Self-Portrait, Laughing

In 1908 the Austrian state bought Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, the gilded canvas shown that summer at the Kunstschau, the big exhibition staged by Klimt's circle. The same year, by the Belvedere's dating, Richard Gerstl painted this small head of himself laughing. Some researchers place it a summer earlier. Gerstl was an outsider who refused to show his work in public. He painted himself many times, nearly always with a serious face. Here the mouth is pulled wide over a row of teeth, the eyes glint, and the face is built from thick, quick dabs of orange, pink and green. Around the head the background breaks into short separate strokes of brown and rust. The museum itself finds the laugh more menacing than cheerful. The picture and The Kiss now hang in the same building, the Upper Belvedere.