The Artist's Nieces, Elizabeth and Maja, Romako (1873) |
'Facing the Modern' - the
reference to ‘modernity’ in the title of the National Gallery's exhibition on
the portrait in Vienna in 1900 has occasioned some comment. Richard Dorment in
the Telegraph even goes so far as to
suggest that it should have been entitled 'Middle Class Portraiture in Vienna
from 1867 to 1918', were it not for marketing considerations - a comment which
seems to imply the distinctly uninteresting nature of the nineteenth century
and the bourgeoisie when compared with rebellious and groundbreaking modernity.
Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (unfinished), Klimt (1917-8) |
It almost seems as if the
exhibition organisers agree with him. The images which they’ve selected to
promote the exhibition – Egon Schiele’s Self
Portrait with Raised Bare Shoulder (1912) and Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (unfinished)
(1917-18) – are among the most strikingly modern in the collection, as well as
the latest. But much of the exhibition is comprised of more conservative paintings
which depict the Viennese middle classes in the latter half of the century –
paintings such as Anton Romako’s The Artist's Nieces,
Elizabeth and Maja (1873) - which evidently foreshadow, rather than just
contrast with, the intensity of expression and revelation of the uncanny
underside of the familial which surface in the later artwork.
Ries' self-portrait (1902) |
The central aim of the exhibition, described as telling ‘the story of
Vienna’s middle classes –their rise and fall in political power, their hopes
for the future, and their claims to the past’, is frustrated by its thematic
organisation. We are introduced to the ‘Old Viennese’ but the following rooms
are devoted to set topics such as self portraiture and death. And this means we
lose all sense of how progressive each painting was seen to be in its time and
the course of artistic development – something which could have been avoided
with a clearer sense of chronology. As with much discussion of modernity in
late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature, what comes across is a
sense of difference, rather than relationship and continuity. It’s as if the
turn of the century suddenly made paintings like Schiele’s Portrait of Erich Lederer (1912) inexplicably possible, when they are so
divided from their historical and sociological contexts.
I enjoyed the exhibition, from
the society portraits of Hans Makart to the commanding self portrait of Teresa
Feodorowna Ries and the death masks of Beethoven, Klimt and Schiele. But
Vienna, and its society, remained impenetrable – and what exactly it means to
be or face the modern confused and unresolved.
What did you make of the National Gallery's exhibition? Let me know here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
I really enjoyed the exhibition and was particularly interested to see so many strong women portrayed, not least the Teresa Ries self portrait you mentioned http://photographingwildflowers.co.uk/2013/12/klimt-at-the-national-gallery/
ReplyDelete