News of the sale of Gustav Klimt's 1907 masterpiece "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" to a New York collector is hugely disappointing for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and its audience. The celebrated golden portrait of the Viennese artist's great patron (and likely lover) has been attracting steady crowds since it went on view in early April.
LACMA's collection of early Modern art includes some landmarks -- Kurt Schwitters' greatest monumental collage, "Construction for Noble Ladies" (1919); Rene Magritte's Surrealist icon, "The Treachery of Images (This Is Not a Pipe)" (1928-29) -- but the Klimt is a work of a different magnitude. The Schwitters is a personal best by a major artist. The Magritte symbolizes an entire movement. The Klimt -- well, call it a founding document of 20th century art.
The portrait of Adele, showered in gold, derives from the ancient Greek myth of Zeus and the forbidden princess, Danae. Klimt transformed a classical tale about sexual congress between an Olympian god and an uncommon mortal into an ecstatic emblem of modern creative life.
In the end, though, when a painting is on the market, buyers do not decide where it will end up. Sellers do.
And the sellers of the Klimt -- Bloch-Bauer's niece, 90-year-old Cheviot Hills resident Maria Altmann, and several other family members -- chose to sell the painting to cosmetics heir Ronald S. Lauder rather than to LACMA. Reportedly, he bought the painting for the Neue Galerie, the small and elegant museum of German and Austrian painting, sculpture and graphic and decorative arts that he and the late art dealer and collector Serge Sabarsky opened on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 2001, just weeks after Sept. 11.
Fortunately, the painting will not be owned privately but by the museum. The Neue Galerie shows works from its own modest collection, from the Sabarsky collection and from the Lauder family. For example, Klimt's unfinished painting "The Dancer" (1916-18), a Matisse-like full-length portrait that is currently part of an exhibition titled "Selections from the Permanent Collection," is actually privately owned.
The price paid for "Adele I," said to be $135 million, exceeds what any other painting has ever brought at auction. (Christie's auction house helped to broker the private sale to Lauder.) But no one can say if that is the highest sum ever paid for a painting on the private market. It is certainly a lot of money -- nearly as much as LACMA is believed to have had on the table for all five Klimt paintings in its show.
