At my all girls high school in Auckland, complete with preppy holiday-appropriate uniform, we briefly covered Gustav in art class. The femmes with the dreamy hair always alive with envious volume, floating along the periphery. A few years ago, I came across Fish Blood online during a search for a painting that mimicked the feelings competing against one another in my body at that moment: lost, carefree, stagnant, free-spirited, trapped, wild, cyclical, unpredictable, longing for something in particular but no idea what. On Saturday at [The Getty], in the 'Spirit of an Age: Drawings from the Germanic World' exhibition, that drawing made its way back into my life--a glass case offered an antique art book open to the exact page featuring Fish Blood. About his other similarly themed works it was noted: her luxuriant hair cascading around her head as if caught by a current of air or water; the fluid stylized treatment of the model's body and hair suggests his enduring identification of women with water--unbounded, immaterial and elusive--a common motif in his work.
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| Fish Blood Gustav Klimt 1898 |
Playground Love
Air
You went to school in Auckland??
ReplyDeleteyesyes i did! i went to westlake girls high school up to the age of 15/16, then i finished high school in the philippines! one of my dearest friends lives on waiheke, perhaps you know herrr.. but then again, i can't remember how small world that place is or not.. ;p
ReplyDeleteahhhh soo beautiful xx
ReplyDeleteWow that's amazing. I went to Carmel College but only for a few months and probably way long before you were at Westlake! ;D I've only been on Waiheke since 2008, who is your friend? :) It's a darn pretty small world, as is the whole country. :)
ReplyDeletehaha wtf, even the actual world is a small world, not just waiheke! i knew/know a couple of girls that went to carmel, though i can't quite remember them specifically anymore, just one. my waiheke girl is huni [hoo-nee], i assume that's a pretty unique name & if you know it you know her ;p
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