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 Klimt inspires ‘Kiss’ A Review By Monique Bos In her debut novel, “The Painted Kiss,” Elizabeth Hickey examines the relationship between Viennese painter Gustav Klimt and Emilie Flöge — his student, model, sister-in-law, sometime lover, friend, muse and business associate. The story is told from Flöge’s perspective as an old woman, after she has fled Nazi-occupied Vienna with her niece. As the final days of World War II progress, she reminisces about her lengthy and complex association with Klimt, whom she met as a sheltered 12-year-old, when her father hired him to give her drawing lessons. She and her sister Helene soon begin sneaking off to model for Klimt and his brother, Ernst, and eventually Helene and Ernst fall in love and are married. Flöge herself grows up under Klimt’s tutelage and mingles with many of the artistic elite in turn-of-the-century Vienna. As an adult, she decides to open a fashion salon, an endeavor in which the artist and his associates provide assistance, and she experiences great success designing clothing for many of Vienna’s leading citizens. It is as Klimt’s companion and muse that she is best remembered, however, and these dual roles inform much of the character development in Hickey’s novel. Her Flöge is always aware of herself as a lens through which readers view the brilliant and sexually voracious Klimt, while her tone is sometimes too dispassionate to seem authentic. In Hickey’s interpretation, although Flöge is known as Klimt’s mistress, their relationship is rarely sexual; more often it is based on mutual understanding and, on her part, oversight of his many illicit liaisons. Hickey provides readers with glimpses into some of the wreckage Klimt leaves in his wake: a poverty-stricken woman in a ghetto apartment, who has borne him an illegitimate son; a young laundress who also has mothered his children; a wealthy woman in a harsh marriage whose fragility hides a strain of insanity. However, none of these subplots comes to any sort of conclusion or develops into more than a mere vignette of the dark side of genius. Therein lies perhaps the novel’s greatest weakness: In attempting to represent historical characters and trace an artistic epoch, the tension and plot of the story suffer. Flöge’s voice is often detached and almost mechanical, and even when Klimt’s actions enrage or enflame her, her reactions seem contrived, more a way to get to the next scene than genuine expressions of emotion. The book’s structure follows Klimt’s career and the creation of some of his masterpieces, with the result that the narrative often is jumpy and disjointed. More than once, a chapter that seems chronologically to take place within days or weeks of the previous chapter is revealed through clumsy dialogue to be set several years later. Despite its weaknesses as a novel, “The Painted Kiss” does present a broad spectrum of cultured Vienna society. Readers interested in the artistic and philosophical currents at the turn of the last century may find this an accessible introduction to a number of fascinating and complicated characters of that era. |
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