Simon Wilson: The snow globe kiss of Gustav Klimt

The Gustav Klimt Kiss snow globe from Vienna. Photo / Jason Oxenham

I bought this snow globe in a shop in Vienna and I don’t want to say I burst into tears, but my heart did give a little ding. It’s Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and the whole shop, in fact much of the whole city, was stuffed full of it. A gilded mosaic rendered a thousand different ways, shimmering at you whichever way you looked.

It was hideous, or it would have been, if I had not had the poster on my wall, once upon a long time ago. It means something to me. So I bought the globe and I’ve kept it in front of me on my desk at home ever since. I love it now, for all the reasons.

I know, it’s a snow globe. It’s anti-art. It’s what happens when art gets perverted by commerce. Although art itself has no peer when it comes to perverting commerce, unless it be commerce perverting art, etc.

Klimt himself was a pervert, or so the burghers of Vienna once thought. His paintings on the themes of philosophy, medicine and jurisprudence, commissioned by the university in 1894, were judged too pornographic to display. He did this kind of thing a lot: bottoms and breasts, shoulder blades and bony feet, wild eyes, wild hair, and long, intricately painted genitals, on the women and the men, daubed with red, looking sore.

The Kiss made up for it. It’s not innocent, but nor is it lascivious. It was commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary, in 1907, of the reign of the imperial tyrant Franz Joseph, who did his best to keep central and eastern Europe in the dark ages all the way into the 20th century.

Vienna, though, despite the dreadful emperor, was the vanguard of the world in art, music, psychology and progressive politics. But Klimt wasn’t political. He was a crowd-pleaser. The Kiss was wildly popular and has remained so ever since.

A hundred years later Lena Dunham in her movie Tiny Furniture and Buffy the Vampire Slayer both made a joke of it: the poster is on the walls of every college dorm, they said. We’re all sentimentally common, at least some of the time.

The Kiss is almost an exact contemporary of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the painting that started the Cubist revolution and changed art forever. The Kiss didn’t change anything. But at least it’s beautiful, which is more than anyone has ever claimed for Les Demoiselles.

Although that is the point. The Picasso is a far greater work, because, among other things, it starts more arguments.

But look at this snow globe. Wow. As I write this the afternoon sun has caught the lovers around the shoulders and when I give it a wee shake the light glitters through all the falling snow.

Mostly, though, it’s not so much exquisite as excruciating. The lovers rise from the gilded plinth like they’re bursting from a wedding cake, which cannot be what Klimt had in mind. Their sculpting is so crudely done it looks like the work of a person with all thumbs.

Art and anti-art. The sudden wonder of a shaft of sunlight. A cheap toy mass-manufactured for the easily impressionable. Life, love, the swooning splendour of that kiss, all frozen forever in fake snow. What a delicious commentary on art.

I think I might enter it for an art prize. In my own name.

This, as I said, is a story about everything and nothing. I have no idea how to make it clickable, although I appreciate there are people who might know. It’s a story for the printed page. I like to think you turned and found it, turned again if you didn’t like it, that’s fine, but if you’re still reading, thank you. I’ve worked in magazines most of my life, I like the serendipity.

A magazine is a snow globe. It’s tatty and lovely and laughable and sometimes it surprises you.

There’s a theory that Klimt was thinking of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice when he painted The Kiss. It’s only one of the greatest stories ever told.

There are versions in Virgil and Ovid and Plato, among others, but the one I really like is by Anais Mitchell, who, like Taylor Swift, sings sometimes with the guys from Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes and the National. Her musical Hadestown hit Broadway a few years ago: it filters O+E through the twin lenses of climate change and fascism. There’s a Tiny Desk concert if you’re curious.

Orpheus is the son of Apollo and his singing is so magical, he has the power to bring spring and summer to the world. He meets Eurydice and they become lovers. But he’s a neglectful artist, you know the type. He thinks he’s too special for ordinary things because he’s “still finishing my song”, and as the bleak winter comes upon them, he doesn’t even notice they’re out of firewood.

So Hades comes along and seduces Eurydice away to the Underworld. Which means she is dead. All around her, there are lost souls who remember nothing and slave away building “the wall to keep our enemies out”.

Orpheus, though, despite being self-infatuated, is brave beyond measure. He follows her. Charms his way in with his singing and persuades Hades to let Eurydice go.

But Hades imposes one condition. As Orpheus leads his lover out of the Underworld, he must not look back or she will die. This time it will be forever.

Off they go, lovers bound for freedom. But Orpheus has trust issues. Maybe she doesn’t love him. Maybe it’s not even her! And he has ego issues. Maybe he’s so wonderful, Hades wouldn’t dare.

He looks back. He folds Eurydice into his arms and plants on her the deepest kiss. Klimt captures the moment. Orpheus in ruddy good health, and Eurydice, her face so pale, falling limply in his embrace. She is already dead.

Men, right? We are everything and nothing. Just can’t do what we’re told. Got to think we know best. Bravery undone by a failure of judgment. So much to give the world and so likely to bugger it up.

The snow globe doesn’t really capture this. It’s not a subtle object. And yet. The sun has gone from my window now and, when I turn the globe upside down, it’s winter.

A kiss in a snow globe. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.