19/9/10, Lower Belvedere, Vienna
A special exhibition of symbolist works arranged around Burne-Jones's monumental Death of Arthur, which he worked on for decades and never finished. It's full of tall, draped, angular figures, almost all turned towards the recumbent figure of the king in his temple-cum-tomb in Avalon.
There's Burne Jones's Sleeping Beauty sequence which obviuously made an impression on me at the time since I wrote it down in my notebook but which now conjures up no memories at all.
There's Leighton's Flaming June, whose seductive appeal lies partly in the beauty of his sleeping model, partly in her bright orange drapes and the sensuous curve of her thigh which fills the centre of the frame but mainly, I think, in the gold of the sunlight on the sea in the distance which positively shouts at you to be joyful and dream of some Mediterranean paradise.
Also Walter Crane's book illustrations, and a Rossetti of a Roman widow, all long neck and impossibly long tapering hands.
Showing posts with label vienna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vienna. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
KLIMT AND SCHIELE
19/9/10, Belvedere, Vienna
Another of Vienna's spectacular museums. This one comes in two parts, each one a massive neo-classical pavilion, facing one another at either end of a long, sloping formal garden of gravelled walks and parterres and water features, built on a low hill overlooking the city by Prince Eugene (or Prinz Eugen).
Here they have Klimt's The Kiss, an image whose familiarity can't disguise its perfection, nor the impact all that gold has when you see it in the flesh. They have a lot of ther Klimts too: a portrait of a lady with a spectacular peacock-eye motif cloth on her chair, early impressionist landscapes, and unfinished paintings that are oddly swirly and tentative.
They have lots of Schiele too, the later ones rather gentler than some of the more turtured earlier ones. Among the later pictures there's a nude portrait of a man and a woman and a child squatting, the woman with her legs apart, and a portrait of Schiele's wife.
The gallery puts both Klimt and Schiele into the context of late 19th century Symbolism and of some of the earlier academic work against which the Symbolists and Secessionists and Impressionist and the rest of them were reacting. So there's David's Napoleon (Why here? Victor's spoils?) as well as some proper French impressionists, including Pisarro landscapes, Manet portraits and Monet's garden.
And there's a Kolo Moser picture of an avenue of trees leading to a house, all blue outlines, which could be Cezanne.
Another of Vienna's spectacular museums. This one comes in two parts, each one a massive neo-classical pavilion, facing one another at either end of a long, sloping formal garden of gravelled walks and parterres and water features, built on a low hill overlooking the city by Prince Eugene (or Prinz Eugen).
Here they have Klimt's The Kiss, an image whose familiarity can't disguise its perfection, nor the impact all that gold has when you see it in the flesh. They have a lot of ther Klimts too: a portrait of a lady with a spectacular peacock-eye motif cloth on her chair, early impressionist landscapes, and unfinished paintings that are oddly swirly and tentative.
They have lots of Schiele too, the later ones rather gentler than some of the more turtured earlier ones. Among the later pictures there's a nude portrait of a man and a woman and a child squatting, the woman with her legs apart, and a portrait of Schiele's wife.
The gallery puts both Klimt and Schiele into the context of late 19th century Symbolism and of some of the earlier academic work against which the Symbolists and Secessionists and Impressionist and the rest of them were reacting. So there's David's Napoleon (Why here? Victor's spoils?) as well as some proper French impressionists, including Pisarro landscapes, Manet portraits and Monet's garden.
And there's a Kolo Moser picture of an avenue of trees leading to a house, all blue outlines, which could be Cezanne.
GERMAN AND FLEMISH OLD MASTERS
19/9/10, Kunsthaus Museum, Vienna
This place makes the V&A look modest. There's a circular entrance hall, tiling, a black and white floor, leading to a grand staircase with enormous frescoes by Klimt and others. One woman gasped audibly as she walked in and saw it, and well she might.
And then there's a spectacular collection of Old Masters. A whole room full of Breughels... really, really famous ones: Winter, the Tower of Babel, Children's Games, a painting of Christ Being Taken to Be Crucified which I think is another version of the one in Nostell Priory written up here in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2010/nov/12/procession-to-calvary-pieter-bruegel-the-younger
And I haven't even mentioned the Conversion of Saul (actually that may be the painting which in composition resembles the Nostell Priory Procession to Calvary), the Massacre of the Innocents, the Peasant Wedding... They're all full of incredible detail, chunky figures, the wintry scenes so effective because there's so much white in them.
