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Curator Denise Allen: Max Klinger believed
in the concept of a total work of art; that
painting, drawing, and sculpture should always
work together.
The Galatea was Klinger's first sculpture
in silver and is meant to preside in a picture gallery.
In 1906 it was extraordinarily unusual for
its time.
Here we see Klinger in the Neues Museum in
Weimar with all of these conservatively dressed
artists, art teachers, and patrons.
She's a silver foil against their conservatism.
In Greek mythology, Galatea is rather a saucy
nymph who's thoughtless, but the Galatea of
myth is not this figure.
Klinger's depiction of Galatea is much more
serious.
The goddess is seated on a marble throne in
a pose that is absolutely immobile, and between
her legs she sort of embraces this small child.
Her hands are pressed against her hips, her
arms are bent, one leg is thrown over the
other and locked into position, her head is
upright and she stares straight ahead.
Silver reflects.
She takes on all different colors, like water
itself.
Klinger was one of the most famous artists
in Germany, but it was thought to be crude
and no institutions stepped forward to acquire
it.
So in 1909, Gustav Kirstein, who was an art
publisher in Leipzig and one of Klinger's
friends and patrons, bought the work.
By collecting and promoting Klinger's art,
Gustav Kirstein showed himself to be one of
the leaders in the culture of Leipzig.
Gustav and Clara Kirstein owned over eighty
of his drawings and prints and one painting.
The Met is really privileged to own two of
the Kirsteins' drawings.
You see Klinger working on an ideal female
type and you see this kind of unsettling quality.
Klinger's art was radical for its time at
around the turn of the century, but by the
time World War I had ended, the cultural landscape
in Germany had irrevocably shifted.
The human figure, derived from natural observation,
had no more cultural valence.
The Nazis came into power in 1933.
Gustav Kirstein lost his position in the publishing
firm and he died of a heart attack in 1934.
His wife Clara inherited the collection and
approached the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts
with the offer of selling the entire collection.
This was to secure the funds for her to emigrate
from the country with her children.
On the night before she was meant to emigrate
her passport was seized.
She was told that she would be sent to Theresienstadt.
To prevent that, she committed suicide, and
the collection ultimately ended up in the
Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts where it remained
until the year 2000.
What is tragic to me is that the Nazis not
only destroyed that culture forever, but also
perverted our present understanding of what
it meant to be German and Jewish in the 1930s.
German Jewish culture was one of the great
forces that contributed to the development
of society at that time.
You know, intellectual, social, political.
It was part of the German landscape and fabric.
In 1918, Gustav Kirstein wrote a brief introduction
to a monograph, It was called The World of
Max Klinger.
Kirstein sort of gets to the heart of what
he thought his friend's art meant.
And he said "Klinger's art comes from the
human heart and soul.
He's a man who seeks liberation and wants
to give it to others."
