Women in gold

The mysteries and dreams, essence and contradictions of the “new woman” on the way to the Age of Emancipation.

More than any other artist, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), the most important painter of Viennese Art Nouveau, placed women at the centre of his artistic work. He dressed them in gold mosaics and transformed them into femmes fatales. His decorative and ornamental way of modelling the female body, endowing it with vibrant contours, was and still is greatly admired by women for his „golden style“. They saw themselves represented, not only in his superb portraits, but also – and above all – in his feeling for the „great feminine themes“ such as beauty and the erotic, death and hope, love and fulfilment.

In this book Doerthe Binkert opens the doors to an imaginary museum, one that has no counterpart in the world of art: she shows us Klimt’s models and muses, his dreaming brides and seductive nymphs, his elegant friends – bedded in gold and veiled in the finest fabrics, posed in costly interiors.

A specifically female view of the „painter of the feminine soul“: knowledgeable and critical, sensitively and powerfully written.