The young girl, whether in Death and Life or in The Virgin, seems to express the words of Sissy, Elisabeth of Austria: "The thought of death is purifying; it has the same effect as a gardener has, pulling the weeds out of his garden. But this garden always wants to be alone, and it becomes angry when curious people look over its walls. In the same way, I hide my face behind my parasol and my fan so that the thought of death can take effect in me peacefully."
In painting his last pyramid-shaped allegories, such as The Virgin or The Bride, Klimtused pure colours only; the kaleidoscopic composition seems to turn on a labyrinthine pivot. There is always a narrative to be told: the young girl becomes a woman; we experience the awakening of her senses, which will lead to the ecstasy of love. The different stages are represented by the same being, multiplied as if in a dream. Dislocated parts of female bodies, in diverse poses and moods, move as if they had been caught by a crazed camera. The pyramid of brightly coloured clothes, the empty shell of a woman's dress beneath it, seems to give birth to the "child" as from a joyful cascading waterfall. The Bride belongs to a still later phase, influenced by Schiele, which was terminated by Klimt's death... The flow of decorative motifs is no less powerful, but more importance is attached to the geometrical organisation of the canvas. The melee of figures seems kept in check by abstract elements. It becomes increasingly difficult to analyse these late works; the fact that they were left unfinished makes it impossible to divine their ultimate goal.
While the portraits of women were developing in this manner, a parallel development was taking place in the other branch of Klimt's work, namely his landscapes: the "tapestry" or "mosaic" style was evolving into a style of composition which shows incipient traces of Cubism. Instead of anonymous extracts from nature as a whole, we begin to see landscapes with urban elements, with architecture, with water, vegetation and buildings. As hitherto, mystic pantheism prevails, and human beings remain out of sight.
