Art in NYC: Obsession-Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, Picasso at The Met Breuer
Erotic watercolors, drawings and prints from The Met’s Scofield Thayer Collection on view July 3 – October 7, 2018
An exhibition of about fifty works by the grand masters of the Vienna Secession movement Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele together with the early works by Pablo Picasso dives deep into artists’ obsession with male and female bodies. Bequeathed to The Met Museum in 1925 by Scofield Thayer, the collection is now coming on view for the first time. Thayer, a wealthy American publisher, and poet, collected the works in the early 1920s.
Klimt, while highly acclaimed in Austria, was mostly unknown to the American public. Schiele and Picasso were just starting to get attention and recognition in America. Thayer used some reproductions of the artworks in his avant-garde literary magazine Dial and for an exhibition at the Montross Gallery in New York in 1924. However he didn’t find much interest for them in his native Massachusetts.
His collection was assembled when Thayer was traveling between Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. It is an opening into the hidden obsession and fascination with the nude bodies, the emotions of the struggling souls and the complexity of desire. Don’t judge; just observe and contemplate.
Thayer became a co-owner of the avant-garde literary magazine Dial in 1918 when he with his friend and Harvard classmate Dr. James Watson purchased it from the previous owner. It became an influential publication of the modernist literature featuring the essays by American writers and poets with E. E. Cummings, Carl Sandburg, Winslow Wilson, Ezra Pound among many other appearing regularly on its pages. The magazine also introduced major European authors to the American public. Thomas Mann, W. B. Yeats, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal were reporting from various European capitals. With literature the magazine also published art, so works from Thayer collection where featured alongside reproductions from Vincent van Gogh, Renoir, Henri Matisse, and Odilon Redon, as well as Oskar Kokoschka, Constantin Brâncuși, and Edvard Munch.
It took more than thirty years for The Met Museum to learn about and sift through the collection left by Thayer as he practically disappeared from public view from the late 1920s suffering health and mental breakdowns. The museum curators organized this exhibition around the notion of the depiction of nudity. The NYT review suggests that “the three artists do make a trio as neat as any geometry lesson”. While Klimt and his protege Schiele were to some degree in-sync on breaking the norms of establishment and picturing the emotions in an almost palpable way, Picasso’s works convey a different perspective.
G. Klimt: “I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women”
Starting from the gallery dedicated to Klimt’s delicate drawings, one can almost sense the artist’s caring touch, fascination, and discomfort with witnessing the moments of pleasure and intimacy. The works seem to be made in secret when the artist was carefully lifting a curtain to look at his subjects while they were unaware of his observant eye.
That discomfort takes a very different tone in Schiele’s works. Schiele penetrates the surface and depicts the pain of the soul amplifying anguish and pleasure alike. The works scream and breeze hard while the artist is there to help channel the feelings. Schiele’s confident lines, preoccupation with some fetish details of clothing and piercing gaze of the models’ eyes bring the obsession to the next level.
In the sequence on view, Picasso’s works are taking the theme from Austrians and making it completely free of any sentiments. Here pretty much nothing is left on the emotional level and everything is about the artist and his joy of depicting. The works on view particularly group figures by the sea look like the pieces of a puzzle assembled now but are ready to be put together in a new arrangement at any time.
This year marks a centenary of death for both Klimt and Schiele. The centenary is also prominently commemorated by another exhibition of their works at the Neue Gallery. See the show at The Met Breuer, take a breath and stroll uptown to the Neue Gallery to see more.
With the New York Pass your can enjoy a free visit to the Met Breuer Museum!
Dates: March 12 – July 29, 2018
Venue: The Met Breuer, 945 Madison Ave., NY, NY
Use Promo Code TMNTX (if applicable)
