Billed as the first comprehensive exhibition of Klimt’s work in the UK - I came away a bit disappointed. I had read the review in the Times and ignored it. I thought the reviewer must be jaded. I wasn't going to miss what was perhaps the most important show of the year. (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4014012.ece)
I had been on the Tate Liverpool website the night before and was impressed to find that you could download the audio guide to the exhibition and save yourself the 2 pounds by bringing your own Ipod along.
What a great idea! More museums should have this available. I didn’t bother to do the download being lazy and thinking I would just use the museums audio guides. We arrived at the Albert Dock show site in good time for our timed entrance only to be told that audio guides were unavailable. The machines were not charging properly and thus unavailable. I regretted not having done the download. I began the tour annoyed and a bit frustrated!
For those of you not familiar with Gustav Klimt
(July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) he was one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group's periodical Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). The group's aim was to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the best foreign artists works to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase members' work. The group encouraged no particular style -- Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. The group's symbol was Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the arts.
Re- reading the Times review afterwards, I realized he was right on the money! I liked the exhibit don’t get me wrong but I wanted to see Klimt’s painting and nothing else! I did’t see beyond the show’s title Gustav Klimt. I didn’t pay attention to the second part of the title: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900 and this wound up being about two thirds of the show. The most familiar of Klimt’s paintings are missing. The Kiss, Danaë, and the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. The exhibition also featured furniture, building models, silver objects (loved the tableware!), jewellery, graphic design and some erotic drawings. I really didn’t care about all that. I wanted paintings. I walked around every corner waiting for the paintings only having to wait for the next room. They were the wrong expectations.
The Tate exhibition opens with the 1902 Beethoven Frieze done for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition, which was intended to be a celebration of the composer. The original frieze was painted directly on the walls of the hall and after the exhibition the painting was preserved, but what we saw at the Tate was a re-production. I think it was the highlight of the show. I also liked his Nuda Verita (1899) . The starkly naked red-headed woman holds the mirror of truth, while above it is a quote by Schiller in stylized lettering, "If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad."Go to the this show. You may be disappointed but at least you will learn something about art and art shows. Enjoy what is there and wait until the real retrospective comes along on his paintings. Klimt states "I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women...There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Who ever wants to know something about me... ought to look carefully at my pictures."
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