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The combination of architecture, furniture and painting was the big innovation of Jugendstil. Everything had to submit in form and design to the whole. Paintings, like furniture and crockery, were especially made for certain rooms.

The Mosaics with their ornaments, figures and gold background impressed Klimt deeply. Due to these Mosaics gold became more and more important in his paintings: Klimt's "Golden Period".

The Kiss

oil on canvas
1907 - 1908
180 x 180 cm

painted on finely knotted canvas

ground

• done in repeated up-strokes
• very homogeneous, on a minimum of bonding agent (elements of bone glue used)
• shows an extremely strong absorptive capacity when structures of oil-pigment put over it

Surface of the painting (outside the gilded mosaic ornamentation):

The bonding agents (pieces of oil and resin) are absorbed immediately by the ground after the work process is being completed.
This way the layer of oil pigment is being forced onto the surface of the almost fat free ground.

Composition of pigments:

relatively high stability thanks to the composition of surfaces in layers without hardly any intervening protective coating

structure of colour:

no protective surface at all, for that reason relatively vulnerable
no final protective coating
immediately after completion the applied structures of colour were drying up quickly resulting in a non adequate, atypical structure of the surface

multi-coloured gold and connected mosaic-elements:

modelled on byzantine frescos and background of Gothic panel paintings

mosaic relief:

same as on ground
with the help of a piping bag the desired spiral and box ornamentation was put on the ground

background:

covered with layers of gold-plating as well as covered with multi-coloured alloyed gold-plates

Gilding

is the coating on of thin gold platings on metallic or non-metallic pads. The gilding can either be carried out by hammering on of gold foil or by application of manganous-gold (followed by the quicksilver's evaportating, so called fire gilding).
Metallic items are mostly gilded in galvanic baths, or by dipping them into golden salt solutions (from which gold disengages on the basis of its high positive normal potential).

Julia (further information),
Nicole (further information),
Ursula (further information)

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