El mundo físico, natural y social: observación y exploración

Klimt’s use of the telescope has been interpreted as reflecting his Nietzschean existential aesthetics.194 _{In relation to my research however, I will concentrate on Klimt’s use of the}

telescope as a significant aid to visual perception. The value placed on sight and visual perception at end of the 19th century is commonly cited as one of the principal influences on painting of the modern period.195 _{Klimt’s use of the telescope can be seen to facilitate this}

investigation into visual perception by augmenting and revealing the functions of the human eye.196 _{Such telescopic devices enabled his observation of optical phenomena such as the}

flattening of pictorial space, the magnification of details hidden from the naked eye and the observation of optical focussing. Simultaneously, the telescope could function as a practical framing tool or viewfinder.

Throughout art history many different viewing devices have been used as transcribing instruments: windows, mirrors, screens, lenses, the camera obscura and the camera lucida as well as more recent technologies such as the photographic camera and the digital screen197

(Figures 10, 11, 12). These devices facilitate the translation of visual information from three-dimensional space onto a two-dimensional picture plane, through a quantifiable and manageable system of relational and planar measurements. That Klimt regularly used a viewfinder198 _{as well as the telescope may help explain the conception that his landscapes}

function as a type of screen.199 _{Just like the well-known drafting technique of closing one}

eye to see objects in relationship to one another, the monocular telescope would similarly facilitate the flattening of pictorial space by limiting binocular stereopsis.200 _{Klimt’s telescope}

and opera glasses are a somewhat unusual example of optical tools in the service of a pictorial transcription system.

194 Wagner concludes that Klimt’s use of the telescope transforms the landscape into a detached and incorporeal world resonant with Nietzsche’s idea of the Apollonian dream state, an enchanted realm of beautiful illusion, ibid., 170.

195 Richard R. Brettell, Modern Art 1859-1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 83.

196 The idea of the telescope as an extension of the eye has been conceptualised since the early 1600s by many writers, see Antoni Malet, “Early Conceptualizations of the Telescope as an Optical Instrument,” Early Science and Medicine 10, no. 2 (2005): 246-50, http://www.jstor.org.virtual.anu.edu.au/stable/4130312

197 For a history of perspective viewers and machines see Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 167-220.

198 Wagner, “Klimt’s Landscapes,” in Gustav Klimt, Landscapes, 164. 199 Dolp, “Viennese Moderne,” 257.

Figure 11. Albrecht Dürer, A draughtsman drawing a portrait, (1532).

Figure 12. Illustration of various Camera Obscuras, (1685). Figure 10. Albrecht Dürer, Man Drawing a Lute or The Draughtsman of the Lute, (1525).

It is not coincidental that Klimt’s landscapes are often described as close ups or close perspectives201 _{as telescopes magnify visual information. Not only can the telescope reveal}

details invisible to the naked eye, it can also arrest vision. While the camera might freeze a single moment of time, the telescope allows the viewer to observe optical phenomena we cannot perceive in real time, such as the observation of a view going slowly in and out of focus, an action that occurs quickly within our own visual system. The telescope shows this visual mechanism as a slow incremental action.

Just like the opera glasses of today, 19th century examples use a dial to slowly bring the image into focus.202 _{This focal apparatus imitates the basic focussing capabilities of the human eye, a}

function that is normally imperceptible to us. The mechanism captures the activity of bringing the subject into focus at any given point within a depth of field.

In the 21st century we witness this regularly, with camera zooms on digital screens and personal devices. In the late 19th and early 20th century however, the spectacle of images slowly moving in and out of focus, and the breakdown of vision that occurs within this process would have been a rare sight, limited to optical instruments such as microscopes, telescopes, opera glasses and early telephoto lenses.203 _{This focussing action may have allowed Klimt to}

observe flat tessellations of shape and colour slowly forming and dissolving through the opera glasses. This phenomenon may also have been accentuated by the limited magnification of the optical devices Klimt used. 204

201 Gottfried Fliedl, Gustav Klimt 1862-1918 (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1989), 178. 202 Greivenkamp, “The History of Telescopes,” 10.

203 Wagner, “Klimt’s Landscapes,” in Gustav Klimt, Landscapes, 166.

204 Alfred Weidinger identified the telescope Klimt is using within the photograph at the landing stage as one similar to a 1905 model with a magnification of 10x. See ibid., 165. While long range magnification was possible with field and prismatic binoculars, see Greivenkamp, “The History of Telescopes,” 12-17, opera glasses from the 19th century through to modern models have maintained a limited magnification of 2x–5x, as they are designed for indoor use and for a set distance to the theatre stage. As both Klimt’s devices had a limited magnification, when looking at a view beyond this range of magnification, some parts of the image may have become blurred or out of focus, forming more generalised areas of flat colour and shape.