The Untold Story Behind Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

[00:00:08][music] [music] >> Gustav Klimt lived a colorful life that matched his exuberant paintings, especially his most famous work of all, the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

[00:00:35]Adele Bloch-Bauer was a fascinating lady for her time, really modern, really forward-thinking. Adele's husband, Ferdinand, wanted to give it as a anniversary present to Adele's parents.

[00:00:45]Klimt actually spent over 3 years, incredible amount of time, working on on the portrait.

[00:00:51]Klimt's most lasting and iconic work was the pinnacle of his aptly titled golden phase.

[00:00:57]It's incredibly meticulous and ornate and must have been very, very difficult to paint. It's completely gleaming. It's like a jewelry [music] box. Little did he know just how troubled a history this painting would have.

[00:01:09]The Nazis confiscated his paintings, including the Bloch-Bauer portrait.

[00:01:14]>> Klimt would probably have been labeled a degenerate artist if he had lived up until [music] that time.

[00:01:20]How did this portrait get caught up in an epic legal battle and subsequently become the world's most expensive artwork?

[00:01:39]I can paint and draw. I believe this myself, [music] and a few other people say that they believe this, too.

[00:01:46]But I'm not certain of whether it's true.

[00:01:51]Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 on [music] the outskirts of Vienna. He was brought up very conventionally.

[00:01:58]He was born into an Austria that had been incessantly at war, and then suddenly wasn't. And so it was a very comfortable, [music] secure, affluent, boring world. By the time he was 30, [music] that had all changed, and he was living in a city where there was Schoenberg and Mahler and Freud and Wittgenstein, and [music] it was just the most extraordinary effulgence of brilliance.

[00:02:21]His father was a craftsman, a gold engraver, >> [music] >> and Gustav was brought up in an environment in which art was discussed, and he [music] decided to study the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. And he had a fairly conservative education there.

[00:02:40]It was a strange time in [music] that there was a real duality between immense progress and a sense of stagnation in society. A lot of this progress, I think, [music] was driven by a huge surge in the population. There were these two opposing sides of society in Vienna, real wealth juxtaposed with real poverty, and Klimt kind of straddled the two. He was he was born one of seven children in a small suburb of Vienna, very, very poor. There are stories of him and his brothers being teased at school [music] because they had going to school in rags. But there was also the mobility that his talent was recognized, and he quite quickly became very famous in Vienna. [music] Vienna was then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and very wealthy. But it was an extremely artistic city, and in the late 19th [music] century and turn of the century, it was very avant-garde, and there was [music] a lot of interesting, exciting things going on in the art field. So it was a great time for an artist to emerge.

[00:03:44]At this time, the Vienna Secession [music] was emerging, meaning a whole new artistic movement was beginning to flourish.

[00:03:52]>> [music] >> The Vienna Secession was set up in 1897.

[00:03:56]It was a group of art rebels, um those artists who wanted to break away from the conventional artistic scene in Vienna. They set up an exhibition venue [music] where they showed avant-garde art, and Klimt was its first president. So he played a crucial role in its founding. He [music] started his career really working with the state, doing various murals, eventually ended up completely turning his back on that and being a leader of the Secession. There'd already been a Berlin [music] Secession and a Munich Secession, so Vienna was rather parochial in that sense. But it was a rejection of the kind of art that Klimt himself had been making. He really represents that move from traditionalism through to something really quite radical.

[00:04:39]>> [music] >> Whoever wants to know something about me as an artist, which alone is significant, they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize what I am and what I want.

[00:04:55]Gustav Klimt was an unusual character.

[00:04:58]Unlike most of the artists in Vienna around [music] the same time, he steered clear of the burgeoning cafe society. He was a very private person, but his reputation did spread quickly, and patrons sought him out.

[00:05:12]He was very reclusive, it seems. His [music] first studio, the one he was in for 20 odd years, was right in the center of Vienna, and he, in spite of that, he didn't socialize. He continued to work with artists [music] at the Secession organization, um but he didn't mix so much with Viennese society. [music] By this time, he'd begun to make it, and patrons and dealers would [music] knock on his door.

[00:05:37]So this is actually part, I think, of the legend of Klimt is that he was quite reclusive. He was in his studio a lot of the time. He had quite an [music] unconventional dress, sort of loose-fitting tunic robe, and he would be there working away night and [music] day, really. He wasn't someone who was out and about much. He was really based in the studio, and this I think this sort of added to his mystery.

[00:05:58]>> [music] >> I have never painted a self-portrait.

