Twin Titans of Modernism

Auguste Rodin, the Michelangelo of modern sculpture, and Gustav Klimt, the great 20th-century Austrian symbolist painter and founder of the modernist Vienna Secession movement, met only once, in 1902.

Klimt was already well on his way to becoming one of the highest-paid painters of his day when Rodin, then at the height of his international fame, visited the 14th Secession exhibition in the Austrian capital that year. Their second meeting, a reunion if you will, is currently taking place at the Legion of Honor in "Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter." While both men were certainly titans of 20th-century art, and 2017 marks the centenary of their deaths, the show doesn't advance a particularly convincing case for the pairing or adequately deliver on a promised dialogue between their artworks.

Over the past year, the Legion has displayed portions of its extensive Rodin collection in conversation with works by other artists, but the exhibit featuring Klimt has been the most eagerly anticipated. Be advised: there are a mere 35 of his landscapes, portraits and drawings here, and those don't include the splendid golden masterpieces for which he's most famous: the sublime "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer-1" (1907) (for that, you'll have to travel to Neue Galerie in New York) and "The Kiss" (1907-08), an achingly erotic, sumptuous depiction of tender lovers cloaked in byzantine gold and mosaic.

Because of their fragility, the astronomical cost of insurance and lenders' reluctance to part with them, Klimt's works rarely travel, making their first appearance in California, however sparse the selection, a cause for celebration. After getting beyond what's missing and yearning for more, there's much that's lovely to behold. It's also an occasion to contrast two temperamentally, very different masters.