Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II 1912

Gustav Klimt painted Adele Bloch-Bauer II with oil on canvas, working across a large vertical space. I imagine him stepping back, squinting, and then lunging forward to place another mark. The background is a flat plane of pink and green—two colors that do interesting things together, as one vibrates against the other. On top of this is a frieze of cartoonish figures, animals, and architecture. I think Klimt's probably riffing off ancient Chinese scrolls here. But then I wonder, was he also thinking about late 19th-century wallpaper? The painting has been built up from layers of paint, giving it a textured surface. It's a history of changes. The surface is thick in some places and thin in others, so the weave of the canvas disappears and reappears. Painters are always looking at other painters—it’s a long, ongoing conversation. And that's how painting becomes this embodied form of expression, embracing ambiguity, allowing for multiple readings. It's never just one thing.