Gustav Klimt. Amante de Mujeres

From The Economist print edition

Nov 15th 2007 | NEW YORK Gustav Klimt A lover of women Money and sex bolster the new fascination with Klimt's paintings.

The Museum of Modern Art. New York. Hope waiting by the studio door

WHY is Gustav Klimt, an Austrian artist who lived between 1862 and 1918, so popular? Even before its November 12th publication date in America, both the English and the German editions of the five-kilo (11lb) Klimt catalogue raisonné by Alfred Weidinger (Prestel) had sold out. And 6,000 visitors had crowded into the first week of the Klimt exhibition at New York's Neue Galerie, running from October 12th to June 30th 2008. A spokesman suggests that Klimt may be the gallery's most successful show since it opened in 2001, outstripping even Vincent van Gogh. For this there is a precedent of a kind: in the psychedelic 1960s, van Gogh's "Sunflowers" lost out to Klimt's "The Kiss" as a favourite poster in America's college dormitories. In 1897 Klimt was one of a group of artists wanting to break free of the stuffy, constricted Old Vienna that had formed them. They established "the Secession" (stylistically allied with art nouveau). Soon everything from fashions to furniture changed as the New Vienna took shape. Klimt was the first president of the Secession and led the way sartorially too; he favoured long, voluminous indigo smocks with embroidered white epaulets. The only surviving example hangs in the exhibition, displayed rather pretentiously at the end of a narrow room with its sleeves straight out from the shoulders, cross-like. In his lifetime and after, Klimt was acclaimed—in Vienna. In America and Britain there was little interest in German or Austrian art until well after the second world war. Klimt's appeal to hippies, and a revival of interest in art nouveau, marked the beginning of increased awareness. Much more recently he has become an international art-world star. This is partly because of the attention given to the restitution battles over his work and the prices paid for those restituted. In 2006, after years of litigation, five paintings by Klimt once owned by Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, two Austrian-Jewish collectors who were the painter's contemporaries, were returned to their heirs by Vienna's Belvedere museum. A sixth, still in the museum, continues to be sought by some family members. Ronald Lauder, a founder of the Neue Galerie, was actively engaged with restitution issues for more than 20 years, advising the family as they pursued their claim. When they succeeded, Mr Lauder bought "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" for a reported $135m. But these days it is "Blooming Meadow", which Leonard Lauder, Ronald's older brother, bought in 1983, that is in the news. Georges Jorisch, grandson of Amalie Redlich, a Viennese Jew, claims that the picture was looted from her collection after the Nazis transported her to Poland in 1941 where she is presumed to have died. The new catalogue raisonné supports this claim; Leonard Lauder steadfastly rejects it, saying he has evidence proving his legitimate ownership. Klimt was a painter of shimmering landscapes and three of them are among the eight paintings in the Neue Galerie show. But sex is at the core of his work: women were his preoccupation. The antechamber to the artist's studio is recreated in the exhibition. Along its far wall, next to the studio doors, is "Hope II", pregnant with breasts exposed. Klimt never had his own home: he lived with his mother and two sisters. Nevertheless, he was a womaniser with uncalculated conquests and seven known children. No wonder Vienna buzzed with gossip about what, besides painting, went on in the studio beyond. Yet among all the photographs of the rather pudding-faced artist in the exhibition, not one captures what made him such a lady-killer. More than 120 drawings are on view, almost all of them women, including nude lesbian couples and women apparently masturbating. But it was the portraits of society women that made his fortune. Many were commissioned by their very rich husbands, some of whom —including, it is said, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer—were cuckolded in the process. In 1903 the artist visited Ravenna, in Italy, where he was struck by the sixth-century Byzantine mosaic interior of the basilica of San Vitale. The glinting gold glass tiles embedded with precious and semi-precious gems must have seemed like a preview of heaven's glory to the parishioners. The Klimt portraits influenced by San Vitale look more like previews of the glories of sex. Among these, the most famous, since her restitution, is "Adele Bloch-Bauer I". The sitter's face emerges from a gorgeous, swirling, gold-painted mosaic. She is both a beauty and a seductress. But in a photograph of her taken three years later, Mrs Bloch-Bauer seems neither beautiful nor sexy. Maybe the affair, if there was one, was over by then; it certainly must have been by 1912 when Klimt painted "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" which packs none of the first portrait's wallop. The first Adele continues to glitter and seduce. Once Ronald Lauder became owner of the painting, it went to the Neue Galerie on long-term loan. As soon as it arrived, visitor numbers shot up by 25%.

