The Kiss is famous because it stopped people the moment it was shown, and the state took it into a museum before the show was over. Klimt covered a square canvas, about 1.8 meters wide, with real gold leaf and painted two lovers in it. The Austrian Ministry of Education bought it for 25,000 crowns in 1908, while the exhibition was still open. It has belonged to the museum now called the Belvedere ever since.
Klimt showed 16 paintings at the Kunstschau in Vienna, and this was one of the two highlights, next to The Three Ages of Woman. The Belvedere's own account says it "caused a great stir and fascinated the visitors."
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Nobody in Vienna that summer saw a painting called The Kiss.
The Kunstschau catalogue listed it as Liebespaar, German for Lovers. The name the whole world uses came later, and it did not come from that catalogue.
Even the picture is not quite the one people saw in June 1908. The Belvedere dates it 1908 to 1909, and says Klimt made changes to it after the exhibition. The painting hanging in Vienna today is a reworked version of the one the state paid for.
By the time it arrived, the state had owned the painting for three years. I take that as the best proof of how strong the picture was: it did not need its famous name to become famous.
What You'll Discover
What the state bought before it was finished.
What Klimt changed after the sale.
Where the gold came from.
Where the name The Kiss began.