrait of the infamously eccentric and influential modern architect, told in lively, snapshot-like vignettes. The Private Adolf Loos reveals the personality and philosophy that helped shape Modern architecture in Vienna and the Czech lands. Includes an introduction, supplemental texts, writings by Loos and photographs. The Loos' trip to the French Riviera and his work in France are a significant part of the story.   Recommended to all those interested not only in architecture but also in the dynamic era of twenties and thirties. Not only a recollection of an extraordinary and controversial personality, Claire’s book is also an excellent literary work. She has captured with a brilliant lightness and humor the tedious, but not boring, life beside a somewhat self-centered genius. […] We still feel Loos’ charisma.– “Annoyed on Vacation and Misunderstood on Site: Loos, We Do Not Know Him,” Lidovk.cz   What makes the book most valuable is the fine-grained portrait it provides us of Loos’ last years, of his activities and his preoccupations. […] The English translation of her book, made by Constance C. Pontasch [and Nicholas Saunders], is fluent and accurate, conveying well the tone of Claire Loos’ original (which, in turn, to some extent mimics Loos’ own writing style). Paterson’s introduction and afterword, along with some forty previously unpublished family photographs, add to the story and help flesh it out. It is a richly informative.– Christopher Long, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture

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