[HN Gopher] Gustav Klimt's Obsession with Gold
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Gustav Klimt's Obsession with Gold
Author : pseudolus
Score : 88 points
Date : 2024-10-06 23:52 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.artnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.artnet.com)
| Daub wrote:
| I teach digital painting. You would be surprised how many
| students ask how to achieve 'the color gold'. One of the
| qualifiers of physical paint (as opposed to digital paint) is,
| not surprisingly, its materiality. Explaining to young people
| what materiality is can be a tough ride. I have to remind myself
| that for some of them the very first experience of painting was
| on an iPad.
|
| Of TFA, it is no surprise that he was greatly influenced by
| Byzantine mosaics. Both are supremely decorative, flat and
| strongly symmetrical.
| Filligree wrote:
| Well, hold on. Gold is a specific color, specularity and
| emissiveness. I wouldn't expect to achieve it in a 2D drawing
| program, and I'm not sure what fraction of monitors can achieve
| it at all, but it's simple enough in Unreal Engine.
| Daub wrote:
| In addition to teaching digital painting I also teach 3d.
| What you describe is completely correct and something I would
| emulate using Blenders BSDF shader. This would emulate real
| world materiality, but my point is that color is the lest of
| the key properties of a metal. For the most part, the Colour
| would derive from environment reflections, which would all be
| tinted with 'gold color'.
| reaperman wrote:
| > it's simple enough in Unreal Engine
|
| The color of physical metallic gold is outside of sRGB color
| space. Maybe you could get close enough to fool people with
| some of the best modern HDR's (I don't know), but for most of
| the history of modern computing it didn't matter how good you
| were at digital animation -- no display could display the
| color "gold" even if you could mathematically compute the
| right color.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's just orange, _reflective_ orange. The italics part is
| the rest of the owl.
| jessekv wrote:
| I've been learning digital painting. Getting realistic
| materials is tricky indeed! So far, I've struggled with
| liquids, metals, glass, and the hardest of all: rocks. It's
| really hard to get the texture and shadow to feel natural! I'd
| be thrilled to get a few tips here...
| Daub wrote:
| Top tips....
|
| Using a digital brush on its own can be extremely limiting.
| Digital paint is inherently flat and lifeless. Textured
| brushes can help, but not much. I would recommend employing
| natural textures via blend modes. The best blend mode for
| passing textures from one image to another is overlay. In
| this way the texture of a photo of a rusty surface may be
| passed onto a painting of a rock. Essentially painting with
| textures... or photo-bashing.
|
| Here is a walk through I did for my students...
|
| https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/87565/pages/photoshop-p.
| ..
|
| Happy to answer any questions.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Explaining to young people what materiality is can be a tough
| ride.
|
| Sounds like an excellent opportunity to introduce them to
| drawing from observation? They don't have to understand what
| "materiality" is, just see that the object appears different
| depending on how they hold it, where the lights are and what
| else is around it. (Assuming that you don't have a bar of gold
| hanging out in your class you could grab some toy gold coins.)
| twic wrote:
| Skill issue, Warhammer painters are all over it:
|
| http://razzaminipainting.blogspot.com/2016/07/non-metallic-m...
| Modified3019 wrote:
| What the fuck are you doing with that link?
|
| Here's the link without the bullshit:
| http://razzaminipainting.blogspot.com/2016/07/non-
| metallic-m...
| twic wrote:
| Oh, sorry. I'm at work, and my company uses some dogshit
| safe browsing wrapper service. Sometimes i forget to trim
| the prefix off before posting a link. Fixed now, thanks for
| pointing it out.
| axegon_ wrote:
| As the son of two artists, both of whom never liked gold, Klimt
| is a strange breed: My parents have made a ton of murals, jam-
| packed with gold. Not because they wanted but because rich
| people(the type of people who want murals in their homes and can
| afford it) love it as an expression of their financial status.
| Both of them hated much of those murals and I can only name a
| handful of works they truly liked, at the end of the day, the
| customer is always right. And having seen much of their work(and
| taking some part on a few occasions circumstantially since I
| can't draw a single line to save my life), I completely agree
| with them. We have a word which roughly translates to mobbaroque
| in English. In almost all cases, this is exactly what it is.
|
| Having said that, my mom specifically has a few favorite artists,
| Klimt being one of them. Over the years she's been asked to make
| dozens of Klimt replicas(The Kiss probably accounting for 80% of
| them) and she's loved doing all of them. I think Klimt is the
| only artist to successfully incorporate gold into his paintings
| without making them look obnoxious or ostentatious. Not only that
| but made them look incredible. Admittedly I never looked all that
| deep as to why he was "obsessed" with it.
| ewuhic wrote:
| What would be the original "mobbaroque" word your parents use?
| axegon_ wrote:
| They don't use it exclusively(they didn't come up with it),
| it's a pretty common word across the country. So much so,
| that even google has picked up on it a lil bit: https://www.g
| oogle.com/search?q=%D0%BC%D1%83%D1%82%D1%80%D0%...
| Daub wrote:
| You may appreciate the following anecdote about Picasso. He was
| offered a lot of money to make a sculpture entirely in hold.
| His response was 'Great! I will paint it black!'.
| axegon_ wrote:
| I use it a lot but then again I lived a rock throw away from
| his house for a long period of my life but since The Rolling
| Stones are a bit closer to my heart, I usually resort to one
| of their famous songs.
| mannyv wrote:
| Mobbaroque -> Mob Baroque.
