Vienna 1902: Gustav Klimt and Auguste Rodin / by Tobias G. Natter -- Kunst-Dinge R. M. Rilke: From Rodin to Klimt and Schiele / by Matthias Haldemann -- The Kiss: Gustav Klimt and Auguste Rodin / by Renée Price -- Rodin's International Celebrity and Influence around 1900 / by Martin Chapman -- Klimt and Rodin: Their Image of Life and Humanity / by Michael Kausch

Winner of the 2016 Marfield Prize In 1902, Rainer Maria Rilke—then a struggling poet in Germany—went to Paris to research and write a short book about the sculptor Auguste Rodin. The two were almost polar opposites: Rilke in his twenties, delicate and unknown; Rodin in his sixties, carnal and revered. Yet they fell into an instantaneous friendship. Transporting readers to early twentieth-century Paris, Rachel Corbett’s You Must Change Your Life is a vibrant portrait of Rilke and Rodin and their circle, revealing how deeply Rodin’s ideas about art and creativity influenced Rilke’s classic Letters to a Young Poet.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is world famous for his golden, ornamental works, his flowing colours and his sensuous portrayal of women. But where did he find the inspiration for his multi-faceted oeuvre? How well did he know Vincent van Gogh? Did he ever see a picture by Henri Matisse? Large-format comparisons reveal Klimt's artistic sources. Modern European art was omnipresent in Vienna in around 1900 - in the Vienna Secession, in galleries, art magazines and private collections. The Viennese artist Gustav Klimt was receptive for the pictorial language of his contemporaries like Alma-Tadema, Minne, Rodin, Toorop, Hodler, Van Gogh, Monet, Khnopff, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler and Matisse, and adapted elements from a variety of artistic styles. The encounter between his works and those of the artists with whom he was associated reveals significant and often surprising parallels.

The concept of Schubert as a feminine type began in 1838. This work examines the historical reception of Franz Schubert as conveyed through the gendered imagery and language of 19th and early 20th century European culture. The figures discussed include Musset, Sand, Nerval, Maupassant, George Eliot, and others.

Gustav Klimt's art thoroughly expresses the apocalyptic atmosphere of Vienna's upper middle-class society - a society devoted to the cultivation of aesthetic awareness and the cult of pleasure. The ecstatic joy which Klimt and his contemporaries found - or hoped to find - in beauty was constantly overshadowed by death. And death therefore plays an important role in Klimt's art. Klimt's fame, however, rests on his reputation as one of the greatest erotic painters and graphic artists of his times. In particular, his drawings, which have been widely admired for their artistic excellence, are dominated by the erotic portrayal of women. Klimt saw the world "in female form". [site accessed 23/07/2012 - http://www.amazon.com/Gustav-Klimt-1862-1918-Basic-Art/dp/382285980X].