Adele again

Coxsoft Art scooped Art Daily on this story, but Art Daily's newsletter brought a better graphic today. Here's the essential detail of Gustav Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907), the most expensive work of art ever sold. The more you remove of that mixed-media nonsense, the better the picture becomes. Allowing the subject to sink into a morass of superfluous background detail is the worst faux pas a portrait painter can commit. Admittedly Klimt's stuff is pretty-pretty, but for a gobsmacking portrait of a similarly elegant and beautiful lady, view John Singer Sargent's Lady Agnew of Locknaw (1893). Wow!