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Dogster & Catster, los facebook para mascotas.

Fashion & Style. Cyberfamilias

Hey Spot, You've Got Mail By MICHELLE SLATALLA Published: December 6, 2007

Hey Greta, you have an email!

SOMETIMES I think Otto is a goat. Actually, he is a Labrador retriever. But he eats everything, including pizza boxes, candy wrappers on the sidewalk and, once, an entire layer of fresh-baked banana cake that was cooling on a high shelf in the pantry. I still am not sure how he got to it without a stepladder. But this was not the problem that sent me looking for help the other day. The problem was Sticky, my tiny papillon, who laboriously chews and swallows only one tiny food pellet at a time, before giving up to run to the window to bark. By the time she returns, Otto has inhaled the rest of Sticky's food and lies sleeping on top of her empty bowl. Not long ago, I would have relied on traditional sources of wisdom to solve this problem, seeking advice from the vet (who said, after Otto put his muzzle on her lap and looked at her pleadingly, that he was a "good, good boy" and "misunderstood") and from a dog owners' mailing list I've subscribed to for years. But after the list's respondents decided the problem was me — the consensus was that a better dog owner could easily teach Otto to "leave it" — I started to get desperate. That is how I ended up at an online social network called Dogster, where my plan was to ask for help after I joined the site. Or, I should say, after Otto and Sticky joined. Think of Dogster as Facebook for canines. There, my dogs (along with 346,639 other four-legged members, as of last week) had their own profile pages that listed their likes and dislikes, personal mottoes — Otto's is "Are you going to finish that?" — and best tricks ("catching seedless grapes in mid-air"). So what if my dogs could barely type, much less upload photos of themselves wearing Santa hats? We live in an era where there is a social network to cater to any niche group you can think of, including infants whose parents create Facebook profiles for them and then expect the godparents to pretend to correspond with the babies. Why shouldn't pets arrange play dates online or blog about their health issues? Or as Ted Rheingold, the founder of Dogster, put it in a phone interview last week, "It's not weird at all." Mr. Rheingold has a dog, of course. But more important, he has seen the simple photo-sharing site he started in 2004 grow into a popular meeting place where pet owners communicate online and, in some cases, in the real world. One group of 100 West Highland terrier owners who met on Dogster convened at a (dog friendly) motel on the Carolina coast. It was perhaps inevitable that Dogster spawned Catster, which had 145,551 members of its own as of last week. Coming next: horses, birds and fish will get their own sites, too, Mr. Rheingold said. He said there is a simple explanation for the lure of animal lovers' sites. "All these people come for the same reason everyone else is on the Internet: they found people who are like-minded," Mr. Rheingold said. "They were missing what I call a certain kind of social-ality in their lives, and this is the place where they found it. It's actually quite heartwarming." That was my initial reaction, too, even after I realized Dogster was urging me to relate to my dogs in new and unusual ways. Like reading their daily horoscopes on their profile pages. (Sticky is a Leo and Otto, of course, is Capricorn — the goat.) I knew I wasn't the first dog owner to anthropomorphize my pets. On the other hand, that might not necessarily make it right. "It's actually something I would resist," said John Grogan, who chronicled the antics of his own retriever in the best-selling book "Marley & Me." He said he has never has felt the urge to dress up his dogs "as little people" or talk to them in baby talk. Did he even know Marley's astrological sign? "I love my pets, but I try to keep a healthy perspective on what they are, and they're animals," Mr. Grogan said. "Sticky is a Leo," I said. Perhaps sensing that I was too far gone to help, Mr. Grogan relented. "There's something about the relationship we have with animals that is magical and brings out a side of people that's softer and more vulnerable than we might otherwise see," he said. "My guess is that on Dogster, people are really bonding with each other, but in the voices of the dogs. Tongue-in-cheek."