[00:06:03]I am less interested in myself as a subject for painting than I am in other people, above all women.

[00:06:10]Klimt may not have socialized as much as the other artists of his era, but he certainly didn't shy away from all human interaction. It's thought that he fathered at least 14 children in his lifetime.

[00:06:23]Yet there was always one constant in Klimt's life, his companion, Emilie Flöge. He frequently wrote postcards to her.

[00:06:35]On my first days here, I did not start work immediately, but as planned, I took it easy for a few days.

[00:06:41]Flicked through books, studied Japanese art a little.

[00:06:46]Klimt became quite close to one of the Flöge sisters, Emilie Flöge, who had established a dress salon with her two sisters [music] called the Schwestern Flöge or Flöge sisters fashion salon. Klimt's brother, [music] Ernst, who died very young, was married to Helene, Emilie's younger sister, and unfortunately he died, which made Klimt [music] really the guardian of Helene, and he became very close to the Flöge family.

[00:07:11]And >> [music] >> he had long correspondence with her. She was really in the center of the avant-garde bohemian [music] circles in Vienna, quite a rebellious lady.

[00:07:22]She was Klimt's lifelong companion. They were almost certainly lovers as well, but the relationship is a bit ambiguous.

[00:07:29]Klimt actually he never married and had a string of lovers, but [music] Emilie Flöge is said to have been the model in The Kiss, which is Klimt's probably most erotic work.

[00:07:41]>> [music] >> Klimt's earliest pictures that really incorporated [music] gold work was when he was working on a a portfolio for this important Viennese art publisher called Gerlach and Schenk. And he offered a work called The Kiss, which did have a rather lavish use [music] of gold, and that would have been in the late 1890s.

[00:08:00]Shortly thereafter in 1901, he made a painting called Judith I, and many people believe that's actually a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer herself, >> [music] >> and that includes rather lavish use of gold, not only in the the frame and the background for the figure, but also the gold choker that she's wearing, which is rather similar to the choker that we see on the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer herself.

[00:08:24]>> [music] >> In 1903, he went to Ravenna, where there are the [music] amazing Byzantine mosaics and frescoes, and he said [music] it was sort of nothing short of a revelation for him, these incredible images, icons surrounded by gold. So I think that's really where we can see the start of using gold leaf. The golden um background [music] has a an amazing effect on the portraits, and it's very, very dramatic.

[00:08:51]But also we have to remember that it was in his childhood, it was in his upbringing. His father was [music] a gold engraver, so he had the sort of the double lead into it, where it was a family um career, as I mentioned.

[00:09:04]It was during this golden phase that Klimt began his first official portrait of Adele [music] Bloch-Bauer.

[00:09:12]It's believed that um Gustav Klimt met Adele Bloch-Bauer and her husband most likely through the Vienna Secession.

[00:09:20]Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was one of the most important art collectors um in the city, and we know that Ferdinand approached Gustav [music] Klimt and asked him to paint a portrait of his young wife, who would have been about 25 years old at that time. Ferdinand wanted to give it as a anniversary present to Adele's parents. So Ferdinand was pretty rich. He was a a sugar merchant, but Adele's father was really rich. I mean, he was a kind of very eminent banker, and he was head of the Eastern Railways and all sorts of things. And that occurred certainly by the summer of 1903, and we know that Klimt began work on the portrait in the winter of 1903.

[00:09:55]Adele [music] Bloch-Bauer took at least 3 years, and when you look at it, and ornate and must have been very, very difficult to paint.

[00:10:03]This portrait [music] of a Viennese society woman would become an object of desire for many, including a Nazi officer. But how did this artwork leave its home in [music] Vienna and end up in the possession of a wealthy US art collector?

[00:10:20]The portrait of Adele [music] Bloch-Bauer is one of Klimt's best-known works. Little did he know its turbulent future as he meticulously created this masterpiece.

[00:10:32]Klimt was a very slow artist. He liked to spend a lot of time [music] with his sitters, uh making upwards of hundreds of sketches. In fact, he probably made at least 200 sketches just for the first portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, about 125 [music] of which are known to survive. And we have a few of them in the collection of the museum here today. [music] He was very meticulous. Of course, this was very frustrating for his sitters, um who would be there for many, many hours.

[00:11:02]Adele Bloch-Bauer [music] would have traveled to his studio on the outskirts of Vienna in one of the outlying districts, spent hours and hours with him at a [music] time in a private chamber where he made these sketches.

[00:11:15]And certainly that would have deepened the closeness of their relationship.

