★★★★★
Five stars
Artists, who were once revolutionary and subversive in their time, seem to lose their edge upon acceptance into the canon. Not so with Egon Schiele. As far as this country is concerned, perhaps Schiele hasn’t even made it into the canon. Indeed, the recent retrospective at the Courtauld gallery in London elicited such a mix of reactions that it seems the artist’s radical, shocking and uncompromising work remains as disputed as ever. Time Out’s Martin Coomer stated bluntly, “With Schiele there is no poetry,” whereas the Financial Times’ Jackie Wullschlager not only dubbed the show the work of an arrested genius but also one of London’s best exhibitions in 2014.
Either side of this divide, the issue of how to approach Schiele’s sometimes aggressive and disturbing exposition of sexuality features prominently. The conservatives see his work as yet another expiation of obscenity and perversion, foisted upon us by the regrettable tendencies of so-called modern ‘art’. Another approach simply dismisses Schiele as a morbid, promiscuous exhibitionist whose theatrical voyeurism is little more than an adolescent vanity project. But the believers among us see Schiele as a groundbreaking visionary whose works, unnerving as they can be, represent a revolution in the understanding and depiction of sexuality. Whichever side of the debate you fall, this exhibition has to be praised for giving fair representation of everything, from the most “acceptable” to the most provocative.
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For me some of Schiele’s most affecting works, are the most difficult to process. In haunting self-portraits, such as ‘Nude Self-Portrait in Gray with Open Mouth,’ Schiele depicts himself naked in arresting contortions, coloured in sickly pallid tones. These paintings do not merely show angst, they portray an angst that reaches out a sickly hand and drags you into its horror. Then there are the unnervingly sensual nudes – ‘Mother and Child,’ for example, is pictured in full oedipal transgression and the undeniable eroticism of the figure sits uncomfortably with the incestuous setting in which it appears. Perhaps it’s becoming clear why ‘Schiele, the radical nude’ is the first ever-major Schiele exhibition in Britain.
The acuity of the effect also owes much to the thinking behind the arrangement. Following a broadly chronological pattern, we trace some of the early works before the war in preparation for a large, second room in which we see the artist in full maturity. What makes the arrangement so compelling is how curator Barnaby Wright shows a dissonance between the form and content in Schiele’s work. For example, the first series of paintings were primarily solitary female nudes. Yet stylistically they felt very different; some of them highlighted Schiele’s very particular reverence for the female form, fetishizing curves in sensuous poses. Others depicted the same subject with a radically different effect – not erotic but graphic, even grotesque. Yet they were in many ways identical to the previous portraits. This careful design of the exhibition very cleverly used Schiele’s dynamism, to make the viewing experience consistently intriguing and surprising.
In addition to Schiele’s expressive range, the exhibition highlights his immense technical ability. Peer closely and you find a calculated method in the madness. For example, look at the precision of Schiele’s brushwork. His lines are at once strikingly bold and incisive, yet always conveying a hazy dreamlike effect that makes his pictures feel like part of a hallucination. There is also a subtle beauty in his composition with colour. His palette is for the most part confined to shades of red and orange, yet paradoxically, this restriction is what makes his work so expressive and lyrical. Indeed, the subtle mixtures and layering of tones create some truly beautiful combinations. It is also undeniable that Schiele is a virtuoso of figurative painting. As unpleasant as his deformed specimens are, they show an exceptional ability in execution and conception.
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In short, if not for pure curiosity, or even the opportunity to have a good grumble, I would seriously recommend you take a look at this exhibition. See on which side of the divide it will cast you, unlike much contemporary art, it will cast you on one side or the other. Schiele’s liminal status in the canon, reminds us that before the platitudes of later critics, the work of the great painters was never as easy to deal with as the art books now suggest. In this regard, this exhibtion gives us a sense of history as it was in its moment. Even now the startling nature of Schiele’s work conveys the radicalism and vitality with which his generation changed the art world.
“Schiele: The Radical Nude” is showing at the Courtauld in Somerset House until the 18th of January 2015.