Hadley Hooper

Back on Dogster, in my absence, Sticky and Otto were receiving e-mail messages from other dogs. One read, "Yippee! Kansas has invited Sticky to join the Dogster group called All Fur Fun! ... 'Where Every Critter is a Winner.'" She joined. Next came "friend requests" from Princess Emma, Daisy, Banky and Pete (a Chihuahua who liked to wear a Santa costume). Sticky and Otto accepted. Forget the old New Yorker cartoon with the caption that reads, "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog." On Dogster, clearly nobody cared that I was a human. Which I was starting to enjoy in a perverse way. But then, as I "previewed" the query I was about to post describing my futile efforts to protect Sticky's food bowl, I realized I would have to make a terrible Sophie's choice. I had to assume a single canine persona in which to post the query. "Pick your author!" the site urged. Sticky or Otto? Otto. No, Sticky. Channeling her tiny dog thoughts — as I imagined them — I typed: "The humans put the food under a stool. Otto got the stool stuck on his head like a dunce cap and started bashing around the kitchen in horror." Then I hit "Post." I felt so ashamed. Within hours, a half-dozen dogs responded. Wolfie suggested adding wet food to Sticky's bowl to persuade her to eat faster. Sedona was in favor of posting a human guard over the bowl while she ate. Gunner said to take her food away after an hour. These recommendations, while encouraging, were not perfect. Sticky wrote back, "Ideally, I would like the food to sit there, undisturbed, for the entire day so I could caper past every now and then to get a piece." Soon, a pit bull terrier boxer mix named Ellie recommended putting Sticky's food in a big box with a little hole that Otto couldn't get through. That reminded me that Sticky had a crate, long abandoned, in the basement. My husband put the crate in the kitchen, put her food inside it and — just like that — the problem was almost solved. I say almost because initially Otto got the cage stuck on his head. But that was the last time he tried to eat Sticky's food. "We won," I said to my husband in my voice, not one of the dogs'. Then the phone rang and my husband looked grim. "Otto's across the street at the school," he said. "Begging bites of sandwich from the children." As I dragged him home, I reflected that this problem, too, could have been avoided if only I had paid more attention to his horoscope on Dogster. "Capricorn: Those delicious scraps in your bowl could bring out the animal in anyone." Especially a goat pretending to be a dog. E-mail: Slatalla@nytimes.com

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Arte y Fotografía de Modas.

Fashion & Style

Work With Me, Baby By GUY TREBAY Published: December 6, 2007

Seb Janiak/In Fashion '07 Miami Beach Art Photo Expo A photograph by Seb Janiak that is part of In Fashion '07 Miami Beach Art Photo Expo.

FASHION is a stepchild, in photography no less than in other areas of the culture. The reach of the imagery it produces influences everything from trash television to presidential campaigns. Yet the slick work cranked out by the fashion machine is rarely taken seriously. Museums relegate fashion picture shows to their basements. Art galleries disdain fashion photographs as work for hire. Auction houses have historically tended to accord fashion images second-class status, sneaking a few first-rate fashion pictures into sales of photography's certified masters. It's not hard to fathom why friction exists between practitioners of fine art and fashion photography. For every self-styled Cindy Sherman hoping to hit it big in the gallery world, there are scores of competent but doubtless overpaid journeymen (fees of $100,000 a day are not rare for top fashion photographers) toiling in advertising's lucrative fields. "For a long time in the quote unquote fine arts world, fashion was a dirty word," said Joshua Holdeman, international director of the photography department at Christie's. "We're far enough away from the work now," he added, referring to the early examples from the canon, "to realize it is a valuable cultural product that belongs in the pantheon of art history."

W Magazine From a strip of fashion photographs from W magazine

Signs of this seem to be everywhere. Last January, a show of pictures by five important contemporary fashion photographers was mounted at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Designating 2009 as the Year of Fashion, the International Center of Photography in New York recently announced an ambitious roster of shows celebrating the fashion image, beginning with a survey of contemporary work, moving through a retrospective of fashion images by Edward Steichen and Richard Avedon, and closing with the third I.C.P. Triennial, whose theme will be the cultural ubiquitousness of fashion imagery. And this week, fashion photography makes its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach, the annual trade fair that is to the art world what the Coachella festival in Southern California is to indie rock. In Fashion '07, an assembly of 20 contemporary photographers brought together by Marion de Beaupre, a curator and author, opened Dec. 2 at the Surfcomber Hotel. Part survey and part marketing trial balloon, the show also tests the premise that the traditional borders between fine and commercial art are now permeable. "As the market becomes so broad and there are so many people who have the means to collect," fashion pictures have been upgraded both critically and in the marketplace, Mr. Holdeman said. "The imagery is easy to approach and accessible in price," he added, although accessible in this case may be a relative term. Prices for images by photographers like Serge Lutens, Max Vadukul and Willy Vanderperre are modest by Art Basel Miami Beach standards (generally under $10,000). But the Irving Penn platinum print a farseeing collector might have picked up at auction 10 years ago for under $8,000 would now command $350,000, Mr. Holdeman said.