[00:11:20]Now, there's a lot of speculation [music] surrounding this. Many people have uh assumed that they were lovers or delved [music] into that. We have absolutely no evidence. Part of that is because of the very sensuous nature of the portraits of Judith I and Judith [music] II, which are believed to be portraits of Adele herself.

[00:11:44]I'm a painter [music] paints day in, day out from morning till evening.

[00:11:49]Figure pictures and landscapes, [music] more rarely portraits.

[00:11:55]Klimt may have claimed that there was [music] nothing special about him, but his art was a different story. His portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer would eventually be hailed as a masterpiece and become an [music] iconic work of art.

[00:12:09]This painting is a really interesting combination of naturalism >> [music] >> and decorative symbolism. It's the two sit by side by side.

[00:12:18]>> The portrait is is incredibly complex, um and many people have described it as being something of a secular icon. And I do think that's a rather apt description.

[00:12:28]>> So, in the rendition of her flesh, so her face [music] and her arms, which is actually only 1/12 of the painting, you see this quite naturalistic style. You really get a sense of the person, the detail in her face. I think the first thing that you notice are the eye shapes, [music] sort of elliptical shapes.

[00:12:45]On her gown, there um also appear to be amuletic devices, the all-seeing eye of God, which some people also see as a relation to the Egyptian wedjat eye, which would provide perhaps a form of protection for her. There are theories that this is the eye of Horus, it's [music] an Egyptian symbol, protecting the vulnerable, an eye of protection, warding off danger. We know that Adele suffered extremely poor health and was very frail her entire life. [music] In fact, she died when she was only 43 years old in in 1925 and rather unexpectedly.

[00:13:17]>> [music] >> She also had tried to raise a family with her husband and had two miscarriages [music] and lost the only child that she brought to term just a few days after his birth.

[00:13:27]And this is believed to have occurred while Klimt was working on the painting, so he might have incorporated those amuletic motifs >> [music] >> as a sign to try to help her be successful in in being a mother. Um finally, I would add that he included her initials, A and B, are scattered really throughout the gown and other parts of the canvas.

[00:13:48]An absolutely marvelous composition, and that's really the secret of the success of the painting, the way that these different elements are brought [music] together and sort of almost seamlessly merge as in a sort of mosaic.

[00:14:04]At the same time as the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was first presented to the world, Gustav [music] Klimt first met the young artist Egon Schiele. He would take him on as his protege, and eventually [music] Schiele would also become a celebrated artist.

[00:14:21]Egon Schiele was like many other young artists at [music] that time, slightly younger generation than Klimt, and they really looked up to him as the leader of the avant-garde, someone who had broken away, opening up the art world in the city and bringing in something [music] new.

[00:14:35]>> He was incredibly generous to Schiele.

[00:14:36]You know, I think Schiele was 17 and Klimt was 45. He was president of the Secession and he was, you know, >> [music] >> very, very eminent. And this little oik turned up and said, you know, I want you to mentor me, and he said, "Okay."

[00:14:47]Um and he found him models and he got him shown. I suppose he recognized something [music] in Schiele's work. You can really see the belief and goodwill between Klimt and Schiele. [music] They even swapped drawings. Schiele proposed it, and Klimt said to Schiele, "You're a much better draftsman than me.

[00:15:02]Why'd I ever want to do that?"

[00:15:04]>> [music] >> But he still did the swap of the drawings. And also, when Schiele got into a bit of a tricky financial situation, Klimt came [music] to the rescue, introduced him to his most important patron, August Lederer, who then commissioned Schiele to paint his son. So, he was really a big [music] supporter of Schiele in his early career.

[00:15:24]Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele had both benefited from the amazing artistic and cultural flourishing [music] that occurred in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century.

[00:15:34]But World War I was around the corner.

[00:15:37]And while they were able to steer clear of the conflict, they both perished as a result of the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. [music] After tea, it's back to painting.

[00:15:52]A large poplar at dusk with [music] a gathering storm.

[00:15:59]Klimt's work only became more and more highly regarded after he died.

[00:16:05]He was seen as the greatest painter to come out of the Vienna Secession.

[00:16:09]But another [music] artist, a far less successful one named Adolf Hitler, had also come out of Vienna. And in the 1930s, under his leadership, Nazism was taking over Austria and Germany.

[00:16:22]With the rise of the Nazis, and really with their invasion of Austria with the Anschluss of March of 1938, >> [music] >> Ferdinand realized that this was, you know, going to be extremely bad news for him, and he fled the country. And shortly thereafter, he was accused of tax evasion and other crimes, and all [music] of his properties were seized.