There's some pictures by Holbein the Elder -- decent but uninspired -- alongside Holbein the Younger's Jane Seymour, Dr John Chambers and two pictures of young merchants, greatly superior to his dad's stuff.
There's a vast painting by Albrecht Altdorfer of Lot's daughters, their father an old man with yellow skin looking lecherous, one daughter fully nude lying alongside and largely obscuring his withered body, the other kneeling by a stream in the distance; and there's a Cranach of the same scene in which the daughters are discreetly clothed.
There's a memorable Durer of Maximilian I in a fur cape.
And a whole room of Dutch group portraits from the great era of Rembrandt and his contemporaries. It was a temporary exhibition so I should have given it more attention, but by that stage I was glutted.
This place makes the V&A look modest. There's a circular entrance hall, tiling, a black and white floor, leading to a grand staircase with enormous frescoes by Klimt and others. One woman gasped audibly as she walked in and saw it, and well she might.
And then there's a spectacular collection of Old Masters. A whole room full of Breughels... really, really famous ones: Winter, the Tower of Babel, Children's Games, a painting of Christ Being Taken to Be Crucified which I think is another version of the one in Nostell Priory written up here in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2010/nov/12/procession-to-calvary-pieter-bruegel-the-younger
And I haven't even mentioned the Conversion of Saul (actually that may be the painting which in composition resembles the Nostell Priory Procession to Calvary), the Massacre of the Innocents, the Peasant Wedding... They're all full of incredible detail, chunky figures, the wintry scenes so effective because there's so much white in them.
There's some pictures by Holbein the Elder -- decent but uninspired -- alongside Holbein the Younger's Jane Seymour, Dr John Chambers and two pictures of young merchants, greatly superior to his dad's stuff.
There's a vast painting by Albrecht Altdorfer of Lot's daughters, their father an old man with yellow skin looking lecherous, one daughter fully nude lying alongside and largely obscuring his withered body, the other kneeling by a stream in the distance; and there's a Cranach of the same scene in which the daughters are discreetly clothed.
There's a memorable Durer of Maximilian I in a fur cape.
And a whole room of Dutch group portraits from the great era of Rembrandt and his contemporaries. It was a temporary exhibition so I should have given it more attention, but by that stage I was glutted.
KLIMT, SCHIELE, JOSEPH MARIA OLBRICH ET AL
18/9/10, Leopold Museum, Vienna
Vienna's museums are large, numerous, imposing. The Leopold Museum is a collection of 20th century, largely Viennese works housed in a handsome modernist building in the Museums Quarter, which was once I think the Imperial stables but now houses several exhibition spaces including two modern structures dramatically inserted into the courtyard (this is one). Plus cafes and all the usual paraphernalia. We sat out in the autumn sun and ate.
My notes (this is written up two months later) talk about Klimt and Schiele as the Jekyll and Hyde of the Viennese Secession. In Klimt's Death and Life a collection of largely naked figures, including a baby, float among Klimt's signature patterning (which always looks like a patchwork quilt) on a plain background, while off to the left a skeleton with a club wrapped in a darker patchwork leers at them. The subject matter is dark but the treatment glittering and seductive. Klimt is a beautiful draughstman (especially in his early portraits).
Nearby is Schiele's Levitation: a predominantly brown picture of dead figures with staring eyes, in a landscape of flowers painted to look like wagon wheels. It's an image that prefigures scenes of the Western Front in World War One. A dark subject, darkly treated. Likewise a Schiele full-frontal self-portrait, with legs akimbo, all browns and yellows but for the nipples, eyes and genitalia, all an eerie red.
