Max Klinger

This article is about the artist. For the M*A*S*H character, see Maxwell Klinger.

Max Klinger
Born	(1857-02-18)February 18, 1857 Leipzig, Germany
Died	July 5, 1920(1920-07-05) (aged 63) Naumburg, Germany
Known for	Printmaking, painting, sculpture
Notable work	Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs, Beethoven
Movement	Symbolism, Vienna Secession, Jugendstil, Art Nouveau.

Max Klinger (18 February 1857 – 5 July 1920) was a German artist who produced significant work in painting, sculpture, prints and graphics, as well as writing a treatise articulating his ideas on art. He is associated with symbolism, the Vienna Secession, and Jugendstil (Youth Style) the German manifestation of Art Nouveau. He is best known today for his many prints, particularly a series entitled Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove and his monumental sculptural installation in homage to Beethoven at the Vienna Secession in 1902.

Life

Klinger was born in Leipzig, Germany to a wealthy and prominent family. He enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe in 1874 where he was a pupil of Karl (or Carl) Gussow. When Gussow left Karlsruhe to become the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, Klinger moved to Berlin as well to complete his studies there. Klinger shared a studio with Christian Krohg and the two had a mutual admiration for French naturalist authors like Émile Zola and Gustave Flaubert, who explored the shadowy aspects of urban life and the hypocrisy of society and the bourgeoisie in their novels. At that time realism was the prevailing style in Germany and Arnold Böcklin was one of the few artist active there that Klinger felt a close affinity to. Klinger graduated from the Academy in 1877. He was drawn to and studied the etchings and prints of many masters that were more aligned with his sensibilities including Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, Runge, Menzel, and Rops. He begin an apprenticeship studying engraving under Hermann Sagert and soon became a skilled and imaginative engraver in his own right. Klinger visited Brussels for a time in 1879, and the following year he spent time in Munich. He was achieving some notoriety with his pen and ink drawings and prints when in 1881 he published two sets of etchings, including Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove, which was an immediate success and established his reputation.

Johannes Brahms Monument

With a receptive audience developing in Paris, where the Franco-Uruguayan poet and art critic Jules Laforgue had been celebrating and advocating his prints, Klinger moved to Paris in 1883 where he lived until 1886 or 1887. Klinger first began sculpting about 1883, and sculpture slowly came to dominate his output in his later years. He conceived and started work on his Beethoven sculpture while in Paris but, it was not completed and fully realized until 1902. In 1889 Les XX (The Twenty) invited Klinger to exhibit his work in their annual winter exhibition that year in Brussels. He moved to Rome in 1889, staying until 1893, studying the Italian masters, where the 15th century artist and works from antiquity are said to be something of a revelation to him. He also intensified his studies of anatomy, the nude, and the representation of mass and volume during this period of his life. It was a productive time in his career. In the 1890s, Klinger continued his gradual shift away from printmaking in favor of sculpting.

Klinger was an accomplished pianist and counted the composer Max Reger among his friends. A friendship with the composer Johannes Brahms developed over a period of 20 years, culminating with Klinger's publication of his print series Brahms Fantasies (1894) and Brahms's dedication of Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Opus 121, to Klinger in 1896, a year before the composer's death.

In 1906 he founded the Villa Romana Prize. After buying a villa in Florence, complete with 15,000 square meter park, recipients of the prize were given the opportunity to stay for a few months and adsorbed the culture of the city. The first beneficiary of the prize was Gustav Klimt, however Klimt waived his honor and passed it on to Maximilian Kurzweil. Later recipients included Käthe Kollwitz, Max Beckmann, Ernst Barlach and Georg Kolbe.

Klinger died in 1920 in Großjena (within Naumburg).

Art

A significant portion of Klinger’s reputation is associated with his many cycles and series of intaglio prints, which influenced numerous printmakers and artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Klinger would adeptly intergraded several intaglio media like aquatint, drypoint, and etching in a single plate producing remarkable formal and tonal qualities. The subjects range from esoteric symbolism to darker aspects of realism. In the cycle A Life (1884), Klinger is often regarded as the first German artist to deal with prostitution as a social problem and the hypocrisy and injustices regarding societies attitude to the subject. The series follow a middle-class woman's descent into prostitution: impregnated, deserted, then rejected by society, she descends into the depths of urban life, and ridiculed by an apathetic and indifferent genteel society. The series A Love (1887) was dedicated to Arnold Böcklin another symbolist artist Klinger greatly admired.

In the series, Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove (printed 1881), the pictures were based on images which came to Klinger in dreams after finding a glove at an ice-skating rink. In the leitmotivic device of a glove—belonging to a woman whose face we never see—Klinger anticipated the research of Freud and Krafft-Ebing on fetish objects. In this case, the glove becomes a symbol for the artist's romantic yearnings, finding itself, in each plate, in different dramatic situations, and performing the role that we might expect the figure of the beloved herself to fulfill. Semioticians have also seen in the symbol of the glove an example of a sliding signifier, or signifier without signified—in this case, the identity of the woman which Klinger is careful to conceal. The plates suggest various psychological states or existential crises faced by the artist protagonist (who bears a striking resemblance to the young Klinger).

Klinger traveled extensively around the art centres of Europe for years before returning to Leipzig in 1893. From 1897 he mostly concentrated on sculpture; his marble statue of Beethoven was an integral part of the Vienna Secession exhibit of 1902.

Klinger was cited by many artists (notably Giorgio de Chirico) as being a major link between the symbolist movement of the 19th century and the start of the metaphysical movement. His work was also admired and a formative influence on later artist such as Max Ernst and other surrealist artist. The historian Holger Jacob-Friesen illustrates and discusses in detail the influence of Klinger's prints on artist such as Franz von Stuck, Kathe Kollwitz, Edward Munch, Lovis Corinth, Otto Greiner, Alfred Kubin, Max Slevogt, Paul Klee, Richard Müller, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann, Horst Janssen, as well as De Chirico and Ernst.

