The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O'Connor Page B

Weininger’s
Sex and Character,
spelled out the social punishments for female individualism. “The sexual impulse destroys the body and mind of the woman,” Weininger wrote. Women lacked the capacity “not only of the logical rules, but of the functions of making concepts and judgements,” he believed; “a real woman never becomes conscious of destiny, of her own destiny.” Passivity was not just a virtue for women, it was a “natural” state, and “waiting for a man is simply waiting for the moment when she can be completely passive.”
    â€œThere is no female genius, and there never has been,” said Weininger. Normal women, in his view, “have no desire for immortality.”
    In a hypocritical society hostile to women in general, and fearful of female sexuality in particular, Klimt’s studio was a haven of sensuality for women whose most elemental feelings and aspirations were pathologized as “degenerate.”
    The “degenerate” label was soon applied to the artists and composers whom Klimt’s female patrons supported. “The degenerates babble and stammer instead of talking,” sneeredMax Nordau, of the
Neue Freie Presse.
“They draw and paint like children who with useless hands dirty tables and walls. They make music like the yellow people in Asia. They mix together all artistic genres.”
    The racially loaded culture wars of turn-of-the-century Vienna were on. It was only a matter of time before “degenerate” would be aimed at Jews. Turn-of-the-century Vienna was governed by opposing forces. As artists and intellectuals pushed ahead with new ways of seeing, giving birth to Austrian modernism, the old Vienna, conservative and hidebound, pushed back. Innovation from Klimt was met with hostility. The rise of Jewish patrons was heckled by persistent anti-Semitism. Inanother generation, these reactionary forces would prevail, absolutely, in a crushing triumph.

Eyes Wide Shut
    Adele, too, adopted the chic flowing dresses favored by emancipated women and immersed herself in Klimt’s artistic world.
    Even music was dangerous now. The disturbing atonal concerts ofArnold Schoenberg moved men to fistfights. Art forced people to see differently, listen differently, and feel differently. Adele was no longer an aspirant, but a member.
    For her growing library, she commissioned a bookplate, or ex libris, by a well-knownSecession artist, Koloman Moser, a close friend of Klimt’s. Moser drew a lithe, naked princess with long, black hair and a golden crown, holding her gown over her nude body as she emerges from a lily pond and encounters a frog croaking on a rock. The image seemed to sum up the prevailing view of Adele as the princess who had kissed the frog. Poor Ferdinand.
    Klimt and Adele were now involved in a close relationship that would last the rest of their lives, much of it conducted in a hushed studio that was a haven for artistic creation and heated trysts. Neither of them left a written record of what occurred.
    The indiscretions of the Vienna intelligentsia were open secrets, though in public, decorum was as rigid as the crust of Klimt’s golden mosaics. The Viennese playwrightArthur Schnitzler, who knew Freud, mapped out the tensions of this social schizophrenia in an erotic thriller,
Dream Story,
where masked Viennese indulge their sexual fantasies at a costume ball. In this confusing milieu,Sigmund Freud became the confidant for the sexual anxieties of a generation of Viennese women, and Klimt’s studio became a refuge for Adele and her friends.
    Those who wondered whether Adele and Klimt were lovers looked for clues in his paintings.
    Some art historians suggest that Klimt had met Adele years before, perhaps in the company of Alma, when she was a theatrical unmarried teenager,eager to throw herself into Vienna’s cultural whirl. If so, it would mean Adele met Klimt at his most amorous moment, a time he