|
| To me that's New York Italian, with lots of marble, gold, and
| extreme decor. It's a big marble tub with gold fixtures and
| maybe a couple of statues hanging around for good measure...in
| a marble/gold/mirrors bath.
| apercu wrote:
| Or the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago ?
| devilbunny wrote:
| Porcelain fountains!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oofdn0MFDSQ
| crabbone wrote:
| > Mobbaroque
|
| Oh, I didn't know the word, but I know what it means! Haha!
| Back in the days I worked in a printing house, one of the most
| common orders were business cards. Unimaginably large
| proportion of those were to be screen-printed with gold paint
| that increased in volume when heated on a paper that looked
| like marble. These orders usually came from people who had...
| well... no business to appear to be rich. Like, a local police
| department chief or an owner of a small refrigerated delivery
| service (that one was both morbid and bizarre as he wanted raw
| meat texture for the business card).
|
| Being an art college grad, I tend to think that a lot of
| Klimt's portraits weren't particularly indicative of what he
| _wanted_ to paint. It was what put food on the table, what
| customers paid him for. He found a way to please the customers
| that worked. How much did he enjoy it?--Hard to tell. From my
| student years, when I had to make a living from art, which was
| admittedly not so easy or successful, I 'd guess that in his
| heart of hearts he probably at the minimum laughed at it.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Klimt does use gold very well. But I am surprised by your
| claim...
|
| > I think Klimt is the only artist to successfully incorporate
| gold into his paintings without making them look obnoxious or
| ostentatious.
|
| Byzantine iconography comes off as neither obnoxious nor
| ostentatious. The use of gold in Botticelli's works
| wonderfully. And so on. What exactly is an example of
| "obnoxious or ostentatious" use of gold in art? I can only
| think of ridiculous things like gold-plated toilets. Perhaps
| you were exposed to especially egregious works that are not
| familiar to the general public?
| Retric wrote:
| I think both Byzantine iconography and Botticelli's works
| were invented to be ostentatious. Gold toilets/plates/etc
| come off as obnoxious because the use of gold is actively
| detrimental rather than simply eye catching.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I don't see how. I do not find the works in question
| ostentatious in the least. They deploy gold tastefully and
| appropriately in relation to the subject matter. Purpose
| and the role something plays in a composition determines
| appropriateness. So, for example, while gold leaf on a
| church ceiling can be beautiful when it plays a sensible
| role in the composition, putting it slapdash on your
| drywall McMansion ceiling because #GoldIsRich is incredibly
| tacky.
|
| I suspect you are judging gold not from reasoned taste, but
| some kind of prejudice.
| Retric wrote:
| I am referring to the intent here. Gold in religious art
| is ment to signify importance just as the tacky rich
| guy's gold is.
|
| Use of gold on a kings actual throne may seem more
| appropriate than a CEO's chair but that's a judgement
| about what should be venerated not the intent behind the
| use of gold.
| mecsred wrote:
| The thing most people find ostentatious about the
| "mobbaroque" examples is that gold is used to add gold to
| the work. As a physical demonstration of wealth, i.e. "I
| can afford so much gold it's all over my artwork". The
| reason people find the Byzantine halos less ostentatious
| is that gold is used symbolically in lesser quantities to
| represent something else which is perceived as valuable.
| AlanYx wrote:
| It wasn't until later in the Byzantine period that gold was
| used excessively in art. In the early period when it was
| largely confined to halos, as a contrasting accent around
| painted halos, or to convey specific religious symbolism,
| it was hardly ostentatious.
| Retric wrote:
| > largely confined to halos
|
| I'd say that's close to the definition of ostentatious.
| So we may simply disagree with what the word means.
| pseudolus wrote:
| Aside from Klimt it could be argued that Maurizio Cattelan has
| successfully incorporated gold into his work - although in the
| form of sculpture. His work "America", a solid gold functioning
| toilet, attracted quite a few crowds (apparently over 100K
| people "used" it), one notable theft, and certainly made a
| statement. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_(Cattelan)
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I never particularly cared much for Klimt and usually despise
| gold. But then I visited a museum in Vienna.
|
| My wife prepared the whole trip and I was mostly going with the
| flow. Unbeknownst to me, we would see The Kiss that day. It was
| striking. I mean, the lighting was obviously perfect and the
| surprise must have helped. But the colors, texture and shapes
| are just remarkable. I'll never forget making a corner turn and
| being completely mesmerized.
|
| One of those moments that makes you realize the value of the
| original, the whole Walter Benjamin aura thing.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Ironically enough, when I visited the neue galerie in New York
| (which hosts a small selection of klimt's paintings, including
| the expensive Adele bloch Bauer), the painting that impressed me
| the most was the most white and plain. The portrait of Gertrude
| Loew really shook me. Photos don't do it justice. I was
| hypnotized, it was such a strange feeling
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| It adds something sparkly reminiscent of life giving sun. Just
| some moderation like jewelry.. too much and it's monkey puke
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Let me save you a click: _Goldsmithing Was the Klimt Family
| Business_
|
| This is TMZ-level art journalism.
| SamBam wrote:
| Klimt is one of those artists that I feel primed to dislike,
| because it's so reproduced that's it's turned cheesy. I've
| probably seen more _Kiss_ posters and fridge magnets and
| whatevers than any other painting in the world.
|
| But good god are they beautiful. They just make me so happy to
| see them. Or sad.
|
| My favorites are probably the birch forests, though, perhaps
| _Birch Forest (1903)_ [1]
|
| 1. https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustav-klimt/farmhouse-with-
| birch...
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