Beech Grove I, Gustav Klimt, Galerie Neue Meister, Wikimedia Commons, Date Accessed: December 3, 2020.
“Art is a line around your thoughts.” – Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt’s 1902 painting Beech Grove is an interesting peek into the mind of a creative genius. It’s easy to become lost among the tree tops as they seamlessly mesh with a melancholy sky. Fallen leaves densely cover the ground like a thousand forgotten thoughts. While Klimt was painting his symbolic masterpieces another Austrian movement was gaining momentum. Gestalt psychology was taking Austria and Germany by storm and laying a foundation to influence generations of future scientists. While many tenets of Gestalt psychology were ultimately dismissed, the central idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts provided fertile ground for further exploration. When looking at Klimt’s paintings the viewer is often bombarded with a flurry of intricate shapes and colors, many of which are indiscernible from the next. However when the painting is experienced as a whole the content is appreciated for much more than its abundance of microscopic abstractions. The same can be said about any number of fleeting thoughts and ideas that we have on any given day. The mind can feel overwhelmed when disconnected thoughts and ideas run rampant during our increasingly busy lives. Unimportant thoughts fall away like leaves blowing in the wind, making a slow descent into insignificance. The thoughts that remain provide the architecture for future experiences, creating something completely different than their independent contributions. The changes occur in our subtle everyday perceptions, not in the inherent structure of the building blocks. In this way Gustav Klimt used his paintings to enrich the human experience, through forcing us to use perception as a means of self discovery.