Au Temps de Klimt: la Sécession à Vienne – la Pinacothèque de Paris
If there is one thing I could say about this exhibition, it had a very good build from historic context to artistic beginnings to master works. If there’s a second thing I could say, it had a terrible queuing system. Queuing once to get a ticket and then separately to get in? Don’t get me wrong, part of living in London is having excellent queuing skills, but I expected more from Paris.
But anyway, once I got inside, I found that the quality of the works on show, and the sensible and engaging way in which they were displayed and explained, helped me to ignore the heaving crowds within the Pinacothèque. The opening rooms set the scene of an artistic scene affected by its place within a divided empire, an emerging bourgeois class of patrons unaffected by the constraints of a narrow academic style, and artists influenced by emerging disciplines such as psychotherapy or travel throughout Europe. Into this arena enters a young Klimt, at first a practically trained painter of murals and theatre decors, but increasingly a progressive believer in artistic freedom and founder of the Vienna Secession. By the time I reached this moment in art history, I was ready and waiting for some Klimt big hitters, and the exhibition did not disappoint.
Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze is an impressive thing, even in copy form as it is here. A ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ uniting painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, I found it to be dreamlike and hypnotising, even in the context of an exhibition space so popular it had grandstand seating to view it. How incredible it must have been to see this work in the original and with the paint still fresh: in comparison to the pleasant academic studies in earlier rooms, the Beethoven Frieze is physical in its sculptural qualities, unnerving with its more unusual characters, and ultimately cries out its commitment to the freedom of art from constraints. What a work.
The accompanying works designed to contextualise the Secession and the Wiener Werkstaette are a little dull, but the other sections devoted to Klimt are similarly interesting: his women are, as advertised, both fragile and powerful, with Judith a particular highlight as she exudes sexuality and sidelines the head of Holofernes. Klimt’s successors, including Schiele, start to creep in at this point with well-chosen works. A section on landscapes and another on portraits show a slightly different side to Klimt than the gold-bedecked reproductions. I felt there was perhaps too wide a scope in the final section on the move towards expressionism (there is after all quite a gap between Klimt and Kokoschka in the artistic canon), but that may just be according to my tastes.
Overall, then, this is an exhibition well worth the wait in my opinion. Queues, visitors packed like sardines and grandstands: none of these dampened my enthusiasm for the rest of the work on display, and in fact I found my interest in Klimt as an artist was revived by the end of my visit. I will make sure to check what else the Pinacothèque have on when I am next in Paris.
