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I recently spent several days in Vienna looking at art. The Hapsburgs were avid art collectors, and have a massive collection. I highly recommend Vienna to any aspiring art historians.

Klimt had a rather conservative art training. He was essentially a court painter, painting murals in various palaces and museums around Vienna. His founding of the Vienna Secession was a big turn from the centuries long legacy of professional court painters producing landscapes, portraits, and allegorical depictions of Hapsburg empire to "Art for Art's Sake." This was a switch from art as a profession to art as an expression.

In Mad Men, Don Draper is regularly ridiculed as a sell out, because his art is for a salary. Somehow this was seen as heretical. But art has a long history of being a profession of propaganda production for ruling class patrons. Klimt help break this mold in Vienna, and is definitely one of the most influential artists of the last century. The Secession produced artists that would go on to influence Surrealism and Modernist, which ultimately shape the way our world looks today.