Bauernhaus in Buchberg 1911

Gustav Klimt made this painting of a farmhouse in Buchberg with oil on canvas, but it’s not like any farmhouse I’ve ever seen. Klimt’s marks are like confetti, tiny dots of pigment. Look at how the colors vibrate, greens and blues mostly, with little pops of yellows and pinks. It’s like he’s built up the whole scene dot by dot, a mosaic of paint. The farmhouse itself is almost hidden, camouflaged within all the foliage, like it’s breathing with the trees and the flowers. The surface has such a tactile quality, you can practically feel the dabs of paint under your fingertips, and sense the physicality of Klimt’s process. It reminds me a bit of the pointillist paintings of Seurat, but where Seurat is very ordered and scientific, Klimt is much more intuitive, more about feeling than seeing. Ultimately, it’s a painting about how nature swallows everything, how everything is connected.