All That Glitters

“The Incas called gold ‘tears of the sun’. The Egyptians knew it as ‘the flesh of the gods’”. Katie White continued in her Artnet column in 2021, “The hue has adorned tributes to deities, marked depictions of kings and queens, and symbolized opulence, power, and otherworldly spiritual splendor.”

Personally, gold for gold’s sake does not move me, though I appreciate artworks where gold has been used to enhance their beauty. The value of gold, however, was brought home to me in a very simple way. I own a few pieces of jewelry by arguably the most important jewelry maker of the Hopi tribe, Charles Loloma. I have seen prices of close to $20,000 for pieces that were nice, but not over the top. So, when an auctioneer who specialized in Native American jewelry was at one of the art fairs, I showed him a piece that I particularly prized and asked what it would bring at auction. He said, between $4,000 and $5,000. When I asked why, he replied that the stones are mounted in silver not gold. Yes, I was disappointed from the point of view of value, but it did not dampen my enjoyment of the work. In many cases, I like silver much more because it is subdued and not glitzy. I am not trying to prove anything. Here is a pendant and buckle by Charles Loloma.

I started to think about it and put “gold” in the search engine for my Missives. There was a string of Missives with the word, exceptional works like medieval objects made for the Church. The gilded silver Arm Reliquary of the Apostles, Hildesheim, ca. 1190 from the Guelph Treasure now in the Cleveland Museum of Art is an example.

Although gold is usually seen to signify wealth and greatness it has always been a source of greed that sometimes results in violence and death. Remember King Midas? When the god Dionysus offered him a wish for anything he wanted, he said he would like everything he touched to turn to gold. This delighted him until he touched his food and drink.

Hearing the word gold, one’s first thought is bullion, jewelry, or maybe a crown, certainly not a painting. But, of course, a painting using gold, on a subconscious level, attracts us by that vibrant color. A painting that has come to be famous as “The Woman in Gold” (1907) is the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gustav Klimt, now in the Neue Galerie in New York.

It resided at one time in the Belvedere in Viena, which has retained another great painting, “The Kiss” where Klimt also made use of gold. It is surmised that the painting is a self-portrait of the artist together with his lifelong partner, Emilie Flöge. It is also the last painting he did where he used gold leaf in his work. Picasso had his pink and blue periods but Klimt preferred gold!

If we think about it, this is nothing new. In fact, it is quite an old tradition in European imagery. In the late Medieval and early Renaissance era gold background was used to represent heaven and the proximity to God. A wonderful example of Italian gold ground painting is the panel in the Frick Collection “The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain” (1308-1311) by Duccio die Buoninsegna.

I wish I could explain why gold is a status symbol associated with wealth and power. Looking for reasons I just kept coming across the same answer… because it always has been so, over millennia.

Maybe it is because it glitters!