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Essay #16 – “The Kiss”

Two very important and very similar works of art created in a very prominent

time period throughout the history of art, both are known as “The Kiss”. Two separate

artists, Constantin Brancusi and Gustav Klimt, which indeed came from different art

movements, created these two pieces. Both artists attempted an understanding so similar

yet so different at the same time allowing each sculpture to present itself in a different

way to the viewer and to those of that time period as well.

Beginning with the piece created in 1916 by the well renowned artist, Constantin

Brancusi lived in the period that was well related to the idea of cubism. This is best

explained to be the breaking of the human form, and turning it into a much simpler form

of geometric shape. This simplistic form of art is most famous for its intertwined figures

consisting of the significant interlocking forms. A woman is on the right whom is

slightly thinner than the one on the left, and her eyes are slightly smaller as well. It is

plausible to say that the woman is on the right judging off of the bulge, which suggests

breasts. What is prominent yet hidden inside of the sculpture, is the how the two eyes

become one so perfectly in line. This structure is made of limestone, which was said to

reveal a simplistic and raw surface that portrayed that of an archaic sculpture. This piece

rejects the society that it was built in and brings back the thriving time during the 19th

century of the renaissance and the baroque.

Most similar to “The Kiss” created by Constantin Brancusi, is Gustav Klimt’s

interpretation of it. Created in the time of World War 1, in the 1890s, it is oil on canvas
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painting (gold leaf if you will). Instead of suggesting a subject in it's most pure form as

Brancusi’s version does, it represents an all consuming love and passion through the stats

of being permanent. In this perception of the sculpture discussed above, it is a kissing

couple on a precipice. Not much of the human form is seen, and the parts we can see of

the woman’s face, is calm and passive. Her eyes are close with a very intensely, and his

neck creates and holds a sense of physical power and desire that carries across the

entirety of the canvas. There is very rich designed patterned clothing that, on the male is

more rectangular than it is on the female. Unlike the relation to the Baroque period

above, this interpretation of “the Kiss” related most to the byzantine period.

“The kiss” still stands today as a very significant piece of work from both of these

aspired artists discussed in this essay. They both bring two different meanings to the

same initial idea of the same perception. Both of these ideas have allowed the viewer to

understand two different aspects of love within these two creative works, and although

they may have the same name, they differ in a variety of other ways.
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