Shares the events that shaped the creation of the painter's most famous portrait, covering such topics as the story of the salon hostess who was his model, contributing factors in turn-of-the-century Vienna, and the painting's fate.

"I am not interested in myself as a subject for painting, but in others, particularly women..."Beautiful, sensuous and above all erotic, Gustav Klimt's paintings speak of a world of opulence and leisure, which seems aeons away from the harsh, post-modern environment we live in now. The subjects he treats – allegories, portraits, landscapes and erotic figures – contain virtually no reference to external events, but strive rather to create a world...

The summer of 1898 finds Austria terrorized by a killer who the press calls "Vienna's Jack the Ripper." Four bodies have already been found, but when the painter Gustav Klimt's female model becomes the fifth victim, the police finger him as the culprit. The artist has already scandalized Viennese society with his erotically charged modern paintings. Who better to take the blame for the crimes that have plagued the city? This is, however, far from...

"Human Dispositions explores new conventions for posing and positioning human figures in pictorial, architectural, and theatrical space in Europe in the decades leading up to WWI. The author contends that questions of "disposition" are vital to understanding a key transitional period in the history of Western modernism. Around 1885, avant-garde artists began to present human figures in strictly frontal, lateral, and dorsal postures. The effect, compared...

The life and work of the famous Viennese painter Gustav Klimt are explored by his favorite cat.