You get some idea of how Schiele transformed what he saw by a small portrait of his mistress Wally, thin and wide-eyed, close to a portrait of what she looked like in reality (very different). The painting, which is mesmerising, was the subject of a long-running dispute between the Leopold and descendants of its original owners after it was sent in 1997 on loan to New York for an exhibition at Moma and seized by the authorities: the legal dispute was only settled this year. Details here:
http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2010/08/portrait_of_wally_settlement_w.html
Kolo Moser was new to me. A very diverse figure. I noted Wotan and Brunnhilde. A series of mountain landscapes including one with a bright yellow house, some very straight, some playing triks with light and colour. His later works were straighter, in some ways, his earlier figurative ones very bold and expressionistic.
And then there are the architects. Otto Wagner designed the U-bahn stations. But Joseph Maria Olbrich was the revelation, not least for his Secession Building of 1897 which is utterly extraordinary and staggeringly original (the Secession were so called because they seceded from the National Academy of Art).
Too many of them died young, Olbrich of leukemia in 1908 aged 41, the other three in 1918: Moser of cancer aged 50, Klimt of a stroke aged 56 (the stroke brought on perhaps by fathering no fewer than 14 children on various women, I read in Wikpedia) and Schiele at just 28 of influenza.
Vienna's museums are large, numerous, imposing. The Leopold Museum is a collection of 20th century, largely Viennese works housed in a handsome modernist building in the Museums Quarter, which was once I think the Imperial stables but now houses several exhibition spaces including two modern structures dramatically inserted into the courtyard (this is one). Plus cafes and all the usual paraphernalia. We sat out in the autumn sun and ate.
My notes (this is written up two months later) talk about Klimt and Schiele as the Jekyll and Hyde of the Viennese Secession. In Klimt's Death and Life a collection of largely naked figures, including a baby, float among Klimt's signature patterning (which always looks like a patchwork quilt) on a plain background, while off to the left a skeleton with a club wrapped in a darker patchwork leers at them. The subject matter is dark but the treatment glittering and seductive. Klimt is a beautiful draughstman (especially in his early portraits).
Nearby is Schiele's Levitation: a predominantly brown picture of dead figures with staring eyes, in a landscape of flowers painted to look like wagon wheels. It's an image that prefigures scenes of the Western Front in World War One. A dark subject, darkly treated. Likewise a Schiele full-frontal self-portrait, with legs akimbo, all browns and yellows but for the nipples, eyes and genitalia, all an eerie red.
You get some idea of how Schiele transformed what he saw by a small portrait of his mistress Wally, thin and wide-eyed, close to a portrait of what she looked like in reality (very different). The painting, which is mesmerising, was the subject of a long-running dispute between the Leopold and descendants of its original owners after it was sent in 1997 on loan to New York for an exhibition at Moma and seized by the authorities: the legal dispute was only settled this year. Details here:
http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2010/08/portrait_of_wally_settlement_w.html
Kolo Moser was new to me. A very diverse figure. I noted Wotan and Brunnhilde. A series of mountain landscapes including one with a bright yellow house, some very straight, some playing triks with light and colour. His later works were straighter, in some ways, his earlier figurative ones very bold and expressionistic.
And then there are the architects. Otto Wagner designed the U-bahn stations. But Joseph Maria Olbrich was the revelation, not least for his Secession Building of 1897 which is utterly extraordinary and staggeringly original (the Secession were so called because they seceded from the National Academy of Art).
Too many of them died young, Olbrich of leukemia in 1908 aged 41, the other three in 1918: Moser of cancer aged 50, Klimt of a stroke aged 56 (the stroke brought on perhaps by fathering no fewer than 14 children on various women, I read in Wikpedia) and Schiele at just 28 of influenza.
Friday, 2 April 2010
SWEET NOTHINGS
1/4/10, Young Vic
2 hrs 20 mins. David Harrower version of an 1895 Arthur Schnitzler play (Liebelei) updated to the late 1920s, directed by Luc Bondy.
Disappointing first half, much stronger second. In part one two lower-middle-class good time girls (milliner's assistant Mitzi and her shyer friend Christine) go round to the apartment of posh Fritz and his friend Theodore for a drunken party. Mitzi and Theo seem uninhibited (though the action never gets beyond drunken pawing, and whenever it threatens to she throws him off with apparent disdain), Christine fancies herself in love with Fritz. Fritz however is conducting an affair with a married woman, though clearly attracted to Christine as well. The party is interrupted by the married woman's husband, a model of wronged rectitude in hat and overcoat and scarf. The girls are taken into another room and shushed; a duel is offered and accepted.
