Google goes erotic with latest doodle

(Credit: Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

There will be those who will feel Google's latest doodle brings an entirely new meaning to "I'm feeling lucky."

For Google's embrace of more open sexual mores continues with a doodle celebrating the 150th birthday of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt.

Yes, not a week after the company encouraged the world to "Legalize Love" -- which is absolutely not, never, no a suggestion that governments should get with it on gay marriage -- here we have a beautiful tribute to a painter who found his own world a little too tight for comfort.

Klimt found himself in an Austrian art scene that was a historical corset. He therefore became a member of the Vienna Secession, an attempt to take art toward places people might actually enjoy.

This particular Google doodle, in which the logo is embedded in a depiction of Klimt's "The Kiss," celebrates his Golden Phase, in which he used gold leaf to create art of a striking and uplifting character.

Though he managed to father a mere 14 children, Klimt apparently avoided scandal.

Perhaps he summed up the relationship between his life, his art, and himself best when he said: "I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women...There is nothing special about me."

Some critics felt a deep and moving relationship with Klimt's art. Indeed, Herman Bahr, in his 1901 "Speech on Klimt," offered: "Just as only a lover can reveal to a man what life means to him and develop its innermost significance, I feel the same about these paintings."

Yet again, Google shows that its doodles are some of the most thoughtful products ever to have emerged from the company.