Philosophy

Philosophy was the first of three pictures presented to the Austrian Government at the seventh Vienna Secession exhibition in March 1900. It had been awarded a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris but was attacked as ‘pornography’ and ‘perverted excess’ within his own country. Unfortunately, the painting, along with the other two, were destroyed in 1945 as SS forces retreated, leaving us with the rough study shown here. In Klimt’s description of the painting "On the left a group of figures, the beginning of life, fruition, decay. On the right, the globe as mystery. Emerging below, a figure of light: knowledge." Originally the proposal for the painting’s theme was The Victory of Light over Darkness, Klimt however presented a dreamlike mass of humanity, referring neither to optimism nor rationalism, but to a "viscous void", it was this this depiction of men and women drifting in an aimless trance that disturbed critics.