Picture of “The Kiss”, Essay Example

Art today has many ways of capturing reality. Moving towards postmodern, artists have started to turn their back on individualism, and tried to create something new of common objects or images. The popularity of self-portrait in the traditional sense started to decline. As the below statement confirms, artists are less interested in their feelings and self-perception, and more focused on the world that is around them.

“I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women…There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night…”
(Gustave Klimt)

Klimt’s portrays and paintings, focusing on people are attempting to capture emotions, situations, and attitudes. They are highly emotional and designed to create an emotional response, too. Being labeled one of the fathers of Modernism, his images are painted to shock and create an impression. Since the creation of his best-known work, “The Kiss”, artists have moved away from recreating emotional reality to new paths: add a new meaning to ordinary things.

Last week, I reviewed the work of Harding Meyer, contemporary artist, born in Brazil. He is a real postmodern artist, who is able to turn unknown magazine images into paintings, adding them new meanings and creating a personality for the model. He takes time to “reconstruct” the human face, and isolates it. In some installations, he adds special effects to the image.

Like Klimt, Meyer is not interested in self-portraits, as he thinks that he knows himself well enough to be unable to add another layer to the art. He wants to show a new perspective, layer, or meaning of an image that was created for a different purpose. Catalog and magazine images, often published to sell clothes or other luxury goods are common marketing tools. Meyer, however, is able to re-purpose these images and add an artistic angle. He does not only paint the features, but the expression of the model, and creates a narrative.

In the famous picture of “The Kiss”, Klimt captured an emotional moment, and he used body language, positions, and proportions to highlight the intensity of the moment. He was interested in “capturing” other people, while Meyer is focused on recreating people based on his subjective perception of the model’s appearance. As Robert Jocks confirms in his review, posted on Meyer’s website: “in all, there is a transfer connected with the question what effect the faces have after being removed from the media. What is left of them? Is there anything that might last beyond the moment of their short appearance in the media?

Meyer and Klimt have different reasons for not being interested in self-portraits. Klimt was trying to capture unique moments and the intense emotions that surrounded them. He wanted to be an explorer of other people’s feelings, instead of analyzing himself. Meyer’s curiosity, however, took him further. He wanted to re-purpose mass media images – often considered uniform, standard, and lacking imagination – into artwork, through adding new layers, perspectives, and recreating the personality of the model. Both artists have their focus outside of their lives, and their art is looking to find something “special” in other people, in different ways. Klimt is not interested in himself as an art subject, as he thinks there is nothing “interesting” in him: in other words, nothing to explore. Mayer, however, finds inspiration in images that are considered by others as products of mass media communication, without artistic value.

Works Cited

Klimt, G. “The Kiss” In: Wienna Now or Never 2012. Web.

Meyer, Harding. “Tumblr Page” n.d. Web.