In 1945, fire claimed three of Gustav Klimt's most controversial paintings. Commissioned in 1894 for the University of Vienna, "the Faculty Paintings"--as they became known--were unlike any of the Austrian symbolist's previous work. As soon as he presented them, critics were in an uproar over their dramatic departure from the aesthetics of the time. Professors at the university rejected them immediately, and Klimt withdrew from the project. Soon thereafter, the works found their way into other collections.

In 1945, fire claimed three of Gustav Klimt's most controversial paintings. Commissioned in 1894 for the University of Vienna, "the Faculty Paintings"--as they became known--were unlike any of the Austrian symbolist's previous work. As soon as he presented them, critics were in an uproar over their dramatic departure from the aesthetics of the time. Professors at the university rejected them immediately, and Klimt withdrew from the project. Soon thereafter, the works found their way into other collections.

Few artists enjoy such worldwide fame as Gustav Klimt. The new Google Arts & Culture online retrospective "Klimt vs. Klimt - The Man of Contradictions" puts the spotlight on the artist's eclectic work and life. A Machine Learning experiment recolored photographs of lost Klimt paintings, while a "Pocket Gallery" brings some of his most iconic works into your living room in augmented reality and 3D. Together with more than 120 stories about his art and personality, a virtual tour of his studio, and many more highlights from the collections of over 30 cultural institutions around the world, "Klimt vs. Klimt" forms one of the most comprehensive online experiences about the artist. Klimt's legacy poses many unsolved questions, not least due to the fact that approximately 20% of his artworks were lost over the course of history.

Gustav Klimt created some of the world's most expensive masterpieces, but around 20% of his artworks have been lost. Among them are the so-called Faculty Paintings: Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence. The three pieces are believed to have been destroyed in a fire during World War Two. Only black and white photos of the artworks remain. The original paintings may never be seen again, but machine learning has come close to bringing them back to life.

Google is doing its part to restore several lost pieces of art that got destroyed during WW2. In order to restore the art, the search engine giant is using artificial intelligence, according to Mashable. It is said that these pieces were part of the loot collected by the German army, which was stored at a castle in Austria. During the last few months of the war, this castle played host to a still-unconfirmed number of artworks by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, with the most valuable ones being part of a series called the "Faculty Paintings." However, the Faculty Paintings have been largely destroyed, and only black and white photographs of them exist.

The neuroscientist was in the art gallery and there were many things to learn. So Eric Kandel excitedly guided me through the bright lobby of the Neue Galerie New York, a museum of fin de siècle Austrian and German art, located in a Beaux-Art mansion, across from Central Park. The Nobel laureate was dressed in a dark blue suit with white pinstripes and red bowtie. I was dressed, well, less elegantly. Since winning a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000, for uncovering the electrochemical mechanisms of memory, Kandel had been thinking about art. In 2012 and 2016, respectively, he published The Age of Insight and Reductionism in Art and Brain Science, both of which could be called This Is Your Brain on Art. The Age of Insight detailed the rise of neuroscience out of the medical culture that surrounded Sigmund Freud, and focused on Gustav Klimt and his artistic disciples Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, whose paintings mirrored the age's brazen ideas about primal desires smoldering beneath conscious control. I'd invited Kandel to meet me at the Neue Galerie because it was the premier American home of original works by Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele. It was 2014 when we met and I had long been reading about neuroaesthetics, a newish school in neuroscience, and a foundation of The Age of Insight, where brain computation was enlisted to explain why and what in art turned us on. I was anxious to hear Kandel expound on how neuroscience could enrich art, as he had written, though I also came with a handful of doubts.