Category / Austria

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?

Kasia Redzisz and Lauren Barnes (eds.), Maria Lassnig (London: Tate, 2016)
Beatrice von Bormann, Klaus Albrecht Schröder and Antonia Hoerschelmann (eds.), Maria Lassnig: Ways of Being (Amsterdam?: Hirmer, 2019)

I first came across the work of Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) at Tate Liverpool, doubled with an exhibition of Francis Bacon. In that case, I think Bacon won, perhaps because I have a sense of how to read his work. And I was bunking off from a conference, so perhaps I didn’t give her a sufficient chance. Certainly, I didn’t write her off. Three years later, I was in Amsterdam to do the Rembrandt blockbuster, repeating the Van Gogh, and then going to the Stedelijk Museum where, in my ignorance, I didn’t know there a huge retrospective of her work, which was to go onto the Albertina (and I don’t think I saw any of her work in Vienna).

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Viennese Roles

Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt (directed by Patrick Marber, Wyndhams Theatre)

The Stoppard play is a familiar unfamiliar beast: a pastiche of a known genre or text meshed with a philosophical idea or two, told in witty dialogue. Tosh a Beckettean Hamlet at probability theory or quantum mechanics at John Le Carré. The downside for some — I don’t agree — is characters as cyphers and an emotional shallowness.

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The Art of 2019 — Part One

I started, as so often I do, with keeping a list of consumed culture. This petered out, so I am relying on memory.

2019 was Van Gogh and Rembrandt and Schiele and Munch.

Every year should be Munch year.
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Exhibitions for Expotitions — 11 June 2019 Update

I used to maintain a list of exhibitions, because I kept missing stuff. I’m recreating this, as it went out of date. I’m based in the south-east UK so, with the exception of Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Tate St Ives, it’s stuff I can do in a day trip (unless I want to make an exception). I can’t pretend to completist (especially now I’m rebuilding) but let me know of stuff I’ve missed and I may add.

Information is presented in good faith — check opening days/hours before travelling and whether stuff is free.

I recommend the National Art Pass for discount — this and Tate/Royal Academy membership pay for themselves if London is getatable.

[Still to add: BALTIC 39, Courtauld Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Foundling Museum, Gagosian Britannia Street, Gagosian Davies Street, Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, Henry Moore Institute, Hepworth, Herbert, IKON, Jerwood Gallery, Kettle’s Yard, Leeds Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Modern Art, Modern Art Oxford, Edinburgh Modern One, Edinburgh Modern Two, Museum of London, Museum of London Docklands, National Galleries of Scotland, National Media Museum, National Museum of Wales, National Portrait Gallery, New Art Gallery, Norwich Castle Museum, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham Lakeside Arts, Pallant House, Photographers’ Gallery, Queen’s Gallery, Holyrood, Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, RAA, Royal Pavilion, Science Museum, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Somerset House, Strawberry Hill House, The New Art Gallery, Towner, Turner Contemporary, Victoria and Albert, White Cube Bermondsey, White Cube Mason’s Yard, Whitechapel Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.]

Closes June 2019

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Drawn Together and Apart

Klimt/Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina (Royal Academy of Arts, 4 November 2018-3 February 2019)

The Albertina Collection was founded in 1776 by Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen and now has a million drawings and prints, which rarely see the light. Here, marking the joint centenary if their deaths we get a joint exhibition of, well, not quite Master and Pupil, but evidently of two of the leading Austrian artists of the first two decades of the twentieth century. As the medium is drawing, and the fame behind Klimt is for paintings such as The Kiss and we probably know Schiele through his drawings, the younger man will win this draw off.
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Consenting Adults

Life in Motion: Egon Schiele/Francesca Woodman (Liverpool Tate, 24 May-20 September 2018)

A couple of years ago, there was an exhibition called Schiele’s Women at the Courtauld, and I swear that I wrote it up, as Schiele’s Sheilas (yes, I know), but fortunately or unfortunately I can’t find my notes. I think I bought the catalogue. But even without that I would have made the trip to the Pool to see one of their paired exhibitions— like Bacon and Lassnig or Klein and Krasiński where sometimes the pairings work and sometimes they don’t. Like whoever it was with Leonora Carrington.
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Save All Your Kisses for Me

One of the most loved paintings in the world is Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907-8), aka The Lovers. Sometimes I’m in agreement with this — Edvard Munich’s Scream and Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. It was bought by the Austrian Gallery before it was completed, originally shown at the Lower Belvedere and in the Upper Belvedere since then.
7a077d20-eea5-4c50-8f6d-6288b2b8e1c2This canvas is nice, but it doesn’t quite do it for me. I saw a load of Klimt drawings alongside works by Egon Schiele at the Royal Academy of Arts, but Schiele won. He was, however, key to a generation of Viennese artists before the end of the First World War.

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