The Lady in Gold The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

by O'CONNOR, ANNE-MARIE

• ISBN13: 9780307265647
• ISBN10: 0307265641
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-07
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

The spellbinding story--part fairy tale, part suspense--of Gustav Klimt's most famous painting, one of the most emblematic portraits of its time: the beautiful, seductive Viennese Jewish salon hostess who sat for it; the notorious, "degenerate'' artist who painted it; the now vanished turn-of-the-century Vienna that shaped it; and the strange twisted fate that befell it.

Author Biography

Anne-Marie O’Connor attended Vassar College, studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a foreign correspondent for Reuters and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times for twelve years, and has written extensively on the Klimt painting and the Bloch-Bauer family’s efforts to recover its art collection. Her articles have appeared in Esquire, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor. She currently writes for The Washington Post from Mexico City, where her husband, William Booth, is Post bureau chief.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xi
Prologue	p. xiii
Emancipation
Adele's Vienna: Poems and Privilege	p. 3
The King	p. 7
Emancipated Immigrants	p. 10
The Wounded Creator	p. 13
Arranged Marriage	p. 17
The Secession	p. 23
Klimt the Seducer	p. 26
An Innocent Abroad	p. 30
"I Want to Get Out"	p. 35
Adele's "Bohemian Home"	p. 41
The Empress	p. 45
"Degenerate Women"	p. 46
Eyes Wide Shut	p. 50
The Outsider	p. 55
The Painted Mosaic	p. 58
KlimtÆs Women	p. 61
"Hugs from Your Buddha"	p. 66
The Good Spirit	p. 69
Love and Betrayal
Degenerate Art	p. 75
"You Are Peace"	p. 77
Unrequited Love	p. 81
Marie Viktoria	p. 84
Maria and Luise	p. 88
Stubenbastei	p. 95
The Housepainter from Austria	p. 99
With or Without You	p. 100
The Return of the Native	p. 106
Love Letters from a Bride	p. 114
Work Makes Freedom	p. 122
Thunder at Twilight	p. 128
Decent Honorable People	p. 134
Gay Marriage	p. 137
The Orient Express	p. 137
The Autograph Hunter	p. 139
Stealing Beauty	p. 142
The Last of the Bloch-Bauers	p. 146
Homecoming	p. 147
Führer	p. 150
Nazis in the Family	p. 152
"Above the Mob"	p. 155
The Viennese Cassandra	p. 160
Ferdinand in Exile	p. 163
The Gutmanns	p. 164
The "Blonde Beast"	p. 168
Love Letters from a Murderer	p. 172
Ferdinand's Legacy	p. 175
The Uses of Art	p. 176
Nelly	p. 179
The Immendorf Castle	p. 183
The Child in the Chapel	p. 185
The Castle of the First Reichsmarschall	p. 187
The Partisans	p. 190
The Man Without Qualities	p. 192
The Nero Decree	p. 193
Restitution	p. 198
Liberation	p. 199
Refugee	p. 205
Provenance	p. 208
Atonement
Historical Amnesia	p. 213
The Children of Tantalus	p. 220
The Heirs of History	p. 225
The Library of Theft	p. 228
The Search for Provenance	p. 230
"I Can't Afford for You to Lose"	p. 235
How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?	p. 236
Klimt's Stolen Women	p. 237
A Lost Cause Celebre	p. 239
Diplomacy	p. 241
Family History	p. 243
Supreme Judgment	p. 246
Arbitration	p. 250
Ciao Adele	p. 254
A Friend from Old Vienna	p. 256
Patrimony	p. 261
Adele's Final Destiny	p. 268
The Burden of History	p. 272
Art History	p. 276
Cultural Property	p. 285
A Reckoning	p. 289
Acknowledgments	p. 297
Notes	p. 299
Selected Bibliography	p. 333
Index	p. 339
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