When we conclude from the visual analysis of the paintings that a Koguryo-inspired vase influenced some of Klimt’s most important later works, we must also recognize the implication that holds regarding the paintings’ subjects. As was previously mentioned, Klimt undergoes a complete stylistic and motivational change around the time he begins using Asian motifs. Whereas his earlier works are filled with overt and subliminal symbols, featuring women who are erotically charged and fully animated, the women in his later portraits are coolly polished, decorated and statuesque. Standing rather rigidly in the center of the canvas, the women become vases themselves: an ornamental piece in front of a two-dimensional backdrop or—ignoring its fantastic ambiguity—simply a wall. Beautiful as though they may be, their expression is vapid, like they have no care or complex thought in the world. Is that not how Leach described Korean ceramics? Unless these women liked to be described as such, Klimt’s equating them with decorative art—a Korean one at that—would certainly be less than flattering. Or, as all these Asian-inspired works are portraits commissioned for wealthy women, Klimt might have regarded them as “a lesser art”. As Vienna’s “painter prince” he received more offers of commission than he knew what to do with, and he was not always so eager to paint portraits. In his Klimt, Whitford writes that in the portraits of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt and Friederike Maria Beer, “the emphasis on ornament can be read as an avoidance of such serious questions as the purpose of portraiture in general and the nature of a specific individual in particular” (Whitford 150). In his “avoidance of such serious questions,” Klimt then purposely strived for uncomplicated but visually gratifying “ornament” pieces to flatter his patrons. In the portraits of Baroness Elizabeth, Friederike Maria Beer and Rita Munk, he clearly achieved the latter goal—the paintings are exotic, elegant and beautiful—but “uncomplicated,” as we can see, is not how they turned out, after all.