Saturday, December 31, 2016

The Women Friends: Selina, by Emma Rose Millar, Miriam Drori

Authors Millar and Drori write: "in 1917, Gustav Klimt painted his sensuous masterpiece The Women Friends. Nothing is known about the two women in the painting, but it is thought they were a real couple." Selina is one of the women. If Selina is fictional, then the authors never let us realize that, instead they breathe such life into her, we must conclude that she is real. A country girl from the Tyrol area of Austria, born at the cusp of the new century, she goes to Vienna in 1917, to become an artist's model. Although, she fails at modeling, her love affair with Gustav Klimt's female muse, Janika, inspires Klimt to paint "The Women Friends."

In telling Selina's story, the authors succeed in describing the hypocrisy of bohemian life of Vienna during World War I. The artists and members of this community had a desperate need to invalidate Viennese society at the same time they desperately sought funding from that same society and its wealthy citizens.

Klimt died in 1918, but Selina's story continues long after his death. In the early 1930s, she lives through the crash of the banks, hyperinflation, the rise of anti-semitism and the mass strikes, after which, she notes that: "Broken glass lay glinting in the Viennese sunshine and dogs scavenged for food," and she asks, "how had this city of opera and Sachertorte slipped so swiftly into barbarism?"

Throughout the telling of Selina's story, Klimt's influence on the authors is clear, as Klimt painted with color, so Millar and Drori paint with words.

The authors write that the "tragic fate of the painting itself and ominous developments in Vienna in the early twentieth-century inspired us to write a series of stories, based on Klimt's women and some of his most renowned work," and this book is the first of the series. I look forward to their future work.

Gustav Klimt, (1917) The Women Friends
(In return for an honest review, I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.)
Paperback: 140 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (November 18, 2016)
Language: English