In the second half we're in Christine's flat, which she shares with her father, a violinist in a theatre orchestra, and much of the time a nosy and disapproving neighbour. She imagines heself fervently in love with Fritz; Mitzi comes round; Fritz and Theo come round; Fritz and Christine embrace but he won't say he loves her; he goes off to fight duel and is killed. At the end, when the news is broken to her, she is utterly distraught.
The ending was evident a mile off, but the script neatly fixed the ambiguities of Fritz's position. It helped that Tom Hughes, who played him, has a narcissist's face; he was good at suggesting Fritz's self-absorbed brooding on the impossible position he'd got himself into, and incipient panic at the prospect of the duel; but vocally he was a bit underpowered.
The women had it. Kate Burdette as Christine utterly convincing, girlish, flirtatious, petulant, only just out of adolescence; and she brought off her hysterics at the end remarkably convincingly (when they took the curtain call Hughes looked smug, she still looked distraught). Hayley Carmichael (who co-founded Told by an Idiot) very funny as the neighbour. Natalie Dormer (who was apparently Anne Boleyn in The Tudors on TV -- Wikipedia claims this is her first stage role) pert and worldly as Mitzi.
Hughes looked the part (a touch of the Jonathan Rhys-Myers about him, in fact) but needs to project more; Jack Laskey as his friend Theodore had no trouble projecting as the noisy, jokey (though ultimately serious) good time boy with spectacle and in the first act extraordinarily sticky-up hair which was slicked down and neatly combed making him look quite different when he arrived at the end of act two in officer's uniform, not so much to bring Christine the bad news (she divined it herself) as to react petulantly when she collapsed and he complained angrily of how much pressure he'd been under himself.
Audience on three sides of a circular raised playing area, which slowly revolved. Bed, screen, grand piano, a couple of chairs and a small table in the first act and a black-framed window which revolved with the stage; bed, screen, rocking chair, white-framed window ditto in the second. Entrances and exits had to be up steps strategically placed around the revolve; there was a trolley with drinks and cakes and crockery in the well at the front in the first act, and music stands as if in an orchestra pit in the second. The steps might have been a disaster; in fact the cast negotiated them with aplomb, and occasionally the set-up was used to positive effect, like Theo coming on at the very start, teetering on the edge of the revolve, or the wronged husband stiffly and deliberately negotiating the window, which had got in his way at the top of the steps.
Great dresses -- flapper-style in the first act, a lovely white cotton number for Christine in the second act.
2 hrs 20 mins. David Harrower version of an 1895 Arthur Schnitzler play (Liebelei) updated to the late 1920s, directed by Luc Bondy.
Disappointing first half, much stronger second. In part one two lower-middle-class good time girls (milliner's assistant Mitzi and her shyer friend Christine) go round to the apartment of posh Fritz and his friend Theodore for a drunken party. Mitzi and Theo seem uninhibited (though the action never gets beyond drunken pawing, and whenever it threatens to she throws him off with apparent disdain), Christine fancies herself in love with Fritz. Fritz however is conducting an affair with a married woman, though clearly attracted to Christine as well. The party is interrupted by the married woman's husband, a model of wronged rectitude in hat and overcoat and scarf. The girls are taken into another room and shushed; a duel is offered and accepted.
In the second half we're in Christine's flat, which she shares with her father, a violinist in a theatre orchestra, and much of the time a nosy and disapproving neighbour. She imagines heself fervently in love with Fritz; Mitzi comes round; Fritz and Theo come round; Fritz and Christine embrace but he won't say he loves her; he goes off to fight duel and is killed. At the end, when the news is broken to her, she is utterly distraught.
The ending was evident a mile off, but the script neatly fixed the ambiguities of Fritz's position. It helped that Tom Hughes, who played him, has a narcissist's face; he was good at suggesting Fritz's self-absorbed brooding on the impossible position he'd got himself into, and incipient panic at the prospect of the duel; but vocally he was a bit underpowered.
