Ok now here is the other guy.
Gustav Klimt was a very important Austrian artist in the early 1900s. He lived in Vienna and was renowned for his characteristic style, which is realistically painted women (often naked or in some sort of suggestive poses....the guy was a sex fiend) who are shrouded and/or floating in this amazing geometric chaos. But there was a purpose to this sex fixation! Klimt painted pictures that were called pornography in their time in order to shock the Victorian era out of its prudeishness. Along the way they ended up being beautiful and just really cool.
Here's some of the tamer of his more passionate work:
He also did a lot of landscapes with the same eye for detail as in his nudes.
Ok, quick recap:
Paints surreal pictures full of mysterious women and sex with great attention to detail and the purpose of provoking society into feeling.
So what do you think? Are the similarities between Haruki Murakami and Gustav Klimt enough to overcome the simple fact that one is a modern Japanese author and the other was a turn of the century Austrian painter?
Klimt has always been one of my favorite artists - I love how his works feel more like shimmering mosaics than actual paintings. I am also always fascinated to find that something that we see as completely acceptable and not off-color at all was once considered shocking and even cruel. How could work so beautiful be considered crass and lowly?
ReplyDeleteIt's a great idea to compare an artist like Klimt to a writer. Even though their cultures and mediums are completely different, it will be really interesting to find their similarities since they both struggled against societies that were too constraining. Noticing the similarities and differences of how they dealt with this problem is fascinating. Great idea!