With logos, Gustav Klimt made a brand of his name

Since the Renaissance, every artist has made a choice in his career as to how put his or her signature on the work. As if to say: I made this. In a way you perpetuate yourself in material reality, you could say: where your name is, you really exist. Not much different than the graffiti writer on the fences along a train track. About since the art of Jan van Eyck in the 15th century artists linked their name to their work, and with that the maker became as important as the work of art. Enter the star artist. The name is important for the monetary value of a work of art, but also as a foothold for us; we get up when we see ‘Vermeer’ on the sign.

In one of the best autumn exhibitions of the moment, Golden Boy Gustav Klimt at the Van Gogh Museum, the signatures will probably not be the first to stand out. The gold, the sensual women, the patterns, the colors, there is enough demand for attention. But somewhere in sifting through the layers of paint I bounced off those magnificent, self-aware logos of the artist. One square, two in this case. One with first and last name in carefully aligned letters green on gold, one with a beautiful green monogram. It suits Klimt, the man was the child of a goldsmith and engraver and trained at the art rifle school, an academy where you learned all kinds of crafts, from weaving to ironsmithing and decorative painting. He made a mark of his name with the monogram. Not as the first artist – Albrecht Dürer already did this in the 16th century – but in a totally idiosyncratic way. These two marks are part of the artwork. Besides the blissful patterns of Emilie Flöge’s dress and her soft, almost floating face. Further on in the exhibition, such logos can be found everywhere in the paint and even in the frames.

Japanese Woodblock Print Makers

In a nice story about Klimt’s signature on YouTube explains British curator Sarah Herring that not only do you see traces of his craft background in his logos, but that Klimt was also inspired by very different artists than those featured in this exhibition: Japanese woodblock printmakers such as Utagawa Hiroshige. His prints, which were extremely popular in Europe at the end of the 19th century and which Klimt also collected himself, often contain texts and signatures in a rectangular frame. In a different color, separate from the background, as a kind of stamp or seal. Even more than showing that he was the star, I saw in this Klimt’s vision of the world in which art permeates everything in life: letters, architecture, crockery, furniture, clothing, books.

Klimt had the kind of design thinking where everything is worth making better, for everyone. And that at a time when the idea of ​​art for art’s sake, l’art pour l’art, grew stronger and eventually contributed to a dichotomy between art and ‘normal life’, which can still be felt today. Until today, many people immediately get the feeling that art ‘doesn’t belong to them’, but is something for people who can afford it or who understand it. Nonsense, Klimt showed. Art belongs to all of us.