The women had it. Kate Burdette as Christine utterly convincing, girlish, flirtatious, petulant, only just out of adolescence; and she brought off her hysterics at the end remarkably convincingly (when they took the curtain call Hughes looked smug, she still looked distraught). Hayley Carmichael (who co-founded Told by an Idiot) very funny as the neighbour. Natalie Dormer (who was apparently Anne Boleyn in The Tudors on TV -- Wikipedia claims this is her first stage role) pert and worldly as Mitzi.
Hughes looked the part (a touch of the Jonathan Rhys-Myers about him, in fact) but needs to project more; Jack Laskey as his friend Theodore had no trouble projecting as the noisy, jokey (though ultimately serious) good time boy with spectacle and in the first act extraordinarily sticky-up hair which was slicked down and neatly combed making him look quite different when he arrived at the end of act two in officer's uniform, not so much to bring Christine the bad news (she divined it herself) as to react petulantly when she collapsed and he complained angrily of how much pressure he'd been under himself.
Audience on three sides of a circular raised playing area, which slowly revolved. Bed, screen, grand piano, a couple of chairs and a small table in the first act and a black-framed window which revolved with the stage; bed, screen, rocking chair, white-framed window ditto in the second. Entrances and exits had to be up steps strategically placed around the revolve; there was a trolley with drinks and cakes and crockery in the well at the front in the first act, and music stands as if in an orchestra pit in the second. The steps might have been a disaster; in fact the cast negotiated them with aplomb, and occasionally the set-up was used to positive effect, like Theo coming on at the very start, teetering on the edge of the revolve, or the wronged husband stiffly and deliberately negotiating the window, which had got in his way at the top of the steps.
Great dresses -- flapper-style in the first act, a lovely white cotton number for Christine in the second act.
Monday, 14 December 2009
THE PAINS OF YOUTH
14/12/09, National (Cottesloe)
2 hrs 30 mins. A Katie Mitchell production of a Martin Crimp version of a Ferdinand Bruckner original more correctly translated as "the illness/disease of youth" and written in 1929.
The publisher's synopsis reads: "Vienna, 1923. A discontented post-war generation diagnose youth to be their sickness and do their best to destroy it. Promiscuous, pitiless and bored, six sexually entangled medical students restlessly wander in and out of a boarding house, cramming, drinking, taunting, spying. Freder sets about savagely experimenting with the young, pretty maid, with half an eye on his former lover Desiree, a wild, disillusioned aristocrat. Petrell abandons Marie for the ruthless underdog Irene. Marie doesn't waste any time weeping - Desiree wants her."
Or: "The sort of play written once in every generation, depicting the moral corruption and cynicism of a frustrated and disillusioned youth in a world that is hopelessly out of joint."
Way over the top but rivetting and not unconvincing. They all had tics, hang-ups and neuroses galore: checking their watches, looking over their shoulders, teasing and taunting and probing and provoking one another. This was, after all, the city and era of Freud. It's the sort of play in which someone says: "Bourgeois existence or suicide. There are no other choices."
The cast doubled as stage hands, in grey suits and white gloves, taking props on and off as the action froze and the lighting changed, covering furniture with plastic sheeting, introducing and removing glasses and clothing in plastic bags: detectives at the scene of the crime, or perhaps museum curators handling fragile artefacts. In the first part I didn't see the point. In the second part it served to highlight some important stage business, including a crucial overdose.
The fashions were elegant: splendid ladies' underwear, hats, frocks. And pyjamas! (Not for sleeping in, though: they had nightgowns for that.) There was a great deal of smoking (in one case of attractively aromatic cigars) and a great deal of shouting.
Everyone seemed to be playing games of control and dominance with everyone else. Feder was monstrous and spooky and clearly very ill, physically and mentally, as played by Geoffrey Streatfeild (whom we saw as Prince Hal/Henry V in the RSC Histories); he took delight in corrupting the housemaid and sending her out "on the game". A insisted at the interval that Desiree (Lydia Wilson), or Dizzy, the aristocrat who was so clever she scarcely needed to revise for her exams and seemed to have extraordinary sexual allure for men and women alike, plus an alarmingly suicidal bent, was also "on the game". We pooh-poohed that, insisting that she just slept around; but in part two she suddenly announced she too wanted to try walking the streets with the corrupted maid (she was prevented and promptly took a fatal overdose) so A was effectively right and we were wrong.
