{"product_id":"the-lady-in-gold-the-extraordinary-tale-of-gustav-klimts-masterpiece-portrait-of-adele-blochbauer-deckle-edge-9780307265647","title":"The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece  Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer Deckle Edge","description":"\u003cp\u003eNational Bestseller The true story that inspired the movie Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds An Award-Winning Nazi Art Theft SagaCalifornia Book AwardMarfield Prize for Arts Writing Library Journal Top 10 Book of 2012 Christian Science Monitor Top Nonfiction of 2012 Huffington Post Best Art Books of 2012 Top 12 Nonfiction 2012 of Examiner.com  The spellbinding story  part fairy tale  part suspense  of Gustav Klimts Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer  one of the most emblematic portraits of its time; of the beautiful  seductive Viennese Jewish salon hostess who sat for it; the notorious artist who painted it; the now vanished turn-of-the-century Vienna that shaped it; and the strange twisted fate that befell it.  The Lady in Gold  considered an unforgettable masterpiece  one of the twentieth centurys most recognizable paintings  made headlines all over the world when Ronald Lauder bought it for $135 million a century after Klimt  the most famous Austrian painter of his time  completed the society portrait.  Anne-Marie OConnor  writer for The Washington Post  formerly of the Los Angeles Times  tells the galvanizing story of the Lady in Gold  Adele Bloch-Bauer  a dazzling Viennese Jewish society figure; daughter of the head of one of the largest banks in the Hapsburg Empire  head of the Oriental Railway  whose Orient Express went from Berlin to Constantinople; wife of Ferdinand Bauer  sugar-beet baron.  The Bloch-Bauers were art patrons  and Adele herself was considered a rebel of fin de sicle Vienna (she wanted to be educated  a notion considered \"degenerate\" in a society that believed women being out in the world went against their feminine \"nature\"). The author describes how Adele inspired the portrait and how Klimt made more than a hundred sketches of her--simple pencil drawings on thin manila paper.  And OConnor writes of Klimt himself  son of a failed gold engraver  shunned by arts bureaucrats  called an artistic heretic in his time  a genius in ours.  She writes of the Nazis confiscating the portrait of Adele from the Bloch-Bauers grand palais; of the Austrian government putting the painting on display  stripping Adeles Jewish surname from it so that no clues to her identity (nor any hint of her Jewish origins) would be revealed. Nazi officials called the painting  The Lady in Gold and proudly exhibited it in Viennas Baroque Belvedere Palace  consecrated in the 1930s as a Nazi institution.  The author writes of the painting  inspired by the Byzantine mosaics Klimt had studied in Italy  with their exotic symbols and swirls  the subject an idol in a golden shrine.  We see how  sixty years after it was stolen by the Nazis  the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer became the subject of a decade-long litigation between the Austrian government and the Bloch-Bauer heirs  how and why the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case  and how the Courts decision had profound ramifications in the art world.  A riveting social history; an illuminating and haunting look at turn-of-the-century Vienna; a brilliant portrait of the evolution of a painter; a masterfully told tale of suspense. And at the heart of it  the Lady in Gold--the shimmering painting  and its equally irresistible subject  the fate of each forever intertwined.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45953242988597,"sku":"ByrdShop_0307265641","price":20.47,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780307265647.jpg?v=1788182721","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-lady-in-gold-the-extraordinary-tale-of-gustav-klimts-masterpiece-portrait-of-adele-blochbauer-deckle-edge-9780307265647","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}