Gustav Klimt, the teacher, the senior, puts me in a trance, wrapping his goddesses in symbolic divinity, decorative costume, celebrating everything that is nurturing and compassionate and powerful about women. While Schiele shocks with nudity, Klimt calms the viewer down with clothes made of silver and gold, metal so soft, almost a balm, a loving maternal figure, offering secrets into our universe. Amazing how one can do that with paint and placement...Klimt proves it can be done, so beautifully, naturally.
And then there's Egon Schiele, he and his women, both stripped down to expose bones, their fragile ribs, bare and vulnerable, a delicate elegance. Schiele, a protege of Klimt, a shocking boy wonder who's presence could not be denied yet recognition received late in their artistic roulette. There is this wall in the Albertina Museum,
with 5 Schiele's, all small, sensual perfection, lined up quietly underneath a very grand chandelier... 
this wall put me under its spell over a dozen years ago, though its Klimt that makes me sit for long spaces of time, falling into 20 ft high scenes of tranquility depicting women so uniquely with death lurking, often, as it does in life....The Kiss is the most famous but by no means my favorite, so sweet to be kissed like that and to be able to paint a kiss that feels like that... 
The Albertina introduced a section of Klimt with Freudian text, maybe to emphasize the dream like elements, elaborate the earthly fantasy and intense sense of contentment. Klimt lives so well in Vienna, like seeing Degas @ Musée d'Orsay, Klimt and Schiele thrive in Vienna, the present married forever to its past, quiet, refined, civilized yet explosive in its own self-contained way. Austria...And what a perfect time to be here, Vienna boasts a fantastic exhibit of Picasso at his most political, Michelangelo at his most natural, strolling around all those sketches, having grown up with copies drawn by artistic siblings in our home in Seattle,
reminding me of times long ago when life was simple, death hadn't arrived to take away a brother, my beloved mother, there was enough love to go around, when it was just the 7 of us, a middle class clan, a benign tribe, loving parents, 5 pretty easy going kids who smiled easily in their photos because they felt like it, so long ago, when America was like that, when my America was like that...Allora, must come back to the present, to Vienna, to the piece di resistance, Signora Frida Kahlo.
This woman kinda blows my mind; all passion and sadness, fears and desires painted in primary colors mostly, again, symbolic, expressive. Those challenging eyes and brow, that beautiful hairline, tutoring herself to embrace her own innate talent, becoming a master among few. I was surprised by how moved I became, overwhelmed by her ability to project multiple cultures, industry after simplicity, moving from Mexico to N. America.
Those photographs of Frida, so fierce, unrelenting, insisting she be exactly who she could be, master of her own world, wanting her men to stay and not stray, so much wanting in that women, I'm grateful Frida wanted so much, she moved me as much as Klimt and Schiele, maybe even more...
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