Robert Hughes: The Business of Art: Gustav Klimt & Mona Lisa

Collector comparing a Gustav Klimt with the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Hughes is the art critic for Time Magazine

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[blakeameade]

what is considered art in today's society is pathetic.

[iheggie]

Never has so much money been wasted on so little talent

[Ccs1989]

I dunno, I really like that piece. It's as interesting to look at as Mona Lisa, while being very different.

[Eldeecue]

It looks like the cover of a bad Romance novel bursting out of a slab of gaudy wrapping paper.

[ridewave444]

Hughes is great.

[art2raw]

Robert Hughes is direct like an artist. . . unlike alot of these jokers.... great art is great art ....it is not the compared to great art

[octemberfury]

considering hughes does not like anything ever, his description was quite glowing i'd say.

also, the mona lisa is not a great painting either, just hype.. hundreds of years of hype

[sleepcity]

"At a reported $135 million, the price was four and a half times the previous high for a Klimt. Until this sale, most art critics and historians would have ranked Klimt as a second-tier modern painter, and that is what previous auction records suggest. The price illustrates the ease with which art history is now rewritten with a checkbook." - Donald Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, pp. 57. Hughes' comments need to be viewed in the context of his argument about the current art market.

[sleepcity]

"This is the great picture of our time. Just like the Mona Lisa when you talk about the Mona Lisa, the Renaissance, this is that great painting. There is no better painting. "

Um, it's fairly obvious that Lauder DOESN'T just mean that it's "his Mona Lisa", i.e., only his personal favorite painting. He clearly does mean that it is the best painting "of our time." The point is that collectors have promoted Klimt as a first-rate painter whereas he has critically been regarded as second-rate.

[claureic]

Lauder's passion is Klimt, Schiele, Moser, Kirchner, Heckel...In this field, it is right to say that "there is no better picture". I respect his passion and if he has the money to indulge in it, well, good for him...and for the publicofhis museum.

[claureic]

Lauder is not saying that "Adele Bloch Bauer" is equivalent to the Mona Lisa: he is just saying that it is HIS Mona Lisa, i.e. the best painting he was able to buy in his collecting career. Hughes is simply twisting the facts to suit his agenda. Lauder hasbuilt a museum of German and Austrian art of the 19th-20th century: in that museum, the jewel is clearly that painting. That is all he's saying...

[codylawrence100]

well, while i certainly respect hughes, and why i must acknowledge the mona lisa to be a great--albeit over rated, or over emphasized--painting, i have to defend klimt here. i think klimt is a superb painter, this peice a superb illustration of that, and, what ever the criticisms may be, klimt did something in the way of portraiture never done before in the history of art.