Schiele vs. Schiele – Neue Galerie, New York and Courtauld, London

Egon Schiele had something of a moment in late 2014, which is perhaps somewhat earlier than expected given that the centenary of his early death will be in 2018.  Nonetheless, it was my privilege to be able to see not one but two top class exhibitions on either side of the Atlantic, the first, Egon Schiele: Portraits at the Neue Galerie in New York, and the second, Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude at the Courtauld Gallery in London.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Schiele was a student at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from the age of 16, against the wishes of his uncle/guardian.  He was a protege of Gustav Klimt, and was increasingly successful with both private patrons and collecting institutions until his untimely death from influenza in 1918, just days after that of his pregnant wife.  Schiele left behind him a striking body of work, concentrated, as the two exhibitions would suggest, in portraits and nudes, the latter often created for specific collectors of his erotic works.  A master draughtsman, his works on paper tend to be at least as widely admired as his paintings: their distorted poses, dramatic cropping and unnatural colours, as well as the tender age of many of the models, render them just as confronting and unnerving as they were a century ago.

Despite the different focuses of the two exhibitions, the selection of works has more overlap than one may suspect at first glance.  The Neue Galerie’s exhibition has a number of nudes, and among the works at the Courtauld can be distinguished portraits of Schiele’s wife, lover, sister, and of himself.  The two exhibitions do have slightly different motivations, however.  The Neue Galerie’s show assumes an audience familiar with at least the major works, and aims to rehabilitate the popular view of the artist from one of angst-ridden tortured soul to a fuller understanding of his modernism and empathy for his subjects, based on the substantial scholarship of curator Alessandra Comini.  This aim is definitely achieved, in a carefully curated exhibition which places Schiele’s skill and versatility at the forefront.  Although the erotic nudes are less strictly portraits than the other works on display, their subjects more often anonymous either in terms of the title or in the works themselves, they come together with the other works on display to show the vision of an artist blessed or cursed to see the reality of life, of beauty, and of the human condition, whether in a portrait of a society lady in fashionable garb, or in a pregnant woman laid out on a doctor’s table.

The Courtauld’s show is ostensibly the first major museum show of his work in the UK (although I have seen mention of one at the RA and another at a private gallery many years ago), and so is more of an introduction than a rehabilitation as with its New York counterpart.  With 38 works on display, it is of a size to allow viewers to contemplate each and every work, and to build an appreciation for Schiele’s talent in line and form.  The exhibition gains momentum from the artist’s student years to his ‘breakout’ year of 1910, in which his unique style came to the fore, and ending with his increasingly confident mature work (if mature work there can be for an artist who died at 28).  I found the 1910 work ‘Mother and Child (Woman with Homonculus)’ to be particularly arresting: a young woman, turning back towards the viewer in a slightly coquettish way, is grasped by a distorted figure of a child.  For me, with its combination of unusual pose, highlighted imperfections and hints of existential anguish, it sums up the themes of Schiele’s work as a whole for, despite these qualities, the image of the woman and child is still both beautiful and powerful.  Critics in the UK seem to have been more troubled by the nudes of young girls than were their US counterparts, but this is perhaps not surprising given the contemporary concern with sexual grooming.

With two such carefully curated exhibitions relying on major loans from abroad (plus a third at the Kunsthaus in Zurich), the storehouses of many European museums must currently be empty of Schieles.  Neither show felt as if it suffered from gaps, though, so it may be that the focuses were just different enough to prevent overlap, or that the curators were able to work around this.  In terms of the breadth of medium and genres, as well as for the visible passion of its curator for her subject, I enjoyed the Neue Galerie’s efforts, but as a frequent sufferer of museum fatigue, the size and quality of the Courtauld show was very much appreciated.  If only I had also been able to go to Zurich, I could retire happily from Schiele exhibitions, surely having seen enough to last me until he next comes into fashion.  Being able to compare and contrast major New York and London exhibitions on the same artist at the same time was, however, an experience I relished and would have the fortune to one day repeat.