Getting to know Gustav Klimt

"Gentlemen may prefer blondes, but it takes a real man to handle a redhead."—Declaration from an unknown but wise soul.

A surgeon this week out of the blue, (with raised orthopedic eyebrows) brought up red hair and Gustav Klimt to me—asking if I knew of him. Klimt is an Austrian painter obsessed with redheads. The surgeon had been talking about something else, and his sudden question took me off guard. Maybe some of my reddened hair was poking out of my ugly blue scrub bouffant at the moment—disrupting the sterile atmosphere. I don’t know. But in any case out of curiosity, I wanted to see what was so special about Klimt.

I discovered that Klimt was indeed obsessed, and his startling work left me breathless and a little disturbed. I had seen his work in Vienna. “The Kiss” being world famous and my favorite, filling postcards in every cheesy souvenir shop. How could such a creepy man make such beautiful tender work? Capturing intimacy better than any Twilight or Last of the Mohican kiss.

His obsession captured private moments or perhaps just private thoughts. He loved naked pale bodies, emphasizing things he shouldn’t know about those bodies. He was talented, and for a rare moment—I found myself proud to be a genre of reddened hair.

It hasn’t always been that way. Not for me and not for ginger-haired women throughout the ages. I had read about the Spanish Inquisition and how the flame-haired women were often burned as witches. Also, in Greek mythology—redheads who died supposedly turned into vampires. Even those damn Nazis had debated on whether we should be allowed to breed. And even after all the hate crimes failing to obliterate us, I have been told more then once that red hair is still going extinct.

But Klimt had a way of erasing those hard feelings in his talented eerie way. Though a few of his paintings (not shown) should remain private perhaps forever. I love that he put an edginess on red, an eroticism, and made sultry red-hot! Take that damn Nazis! And thank you Gustav for making me feel better about my carrot-like self.