Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter who embodied the erotic, psychological and aesthetic obsessions of Vienna at the turn of the last century. He wrestled with love, death, sexuality and regeneration. He died in 1918 and has become as modish as he is controversial. In the pantheon of Western art he can hardly match Rembrandt or Picasso. But yesterday one of his paintings was reportedly bought for a record £73 million from the descendants of a Jewish family from whom it had been seized by the Nazis. Its new owner, the cosmetics mogul Ronald Lauder, will hang it in a New York museum of German and Austrian art — after years on the walls of a Vienna gallery that had contested its restitution.
Is any painting worth that much? Will all that money — privately negotiated — really be handed over? And if so, does this not prove that art’s aesthetic appeal is far outstripped by its ability to generate vast profits for its owners? And there is probably no individual more appreciative of this great work of art than the insurance salesman writing a policy for its protection.
There is competition to New York in the British capital. London can now provide a richer cornucopia of great art than almost any other city at any other time. Consider what is on offer this summer: a magnificent new exhibition of Velázquez, including twenty works never seen in the capital; six huge Constables, hung together in Tate Britain; Kokoschka at the Courtauld, Kandinsky at Tate Modern, Modigliani at the Royal Academy, Michelangelo’s drawings, Islamic calligraphy, portrait painting, Modernism . . . who needs the World Cup for spectacle?