[00:16:40]And he ended up settling in Switzerland, where he lived impoverished. A lawyer was appointed to oversee the Bloch-Bauer collection and homes and all of their [music] assets. He worked with various museums in the city and collectors to organize trades and [music] outright sales of these works. And through that, this particular portrait, as well as the second portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, ultimately ended [music] up in the collection of what is today the Belvedere Museum.

[00:17:11]Questions remained whether this was its rightful home as there appeared to be conflict [music] between Adele's final wishes and the contents of Ferdinand's will.

[00:17:22]He left a will [music] naming all of his property um to belong to his family's heirs. [music] So, he mentioned his nephew in particular and his two nieces, one of which was Maria Altman.

[00:17:34]She had to flee Vienna during the war.

[00:17:36]Her husband got [music] taken to Dachau, to the concentration camp, and was used almost as a pawn to bribe his brother.

[00:17:43]And as soon as he was released, they just completely bolted out of Vienna.

[00:17:47]>> Maria Altman and her husband um ended up settling in the US, in California [music] in particular. And some family members did perish in the Holocaust in concentration camps.

[00:17:55]>> She lost everything. She'd lost the country she was born in. She'd lost all of her family apart from her immediate family had gone [music] to the gas chambers or or one way or another had been killed.

[00:18:04]>> There was a lawyer in the um intervening years right after World War II that did attempt to claim some of the family's property and was successful in reclaiming some things. But the government insisted that they had Adele's will, and her will provided that the Klimt paintings would go to the Austrian government.

[00:18:23]>> [music] >> And when this lawyer asked to see that will, they always said it it wasn't available or they had misplaced it.

[00:18:28]>> Adele Bloch-Bauer had said she wanted the pictures and all the Klimts um to go to the Austrian [music] state.

[00:18:36]But what she really meant was because she and her husband couldn't have children, that when Ferdinand died, they should go to the Austrian state, not that they should be stolen by Nazis.

[00:18:43]Seven years before he died, [music] which I think rather changed the rules a bit, really.

[00:18:49]She would stop pursuing her claim, but a tragic personal event would spark Maria's drive to get back what was rightfully hers.

[00:19:00]If you fast forward quite a few decades, 1998, [music] the law in Austria changes. Any works of art or property that had been seized illegally from families during this period, you know, should be rightfully returned to the [music] heirs and survivors. Around the same time, Maria Altman's sister dies, and Maria inherits her papers. And as she begins going through these papers, she begins to suspect that perhaps that promise to the museum was nothing more than a promise, and it wasn't an outright gift. Maria Altman picked up the phone to [music] a young family friend, Randol Schoenberg, who was related to the very famous [music] composer in Vienna, had family history in Vienna. And he said, "Let's go for it. Let's take this case to court in America." And eventually went up to the Supreme Court. [music] And Maria Altman had several advisers on the case. They said, "Don't go with this young young lawyer. You need to get someone very [music] experienced. You're going to Supreme Court." But she stuck with it and they won the case in 2004.

[00:19:58]Uh and they won the right to take it to court in Austria.

[00:20:01]>> [music] >> So the case the case then moved there and in 2006 they won the paintings back.

[00:20:08]One of Maria's supporters at the time was Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder company and avid art collector.

[00:20:15]He had set up the Neue Gallery in New York 5 years [music] previously, a gallery dedicated to the art of the Austrian and German avant-garde. In 2006, [music] Ronald Lauder purchased the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer from Maria Altmann >> [music] >> in a private sale.

[00:20:33]It would have been impossible for her to >> [music] >> hang them in her small California bungalow. I mean, insurance costs alone would have been quite prohibitive and that was never her intention. [music] She did want the portraits and the landscapes to be in a museum collection if possible where they could remain on display. So a private sale was engineered so that um we were able to acquire this um for an undisclosed sum, but reportedly $135 million, [music] which was said to be the most expensive painting sold at that time.

[00:21:06]Well, in a way the [music] Belvedere is really the appropriate home for the painting in Vienna where the artist [music] worked. Fortunately, as it happened, um it was bought by an American [music] collector who's very public-spirited and has set up his own museum. So at least the painting will remain >> [music] >> um on public view in the Neue Gallery in New York.

[00:21:28]Keeping the painting on [music] public display has been the wish of every custodian of this portrait and it is testament to the pure creative talent of Gustav Klimt that people still queue daily to see it.

[00:21:40]>> [music]