Max Vadukul In Fashion '07 Miami Beach Art Photo Expo

A paradoxical dimension of the current lively interest in the field is that the innovative spirit and visual daring of the late '90s — when many photographers were mining their personal lives as well as the weirder byways of pop culture, including pornography, and were also eschewing technological wizardry in favor of raw emotional response — appears to have gone into retreat. Some in the industry point to the economy and the conservative tenor of most mainstream fashion magazines to explain this development. Some claim that a backlash against images condemned (by Bill Clinton, among others) for glorifying "heroin chic" in the mid-90s resulted in self-chastening throughout the industry. Many note that the marquee names of the moment were already the establishment a decade ago. Where is the generation that ought by now to have supplanted stars like Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Ellen von Unwerth, Mario Testino or Nick McKnight? Who knows? "It's obviously a complicated issue," said Dennis Freedman, the creative director of W magazine, perhaps the most visually daring of mainstream American fashion publications. "There are many photographers working today who have a lot to say, who have points of view, who have a voice that's intelligent and considered," he added. "Unfortunately within the fashion world there aren't enough opportunities to create that meaningful work." True, there was a period within the last decade, said Vince Aletti, a photography critic for The New Yorker and adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography, "when every time I went to look at a fashion magazine, I was psyched." At the moment, he added, "there is not much to jump out of your seat about." There is little around quite as startling as the "Fight Club" pictorial that Steven Klein photographed for W, in which Brad Pitt posed covered with sweat and grime and so little else that the magazine's caption writers were taxed. There is little that seems so controversial as Mr. Klein's pictures of Justin Timberlake, which appeared just after 9/11, images whose borders were singed and whose pretty boy subject was shown with his nose caked in blood. Even Mr. Klein's pictures of a compulsive exhibitionist like Madonna, posed atop a table with her foot behind her head and her crotch thrust toward the viewer, seems to belong to another, more provocative time. "The entirety of that Madonna sitting was very dark," Mr. Aletti said. "And it couldn't have been further from the classicism and clean lines of Beaton and Horst."

Elaine Constantine/In Fashion '07 Miami Beach Art Photo Expo A photograph by Elaine Constantine that is part of the Miami Beach show.

Like the 20 photographers whose work is on view in Miami Beach, Mr. Klein sometimes gives the impression that he consults fashion history only rarely and cares little or nothing about clothes. This is illusion, of course, but one that Ms. de Beaupre, the curator of In Fashion '07, said helped set terms for a new kind of photographic engagement with the business of selling garments. With the notable exception of Steven Meisel, whose work mines an obsession with fashion's back pages, most fashion photographers of recent years have made it clear that their concerns lie mainly in "material that has nothing to do with the history of fashion," as Mr. Aletti said. Enmeshed in both fashion's past and the cultural present, Mr. Meisel exploits an unabashed affection for fashion's surface obsession while simultaneously devising a sly form of cultural critique. "I don't know whether a term like avant-garde works in this case," Mr. Aletti said. "But, like a lot of people over the past few years, Meisel is really trying to do something creative and risky. He's really pushing photography." Whether or not by intention, he is helping propel fashion photographs in the direction of art and in the process creating an alluring hybrid, one that sometimes supports an aesthetics of glamour and just as often parodies it. "Fashion photography now is not about fashion alone," Ms. de Beaupre said. "The material is of interest now because there is this strong creative and personal language," Ms. de Beaupre said, "that belongs very much to our times."

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Hotel Boutique en Buenos Aires.

AMERICAS Buenos Aires Journal

In Macho Argentina, a New Beacon for Gay Tourists By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO Published: December 3, 2007

Photo: Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press A gay pride flag was carried during the gay pride parade in Buenos Aires in November. As tourism has been flourishing, so, too, has local gay activism.