Marie's lover, Petrell (or "Dolly"), was weak and spineless and easily seduced by the self-made, waspishly self-defensive Irene (or "Sally" as her janitor father had originally named her). The dominance games seemed to involve quite a lot of class (the maid was delighted to discover that she and Marie both came from Passau and that her father, a carpenter, had worked for Marie's father, a bourgeois builder). D also thought they involved gender role-playing and the notion that women could only be happy and fulfilled if they had a man, perhaps because at the end Marie was taunted by the monstrous Felder into marrying him. I didn't get that: indeed, the women generally seemed admirably independent and un-dependant. They were, after all, professionals in the making (though I'm jolly glad none of them were my doctor).
Marie was Laura Elphinstone, first class: we saw her in Lysistrata at the Arcola and possibly Tom and Viv at the Almeida.
2 hrs 30 mins. A Katie Mitchell production of a Martin Crimp version of a Ferdinand Bruckner original more correctly translated as "the illness/disease of youth" and written in 1929.
The publisher's synopsis reads: "Vienna, 1923. A discontented post-war generation diagnose youth to be their sickness and do their best to destroy it. Promiscuous, pitiless and bored, six sexually entangled medical students restlessly wander in and out of a boarding house, cramming, drinking, taunting, spying. Freder sets about savagely experimenting with the young, pretty maid, with half an eye on his former lover Desiree, a wild, disillusioned aristocrat. Petrell abandons Marie for the ruthless underdog Irene. Marie doesn't waste any time weeping - Desiree wants her."
Or: "The sort of play written once in every generation, depicting the moral corruption and cynicism of a frustrated and disillusioned youth in a world that is hopelessly out of joint."
Way over the top but rivetting and not unconvincing. They all had tics, hang-ups and neuroses galore: checking their watches, looking over their shoulders, teasing and taunting and probing and provoking one another. This was, after all, the city and era of Freud. It's the sort of play in which someone says: "Bourgeois existence or suicide. There are no other choices."
The cast doubled as stage hands, in grey suits and white gloves, taking props on and off as the action froze and the lighting changed, covering furniture with plastic sheeting, introducing and removing glasses and clothing in plastic bags: detectives at the scene of the crime, or perhaps museum curators handling fragile artefacts. In the first part I didn't see the point. In the second part it served to highlight some important stage business, including a crucial overdose.
The fashions were elegant: splendid ladies' underwear, hats, frocks. And pyjamas! (Not for sleeping in, though: they had nightgowns for that.) There was a great deal of smoking (in one case of attractively aromatic cigars) and a great deal of shouting.
Everyone seemed to be playing games of control and dominance with everyone else. Feder was monstrous and spooky and clearly very ill, physically and mentally, as played by Geoffrey Streatfeild (whom we saw as Prince Hal/Henry V in the RSC Histories); he took delight in corrupting the housemaid and sending her out "on the game". A insisted at the interval that Desiree (Lydia Wilson), or Dizzy, the aristocrat who was so clever she scarcely needed to revise for her exams and seemed to have extraordinary sexual allure for men and women alike, plus an alarmingly suicidal bent, was also "on the game". We pooh-poohed that, insisting that she just slept around; but in part two she suddenly announced she too wanted to try walking the streets with the corrupted maid (she was prevented and promptly took a fatal overdose) so A was effectively right and we were wrong.
Marie's lover, Petrell (or "Dolly"), was weak and spineless and easily seduced by the self-made, waspishly self-defensive Irene (or "Sally" as her janitor father had originally named her). The dominance games seemed to involve quite a lot of class (the maid was delighted to discover that she and Marie both came from Passau and that her father, a carpenter, had worked for Marie's father, a bourgeois builder). D also thought they involved gender role-playing and the notion that women could only be happy and fulfilled if they had a man, perhaps because at the end Marie was taunted by the monstrous Felder into marrying him. I didn't get that: indeed, the women generally seemed admirably independent and un-dependant. They were, after all, professionals in the making (though I'm jolly glad none of them were my doctor).
Marie was Laura Elphinstone, first class: we saw her in Lysistrata at the Arcola and possibly Tom and Viv at the Almeida.
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