y o u n g b l o o d, o l d s o u l.

paintingses:

Portraits of women by Gustav Klimt after 1900 almost resemble mosaics. The term AESTHETIC DECORATION is used mostly to describe this. It’s use means that there is no reference to the sitter’s location, family, interests, etc, as mainly their hands, face and decolletage are the only things peeking out of the geometrical patterns that surround them.

It is possible to read the portraits as the sitters being marooned from the world and many scholars have noted that the overt use of aesthetic decoration symbolizes the isolation felt by Klimt, and how he had withdrawn into himself and his art shortly after he renounced the University of Vienna commission in 1904. 

(via ahimza)