Mother and Child (Dead Mother), 1898, engraving and etching, plate size 45.6 x 34.9 cm.: form the series Vom Tode [From Death], Opus XIII.

Print series published by Max Klinger

• 1879. Radierte Skizzen (Etched Sketches), Opus I, nos. 1-8.
• 1879. Rettungen Ovidischer Opper (Rescues Ovidian Victims) Opus II, nos. 1-13.
• 1880. Eva und die Zukunft (Eva and the Future), Opus III, nos. 1-6.
• 1880, Amor und Psyche (Cupid and Psyche), Opus V, book with 46 etchings
• 1881. Intermezzi (Intermezzi), Opus IV, nos. 1-12.
• 1881. Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs (Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove), Opus VI, nos. 1-10.
• 1883. Vier Landschaften (Four Landscapes), Opus VII, nos. 1-4.
• 1883. Dramen (Dramas), Opus IX, nos. 1-10.
• 1884. Ein Leben (A Life) Opus VIII, nos. 1-15.
• 1887. Eine Liebe (A Love), Opus X, nos. 1-10.
• 1889. Vom Tode, Erster Theil (On Death, Part One) Opus XI, nos. 1-10.
• 1894. Brahmsphantasie (Brahms Fantasy), Opus XII, nos. 1-41.
• 1898-1910. Vom Tode, Zweiter Theil (On Death, Part Two), Opus XIII, nos. 1-12.

In contemporary culture

In Elsa Bernstein's naturalist play Dämmerung, Klinger is mentioned in the third act when Carl talks of being able to afford "etchings by Klinger" for 80 francs.

Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, an infamous Moscow art collective, based their 1991 installation Klinger’s Boxes, on an idea inspired by Klinger's Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove.

Asteroid 22369 Klinger is named in his honor.

Gallery

Paintings

• 
  Portrait of a Gentleman (undated), oil on cardboard, 37.5 x 32.2 cm. (14.7 x 12.6 in.), Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria.
• 
  Pissing Death (1880), oil on canvas, 95 x 45 cm. Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany.
• 
  A Legation (1882), oil on panel, 37 x 63 cm. (14.5 x 24.8 in), Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany.
• 
  The Judgment of Paris (1885-87), oil on canvas, wood and plaster, overall dimensions: 370 × 752 × 65 cm., Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria.
• 
  The Blue Hour (1890), oil on canvas, 191.5 × 176 cm. (75.3 × 69.2 in.), Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany.
• 
  Christ in Olympus (1897), oil on canvas with mixed media, overall dimensions: 549 × 965 × 65 cm, (3800 kg.), Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria.
• 
  Landscape on the Unstrut (1912), oil on canvas, 192 x 126 cm. (75.5 x 49.6 in.), Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg, Germany.

Sculptures

• 
  The Drama (before 1904), demotions and collection unknown
• 
  Elsa Asenijeff, ca. 1900.
• 
  Athlete, (1901), , demotions and collection unknown
• 
  Beethoven photographed in 1902 at the 14th exhibition of the Vienna Secession. Interior design by Josef Hoffmann
• 
  Beethoven, 1902, marble, Leipzi
• 
  Beethoven Torso, 1902, bronze

Drawings, prints and graphics

• 
  Cupid, Death, and the Beyond, from the series Intermezzi, Opus IV, no. 12 (1881), etching and aquatint, 15.7 × 40.7 cm., Philadelphia Museum of Art
• 
  Anxieties from the series Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove Opus VI, no. 7 (1881), etching, 7, 13,5 x 25,7 cm., Albertina, Vienna
• 
  Abduction from the series Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove Opus VI, no. 9 (1881), etching, 9, 11,4 x 26,1 cm., Albertina, Vienna
• 
  Intermezzo, from the series A Love, Opus X, no. 6 (1887), etching with engraving and aquatint, 19.1 x 42 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• 
  First Future, from the series Eva and the Future, Opus III, no, 2 (1879–80), etching with aquatint, 36 x 23.5 cm., Saint Louis Art Museum
• 
  Third Future, from the series Eve and the Future, Opus III, no, 6 (1880), etching, 290 × 201 mm., Art Institute of Chicago
• 
  Sitting Naked Woman with Dancing Phallus (1882), ink pen and brush on paper, 30.6 x 18.7 cm.
• 
  Temptation, from the series A Life, Opus VIII, no. 4 (1884), aquatint and etching, with roulette, 47.3 × 22.5 cm. Art Institute of Chicago
• 
  Downfall, from the series A Life, Opus VIII, no. 12 (1884), etching and drypoint, 27.6 × 22.8 cm. Art Institute of Chicago
• 
  Back into Nothingness from the series A Life, Opus VIII, no. 15 (1884), etching and aquatint, 29.9 x 24.8 cm.
• 
  Kiss in the Park, from the series A Love, Opus X, no. 4 (1887), etching and engraving, 45.4 x 27.4 cm.
• 
  Evocation, from the series Brahmsphantasie, Opus XII, no, 2 (1894), 21.8 x 34 cm., National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.
• 
  Sisifus (The Faculties) (1914)

Further reading

• Gibson, Michael. "Symbolism". Köln: Benedikit Taschen Verlag. 1995. ISBN 3-8228-9324-2.

External links

• Plate 1 of 'Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove – all ten plates can be viewed in order
• www.max-klinger.com
• Max Klinger's Beethoven Monument
• "This Kiss to the Whole World" Klimt and the Vienna Secession. (NYARC) Klinger Vienna Secession exhibition catalog; Short bio; Beethoven Statue.