About this work
Three fully nude figures stand at the dark heart of Klimt's *Beethoven Frieze* — and this section, known as "The Hostile Forces," is the panel that made Vienna gasp.
The Gorgons occupy the central wall alongside the giant Typhoeus: his three daughters who symbolize lust and lechery, intemperance, and gnawing care.
The three women flank Typhoeus, with Medusa and her snakes at the centre. Their bodies are rendered in Klimt's signature flattened, ornamental style — sinuous outlines, wild cascades of hair threaded with gold, faces that hover between seduction and vacancy. Above the Gorgons, the skeletal female figure of Death lurks with unmatched dramatism. The palette is deliberately unsettling: sallow flesh against dark ground, serpentine coils, and the glint of gold leaf that makes the threat feel all the more opulent and inescapable. In preparatory sketches, Klimt experimented vividly with the linear rhythm of the bodies' contours and the alternating light and dark masses of hair — and the staccato of the pubic parts, also emphasized in the frieze, strikes a playful, provocative note.
In 1902, Klimt painted the Beethoven Frieze for the Fourteenth Vienna Secession exhibition, in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's death.
The work is inspired by Richard Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and combines Ancient Greek, Byzantine, early medieval, and Japanese art styles while incorporating Klimt's characteristic use of gold leaf.
His application of gold and use of real gold leaf in the Beethoven Frieze reached an unprecedented standard — and the work marks the beginning of Klimt's Golden Period.
It was primarily this central wall — with its depictions of Sickness, Madness, and Death and the lewd eroticism of the Gorgons — that was denounced by many contemporary critics as "painted pornography." That scandal only sharpens its importance: this is the moment Klimt fully committed to a visual language that was confrontational, psychological, and entirely his own.
This panel rewards a viewer who is comfortable sitting with discomfort. It belongs in a space with intention — a dark-walled study, a gallery-style hallway, or a room that already holds bold, serious work. The gold threading through the Gorgons' hair catches warm light beautifully, but make no mistake: the mood this print sets is one of electric unease. The frieze illustrates human desire for happiness in a suffering and tempestuous world in which one contends not only with external evil forces but also with internal weaknesses — and this section is where that darkness is most naked. It speaks to collectors drawn to myth, to Symbolism, and to art that refuses to comfort.
