quote:
Originally posted by wine+art:
Schiele was clearly a very disturbed soul which is often obvious in his work. I look forward to hearing your thoughts after seeing the exhibit.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it all. The exhibit,
The Radical Nude, is made up entirely of nudes, about 35 paintings in all; inventive....sure, stark..you bet, dark...perversely so, pornographic...'in your faces, f#%kers' I seemed to be hearing him say.
For my naivity, being the first time I have seen such a large number of his paintings at one time, it perhaps might have been more...oh, I don't know...enlightening, maybe?....if other than his nudes were shown along side these. There were some stunners, clever use of form, abbreviated coloring to great effect...but at least one I simply could have done without, the prepubescent girl, spread eagled. I'm the richer for going, though, and look forward to reading the book I bought on him.
I cannot say enough about the Courtauld...there were some Oskar Kokoschka colored lithos and two landscapes rotated into the permanent collection to compliment this exhibit, as well as a series of recent works by Jasper Johns (based on a photo of Lucian Freud), on loan, previously shown at the MoMA. The Russian 'Jack of Diamonds' display seemed rather pedestrian after all of
that.