Schiele in Vienna -- Still So Modern a Century On

A century after Egon Schiele's death, his art is still too shocking for some. Last year, the Vienna tourist board's posters advertising the centenary with images of his nudes were only allowed on the London Underground with the naughty bits covered up.

And, as Egon Schiele: The Jubilee Show -- Reloaded at the Leopold Museum in Vienna shows in a thoroughly splendid exhibition, many of the Austrian Expressionist's works remain startlingly fresh. How far ahead of his time he must have seemed before World War I. Warning: There is no censorship in this show or in this blog post.

Here he is, bequiffed and staring moodily out at you in this Self-Portrait with Striped Shirt made in 1910, the year he turned 20. You feel he could have just got off a tram at the Karlsplatz with a skateboard tucked under his arm.

Or what about this? As if dancing to some throbbing beat under the influence of mind-altering substances, the artist portrayed himself in the same year as a Kneeling Nude. Schiele was certainly obsessed with himself. He created more than 170 self-depictions. And he only made it to the age of 28.

Both these images come from a section of the show entitled Ego, where we also get a sample of Schiele's poetry. "I am of the most noble the most noble and of requiters the most requiting," he writes. "I am human, I love death and I love life." It's like Morrissey penning some lyrics for the Smiths. Schiele take a bow.

But before we get to Ego in this large and engrossing show, we're introduced to Schiele's Self. Beneath an extremely thorough biography of the artist (they don't do things by halves at the Leopold, which has the world's largest Schiele collection), there are some old photographs, including one of him and his family on the day of his first holy communion in 1903. Spin round 180 degrees and you're looking straight at what the good little Catholic was getting up to seven years later.

Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait) is an astonishing painting. The energy, the contortion, the representation of the sinewy, bony body (and the body hair!). The feet and hands missing, the red highlights. He did five like this, the first representations of a radically Expressionist new style he adopted in 1910 after moving from the influence of Gustav Klimt. This is the only one to have survived.

Schiele had a life-sized seated female nude (now lost) exhibited in the Prater in Vienna that year. When the aged Emperor Franz Josef saw it, his response was: "This is absolutely dreadful!"

The young Expressionist didn't have an easy time of it. He had to turn out and sell small paintings just to survive, like this Small Tree in Late Autumn that seems to be a dancing figure, buffeted by the wind.

His low point came in 1912, when he was arrested and held in jail on charges of abducting a girl and molesting adolescents. He was eventually sentenced to three days in prison because children visiting the house he shared with model Wally Neuzil would have been exposed to nude pictures on the walls. He found the experience shattering.

There's a dichotomy in Schiele's work. Much is uplifting, but some is very bleak indeed, particularly following the outbreak of war in 1914. Levitation, from 1915, shows two men in monk's robes on the threshold of death. Both bear Schiele's facial features.

This exhibition takes us thematically through various aspects of Schiele's work. There's a room devoted to the artist's spirituality, for example. Some quite dark works in here, and the one that stands out is Cardinal and Nun (Caress), a response to Klimt's The Kiss, painted five years earlier in 1907/08. Klimt's golden portrayal of embracing lovers is transformed into an angst-ridden illicit coupling swathed in deepest black. "I went through Klimt until March," Schiele said in 1910. "Today I believe I am quite different."

Of course there's plenty more sex to come, in rooms devoted to Schiele's study of the female nude. A host of examples of his sparse yet wonderful drawing cover the walls with figures in contorted and provocative poses. But it's noticeable how his depictions become less angular in his later work. Some of these more rounded figures in larger paintings appear less interesting, less individual, but that's not the case for the Reclining Woman from 1917, voluptuously spread out against a golden backdrop.

Scattered throughout this show are responses by more modern or contemporary artists to Schiele's work. They generally fail to distract from the headline act, though one of Sarah Lucas's stuffed-tights mannequins, Tracey, sits well among Schiele's nudes.

Another big theme in Schiele's oeuvre are cityscapes, often from a high viewpoint and equally untraditional. They can be gloomily oppressive, as in Dead City III, but there are brighter works, too, such as this Cubist-like Crescent of Houses II (Island Town), a view of Krumau, now Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic.

The final room is devoted to portraits, and it's here that you again get that feeling that Schiele was just so far ahead of his time. How dramatic is this picture of Olga Gallus? Her disembodied head squashed into the right-hand corner, her hat cropped, floating over a strongly mustard-coloured background. The eyes pull you in. The reproduction doesn't do it justice.

Had Schiele lived to the 1960s, rather than dying of Spanish flu, he'd have been in his 70s, but here he is, somehow producing what looks like Pop Art in 1909. Portrait of the Painter Hans Massmann has the 60s all over it, doesn't it? That rattan chair, the moustache and sideburns, the purple suit and that funky backdrop. It is, of course, Peter Wyngarde as TV sleuth Jason King.

This is a fascinating and really well laid-out exhibition, even if the explanatory wall texts are a bit jargon-laden, and not very well translated from the German. But it's all about the pictures, not the words, and they are in many cases glorious.

Practicalities

Egon Schiele: The Jubilee Show -- Reloaded is on at the Leopold Museum until March 10 next year, though note that the museum is closed for rebuilding work from November 5 to December 5. It's normally open Wednesday to Monday from 1000 to 1800, with late opening on Thursdays to 2100. Full-price admission to all the exhibitions at the Leopold is 13 euros, and you can book tickets online here.

The Leopold is in Vienna's Museum Quarter, just outside the Ringstrasse boulevard that encircles Vienna's city centre and a couple of minutes walk from the old masters in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Museumsquartier and Volkstheater are the nearest Underground stations, and numerous trams run nearby.

More Schiele in Vienna -- and in London! 

Another of the Austrian capital's great museums, the Belvedere, home to The Kiss, highlights its own collection of 20 Schiele works in a new show running from October 19 to February 17.

Londoners will get their chance to see drawings by both Schiele and Klimt in an exhibition at the Royal Academy from November 4 to February 3. These works come from yet another major Viennese gallery, the Albertina.

Images

Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Striped Shirt, 1910, Leopold Museum, Vienna. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger
Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait as Kneeling Nude, 1910, Leopold Museum, Vienna. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger
Egon Schiele, Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait), 1910, Leopold Museum, Vienna. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger
Egon Schiele, Small Tree in Late Autumn, 1911, Leopold Museum, Vienna. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger
Egon Schiele, Reclining Woman, 1917, Leopold Museum, Vienna. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger
Egon Schiele, Crescent of Houses II (Island Town), 1915, Leopold Museum, Vienna. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger
Egon Schiele, Woman with Black Hat (Olga Gallus), 1910, Leopold, Private Collection. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger
Egon Schiele, Portrait of the Painter Hans Massmann, 1909, Kunsthaus Zug