Gold in London (Klimt Immersive Exhibition)

This page covers an immersive digital exhibition built around the paintings of Gustav Klimt, which ran from 13 April 2018 to 6 January 2019. Our catalogue has long listed it as Gold in London, but those dates and the photograph above match the inaugural show of the Atelier des Lumières in Paris, a former nineteenth-century iron foundry in the 11th arrondissement converted into a digital art center by the company Culturespaces. We describe that installation here and have flagged the title for checking.

What you are looking at

The photograph shows a darkened industrial hall. At its center stands a tall cylindrical structure, its curved surface covered with a projection of Klimt's Tree of Life: black branches coiling into gold spirals, with small eye-like ornaments and flowers scattered among them. A doorway has been cut into the cylinder, and the same pattern continues on the walls beyond. Visitors walk through the image as silhouettes, their shadows briefly interrupting it.

The Tree of Life comes from the mosaic frieze Klimt designed for the dining room of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels between 1905 and 1911. In the original, the tree's spiraling branches fill a long horizontal panel in marble, glass, metal and enamel. Here it is enlarged many times and wrapped around architecture.

How the show worked

Instead of hanging original works, the exhibition projected high-resolution images of Klimt's paintings onto every surface of the space, including the floor, using dozens of video projectors and a synchronized soundtrack. The program, designed by Gianfranco Iannuzzi, Renato Gatto and Massimiliano Siccardi, moved through Klimt's career and the art of Vienna around 1900, from his early decorative commissions to the gold-leaf paintings of his "Golden Phase," including The Kiss and the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, as well as works by his younger colleague Egon Schiele.

Why it matters

The show was a large popular success and helped launch the fashion for immersive "experiences" of famous painters, followed by similar programs devoted to Van Gogh, Monet and others. Critics have debated whether such shows bring people to art or replace looking at the real thing; none of Klimt's actual gold leaf, which changes with the viewer's angle and the light of a room, can be reproduced by a projector.

Where to see Klimt's gold

The original Tree of Life frieze remains in the private Palais Stoclet in Brussels; its full-size working cartoons are in the MAK, Vienna. The Kiss hangs in the Belvedere in Vienna. For other artists in our catalogue, see Gustav Klimt, Symbolism and famous paintings.