BUENOS AIRES — Home to the sexy tango and strapping meat-eaters, this South American capital has long been thought of as a bastion of macho attitudes. But a new hotel here is adding to the city's growing image as a bastion of gay-friendliness. The Axel Hotel, a Spanish import that opened in November, has come to symbolize Buenos Aires's increasingly aggressive effort to court gay dollars and euros. It is Latin America's first luxury hotel built exclusively with gay customers in mind. That Buenos Aires would be chosen for such a marketing experiment is a result of a marked change over the past several years in the acceptance of gay men and lesbians in Argentine society. This city of three million people has come a long way from the years of military dictatorship, when being openly gay could lead to jail. Five years ago this was the first major Latin American city to legalize same-sex unions, and this summer it was host to a World Cup for gay soccer players, a first in the region. "There is so much more freedom these days," said Mauricio Urbides, a 28-year-old fashion designer, who sipped red wine with two male friends at the hotel recently. "You see gays on television here, in government. Just 15 years ago it was a completely different situation." The three friends were among a mixed crowd of homosexuals and heterosexuals who laughed as Kyra and Sharon, drag queens from Barcelona, Spain, poked fun at Argentina's president-elect, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and sang a Marilyn Monroe-inspired "Happy Birthday to You" to a male guest. In other parts of the world, like the Castro district in San Francisco, gay people have struggled recently to maintain a cultural presence in the face of gentrification. Buenos Aires has no traditional gay neighborhood, but acceptance of gay people has slowly grown. The first gay bar here opened in 1983. In 1992 President Carlos Menem signed a decree promising equal legal protection for gay men and women. Argentine social mores began loosening in the 1990s, when the pegging of the peso to the dollar gave Argentines more spending power, allowing many to travel abroad. "People traveled and found there were other ways of living that were completely different than what they were used to," Mr. Urbides said. After Argentina plunged into economic chaos in late 2001, discrimination based on sexual orientation seemed to many like a petty concern. "When people are eating out of garbage cans it really doesn't matter if you are gay or not," said Osvaldo Bazán, a journalist and the author of "History of Homosexuality in Argentina From the Conquest of America to the 21st Century." The devalued currency made Buenos Aires a relative bargain for Western tourists, including many who are gay and like the city's European sophistication. In recent years marketers have more aggressively sought to promote the city as a gay tourist destination. Gay tango bars and wine shops have sprouted up, and a new "friendly card" helps travelers and local residents alike to get discounts at gay-friendly shops and restaurants. Travel industry experts estimate that about 20 percent of the tourists here are gay — 300,000 a year — and they spend $600 million here annually.

MULTIMEDIA-Slideshow Photo: Joao Pina for The New York Times The Axel promotes itself as a place for fun, complete with a glass-bottomed rooftop pool and free condoms.

Even as tourism has been flourishing, so, too, has local gay activism. It was young gay rights advocates who successfully pushed to legalize same-sex unions, despite resistance from the Roman Catholic Church. At the end of November the lower house of Congress in Uruguay, Argentina's neighbor, legalized homosexual unions there, too. If the Senate approves the law, Uruguay would be one of only six countries with such a law. Advocates in Argentina, meanwhile, are pushing Congress to extend health benefits to gay couples. Argentina's more liberal treatment of sexual orientation on television has also stoked acceptance. Florencia de la Vega, who is transsexual, made a splash when she played a transvestite in the 2004 soap opera "Los Roldán." In 2005 the dating show "12 Corazones — Especial" featured gay men who kissed on camera. Yet some visitors still complain of homophobic treatment, said Marcelo Suntheim, secretary of the Community of Homosexuals in Argentina, an activist group. He said the group received three complaints this year from gay couples who said hotel concierges in Buenos Aires "asked them not to kiss in the lobby because children were present." So some local residents say they hope that the Axel will offer another place where same-sex couples can feel more comfortable. The hotel, which has billed itself as "hetero-friendly," is the second gay-themed hotel to be built by Juan Juliá, an entrepreneur from Barcelona, where the first Axel opened three years ago. The 48-room Axel promotes itself as a place for fun, complete with a glass-bottomed rooftop pool, and free condoms. "We provide everything for you to have fun," Mr. Juliá said. "Be safe, but have fun." He said he hoped the hotel became popular not only with tourists, but also with local Argentines who would see it as a place to socialize. "The majority of the gay community is looking more and more for hetero-friendly places," instead of exclusively gay places, said Luciano Fus, a 29-year-old translator who watched the drag queen show. "But this will be another after-work spot." Mr. Urbides said he would "definitely come back." He smiled. "Especially if the hotel brings Madonna back to Buenos Aires, or better yet, if it brings Cher here." Vinod Sreeharsha contributed reporting.

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