Peces dorados

Around 1901 Klimt was in the middle of the worst fight of his career. He had been commissioned to paint three large panels for the ceiling of the University of Vienna's great hall, and when the first were shown, professors and the press attacked them as ugly and obscene. This picture of nude figures drifting in green water was his answer. He first meant to call it To My Critics, and the figure at the lower edge, turning her bare backside toward the viewer, is usually read as his cheeky reply to the outrage. He settled on the title Goldfish instead. The gold he worked into the water is the same gilding he was beginning to make his signature, a few years before The Kiss.