Klimt's biographer, Frank Whitford, has described the picture as "the most elaborate example of the tyranny of the decorative" in the artist's work. Klimt gives over almost every space on the canvas to ornament, and leaves only the woman's hands and upper body to describe her appearance. Like many artists around this period who were experimenting with abstraction, Klimt was faced with the possibility of crossing into pure form, and leaving depicted objects behind. That this picture marked an important turning point, and that he chose to turn back from this extreme, is indicated by his second portrait of Bloch-Bauer, produced in 1912, in which her body stands out much more substantially against the background.