Minerva or Pallas Athena

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Minerva or Pallas Athena: Gustave Klimt

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Gustave Klimt Oil Painting - Minerva or Pallas Athena

Keywords: Minerva, Pallas, Athena

Work Overview: Minerva or Pallas Athena
Gustav Klimt
Date: 1898
Style: Art Nouveau (Modern)
Period: Golden phase
Genre: mythological painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 75 x 75 cm
Location: Vienna Museum, Vienna, Austria

Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group's periodical, Ver Sacrum ("Sacred Spring"). He remained with the Secession until 1908. The goals of the group were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the works of the best foreign artists to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase the work of members.[9] The group declared no manifesto and did not set out to encourage any particular style—Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. The government supported their efforts and gave them a lease on public land to erect an exhibition hall. The group's symbol was Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the arts—of whom Klimt painted his radical version in 1898.

Pallas Athene uses classical mythology but contrasts markedly from Klimt's more feminine depictions of women. Here, this is a powerful goddess, a woman of strength and courage, sporting traditionally masculine qualities.

Gender ambiguities in Greek antiquity were actually very common, not just here in Athena.

Pallas Athene of 1898 continues his use of mythology as seen in the likes of Danae, though in this new direction of female strength. Sexuality is also hidden here, where as Judith, Danae and The Kiss positively focused upon it, indeed celebrated it.

It's contrast from the rest of his career makes this a significant work, whilst at the same time also incorporating common features of his work, such as the bright, gold-leaf artwork and the use of symbolism and greek mythology.

Klimt’s Pallas Athene, painted in 1898, is a depiction of the martial aspect of the Greek God, a representative of wisdom (note the owl behind), craft and war, and the guardian personification of ancient Athens.

Athene appears before us in defiant stance, one hand clutching at the shaft of a spear, her invariable weapon. She regards the viewer with a steady and penetrating gaze; the impression is of being evaluated. Her eyes are wide and pale; the look calm and controlled. She carries her head high and her mouth is drawn tight and thin which accentuates the heavy, straight jaw line. These attributes, coupled with the helmet which covers the other areas of her face and head, lend her a decidedly masculine appearance which the lank hair, trailing beneath, does not attenuate.

The air of powerful determination is further heightened by the square format and the horizontal and vertical lines that are inherent in the composition. Her breastplate is a rectangle, the spear a vertical line, the arm a right angle, the mannequin stands upright upon the orb, even Athene’s hair comes straight down to frame the grotesque face leering from the gorget.

However there are some mitigating notes which temper the overall tone of rigidity. The breast plate edges, especially at the lower edge are composed of curved forms, the mail is made up of scallop shapes, the orb and the owl’s eyes are round. These curved elements soften the lines and give balance to the square rigidity of the composition. Most tellingly her left hand supports the spear in a delicate and loose grip. The flesh itself is portrayed in the nacreous manner that Klimt excelled at, its pallor standing out in sharp contrast to the dark backdrop, which seems to give the god an entirely human frailty that we can just glimpse behind the armour and the mask-like face.

The use of mythological themes was common in Klimt’s work of the time, as it was with many of the Symbolists.

The Athena of myth is a paradox, an external contradiction but internally consistent: a goddess with what some women, Pomeroy and Cantarella, for example, consider masculine powers. The Athena of a state religion or state cult is another persona and not the subject of this study. In mythology Athena poses a curious androgynous power. Is she externally female but internally male or is it that her myth persona is ambiguous? To us, wisdom and war may seem strange mindmates of this patron goddess, impossible alloys. Here it may be merely a cross-cultural and diachronic dilemma, but Athena's compound persona is nonetheless fascinating.

Gustav Klimt's use of Classical myth iconography is directly derivative of antiquity in his many images of Athena. Perhaps the outstanding image of this goddess since Classical antiquity, however, is his Pallas Athene of 1898. She is a very different persona from his famous femmes fatales whose sexuality is overwhelming, for example his Judith (1901) and Danae (1907-8). Here it is Athena's divinity which Klimt finds more interesting, rather than her sexuality, which is not surprising given the gender ambiguities she demonstrated in Greek antiquity. Perhaps Klimt implies that power is a catalyst to sexual instincts, as history has long suggested that power is one of the most important sexual stimuli in human behavior and that the desire for power is strongly connected to sexual desire. In any case, this somewhat asexual Greek goddess becomes Klimt's most powerful female in his art.

Shown to the public at the November exhibition of the Wiener Secession, Pallas Athena had already been selected as patroness for the 1. exhibition of the Secession in Munic 1897. Pallas Athena stands for the fight of the members of the Secession against the art of the establishment.

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