Klimt’s Spatial Wit

Julie M. Johnson, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and Leonard A. Lauder Senior Fellow in Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In March 1901, Gustav Klimt submitted his painting, Judith I, to the ongoing 10th Exhibition of the Vienna Secession. A critic remarked that the work must be a “Raumwitz,” or, a “spatial joke.” This lecture examines the concept of the “spatial joke” as a positive term, and reconsiders Klimt’s experiments with space and reality layered against the backdrop of the urban environment of Vienna 1900.

This talk is presented as part of the Summer 2025 Lecture Series, “Focus Vienna,” which explores themes related to the exhibition “Austrian Masterworks from the Neue Galerie.”