The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer Details
Review “Fascinating. . . . A mesmerizing tale of art and the Holocaust.” —The Washington Post“A celebration of art and persistence. . . . O’Connor’s book brings Klimt’s exceptional portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer home, broadening the meaning of homeland at the same time.” —The Christian Science Monitor“Ms. O’Connor has told an important story.” —The Wall Street Journal “O’Connor skillfully filters Austria’s troubled twentieth century through the life of Klimt’s most beloved muse. . . . A nuanced view of a painting whose story transcends its own time.” —Bookforum“Captivating.” —MORE Magazine “Combines detailed reportage with passionate storytelling. . . . Unraveling the portrait’s journey also reveals how global norms of art and war have changed, and the powerful roles that art plays in politics, society, identity and memory.” —The Rumpus “A fascinating book.” —The Dallas Morning News “Richly drawn. . . . Part history and part mystery, The Lady in Gold is a striking tale.” —BookPage “The lusciously detailed story of Gustav Klimt’s most famous painting, detailing the relationship between the artist, the subject, their heirs and those who coveted the masterpiece. . . . Art-history fans will love the deep details of the painting, and history buffs will revel in the facts O’Connor includes as she exposes a deeper picture of World War II.” —Kirkus Reviews “Intriguing. . . . Poignant and convincing. . . . Vividly evokes the intellectually precocious and ambitious Adele’s rich cultural and social milieu in Vienna, and how she became entwined with the charismatic, sexually charged, and irreverent Klimt.” —Publishers Weekly “Writing with a novelist’s dynamism, O’Connor resurrects fascinating individuals and tells a many-faceted, intensely affecting, and profoundly revelatory tale of the inciting power of art and the unending need for justice.” —Booklist (starred review) Read more About the Author Anne-Marie O’Connor attended Vassar College, studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a foreign correspondent for Reuters and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times for twelve years, and has written extensively on the Klimt painting and the Bloch-Bauer family’s efforts to recover its art collection. Her articles have appeared in Esquire, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor. She currently writes for The Washington Post from Jerusalem, where her husband, William Booth, is Post bureau chief. Read more See all Editorial Reviews
Reviews
From the cosmopolitan salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna to the interwar years when Vienna was a shadow of its former glory to the terrible years of the Anschluss and finally to the courtrooms of the postwar period, this book is an extraordinary masterpiece of history. This is the story of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the lady in gold of the famous Klimt painting.The story begins close to the present when finally the Klimt painting was handed over by Austria to the family of Adele in 2006. But then backwards in time we go to the late 19th century. To a cosmopolitan Imperial city - Vienna. A glorious Vienna where women of the "second society" (read: liberated, secular, wealthy Jews and non-aristocrats) were able to hold salons for the artists and authors who would never have been exposed to the public or gained so much fame otherwise. But it was also frequented by the famous too. Mark Twain stopped by on his travels through Europe and received a warm welcome from the people open to modernity but was also vilified by the establishment. The first female doctor in Vienna visited. The composers Mahler and Strauss frequented the salons. And so did artists, including Klimt. And while we get a lot on the world of this society of the liberated Jews, we also learn a lot about Klimt.After recreating this world of artistic and intellectual ferment, however, the book turns dark. The Fall of the Habsburg Empire was a catastrophe for Imperial Vienna. No longer was Vienna the center of a multicultural polyglot empire. Now it was only the capital of the rump state of Austria. And vastly reduced in population and glory. The book is part a biography of Klimt. Part a biography of Adele Bloch-Bauer (and her many relations). But it is also a biography of Vienna. And while the interwar years were not great for Vienna, the deepest darkness was still to come during the Anschluss. Now the society of the salons would be broken. And lost forever. The Nazis would attempt to erase the cultural brilliance from history. The names would attempt to be forgotten. The Germanification of Austria would leave no room for Jews or the part they played in making Vienna a capital of modernity.The Nazi years when the family scattered through Europe, the postwar period when Vienna was occupied by the four main Allies, the end of deNazification in '48 because Vienna was important to the West and was not going to be lost to the Communist Soviets are all discussed and the families that are the core of the book weather the tempests of time. Though not all make it. Some are lost to firing squads. Some to suicide. Some to Concentration Camps. Some made it through the Fascist years but ended up killed by Tito's forces in Yugoslavia (part of the family had huge assets there). And then the story continues in the new world where some of Adele's descendants survived.But it also continues in a disgusting version of Austria. And the last part of the book discusses the collective amnesia. And how the Austrians now would not let any art leave the country because art was part of the national cultural patrimony. But some lesser works could leave if the owners whose works were stolen would agree to more valuable works staying. This post-war Austria eventually succumbs to something better and so the story ends in the period when the stolen artworks begin to be reclaimed by the original owners's families.The book is a masterpiece of story telling. The author recreates the world and makes you identify with these historical personages. For anyone who wants to know more about Austrian history, this is a great book to read. For anyone who loves history, this is a great book to read.
