✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper


Sign up by Email or Facebook.

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we sent newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Turning tips into memories

Get started Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Kids
  • Benefits
  • Membership
  • Get Started
  • Membership
  • Benefits
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Visual Arts

Royal Academy Exhibition review: Klimt/Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum ★★★★★

04 Nov 18 – 03 Feb 19, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

This glorious Royal Academy exhibition celebrates the centenary of the revolutionary Austrian Modernists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele

By Lucy Scovell on 17/1/2019

34 CW readers are interested
Egon Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait, Squatting, 1916
Egon Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait, Squatting, 1916
Royal Academy Exhibition review: Klimt/Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum 5 Royal Academy Exhibition review: Klimt/Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum Lucy Scovell
Austrian Modernists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele were provocative, radical, scandalous. In early 20th-century bohemian Vienna, they challenged convention and form, distorted the body, and endeavoured to create the most erotic art on the market.


Now on the centenary of their deaths, 100 of Klimt and Schiele’s exquisite, fragile drawings are on display for the first time in the UK. This Royal Academy exhibition offers an intimate insight into the parallels and differences in both artists' practice and reveals how each enriched the work of the other, while pushing the expressive and erotic possibilities of the line in Art-Nouveau Austria.


The two had an unorthodox relationship from the start. When Schiele moved to Vienna in 1906, Klimt, 28 years his senior, was already an established and celebrated society portrait artist, as well as a leading figure of the Viennese avant-garde. But the young Schiele's bold experimentation with the human form, explicit depictions of female sexuality and prodigious talent soon attracted Klimt's attention.


TRY CULTURE WHISPER
Receive free tickets & insider tips to unlock the best of London — direct to your inbox
Klimt took the young artist under his wing, asking his protegé to exhibit with him in the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau exhibition. What united these two artists was drawing: the spontaneity and creativity of the medium offered them an ‘expressive power’, ideal for exploring the flux and elegance of modernity. A common understanding of the emphatic line led to an intimate friendship, a sharing of patrons, mistresses and muses. Friends in life and in death: they both succumbed to Spanish flu in 1918.



Royal Academy Klimt/Schiele exhibition
Egon Schiele, Seated Female Nude, Elbows Resting on Right Knee, 1914. The Albertina Museum, Vienna


Arranged thematically in five sections, this Royal Academy exhibition explores notions of eroticism, subjectivity and isolation. The drawings are diverse in theme and subject: society portraits, landscapes and erotic nudes are on show alongside the artists’ sketchbooks, graphic designs, lithographs and photographs.


From the outset, it's Klimt versus Schiele. We play witness to an unadulterated comparison of two geniuses: in portraiture and erotica, in technique and style. We see Klimt's intensive exploration of the human figure through two key projects – a state commission of allegories Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence, and his seminal Beethoven Frieze realised in 1902. Both showcase his revolutionary approach to line: we see the female form in naturalistic splendour, pronounced body contours with no shading, and the sensuous shapes of the femme fatale protrude from the page. Then there's the masturbating nude on her back: her eyes closed, leg raised, the model delicately caresses her clitoris. Klimt's soft, supple lines and decorative patterning convey the pleasure she feels. It sends a splendid shiver down your spine. In rejecting the conservatism of the academy, Klimt forged a new Modernist path.




Egon Schiele, The Cellist, 1910. The Albertina Museum


Schiele followed suite. But his unorthodox approach to portraiture met with harsh criticism, and a prison sentence – in 1912 Schiele was convicted for exhibiting pornographic material to minors. It's easy to see why. Sexualised child prostitutes disgust and unflinching angular self-portraits, painted between 1909 and 1918, provoke unease. In Self-Portrait in White Garment, 1911, Schiele grimaces and glares at the viewer, his long, angular hands clenched in claw-like fists. In another, he sits hunched, his nipples heightened with rose, his head cocked, his flaccid penis at the heart of the composition.


But they draw you in; they totally subsume you. We stand intrigued, transfixed, repulsed even, before his formidable contorted lines. At times highlighted with strategic splashes of gouache and watercolour, at times truncated, Schiele's line pulsates with energy. He scrutinizes his models, and crudely, viscerally lays them bare. Viewer becomes voyeur. In Schiele's erotic drawings, sexuality is symbolic of life. We see Schiele explore the physical and psychological – new ideas about the mind and body using form.


For all these comparisons, Klimt and Schiele’s creative processes and final works are very different. While many of Klimt’s drawings were made in preparation for his paintings, Schiele valued his drawings in-and-of-themselves, selling them as independent works of finished art. Although both are naturalistic, raw and explicit at times, their styles are often worlds apart. Klimt is delicate, Schiele bold.


Austria’s two most famous artists succeeded in challenging expectation. One hundred years on, this intimate exhibition shows that they are as radical as ever.


Klimt/Schiele exhibition Extended Opening Hours:


Tuesday 29 January, 6pm - 9pm
Wednesday 30 January, 6pm - 9pm
Saturday 2 February, 6pm - 9pm


What Royal Academy Exhibition review: Klimt/Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum
Where Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD | MAP
Nearest tube Green Park (underground)
When 04 Nov 18 – 03 Feb 19, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Price £18
Website Please click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 16 - 18 April. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2021 Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Courtesy Gagosian
Things to do in London this weekend: 16 - 18 April
Kelly Macdonald in Line of Duty season 6, BBC One (Photo: BBC)
Line of Duty season 6 episode 5, BBC One review
Kelly Macdonald in Line of Duty season 6, BBC One (Photo: BBC)
Line of Duty, season 6 episode 4, BBC One review

Editor's Picks

The European & London Art Fairs 2019 not to miss this spring
Must-Visit Art Fairs: London & Europe 2019
London Design Biennale 2018, Hong Kong, Sensorial Estates
What's on at Somerset House: exhibitions, art, design & more
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1978, Gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 inches, 20.3 x 25.4 cm; Image Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
Cindy Sherman, National Portrait Gallery, review
In-the-know art exhibitions online
In-the-know art exhibitions online
Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890) Starry Night 1888. Paris, Musée d'Orsay Photo (C) RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
Last Chance: London art exhibitions to catch before they disappear
The Lehman Trilogy, National Theatre 2018
The Lehman Trilogy, Piccadilly Theatre
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Sartoria

    Located in the bespoke tailoring district of Savile Row, Sartoria serves up top-quality Italian cuisine all day long in a setting designed by David d'Almada. From mouthwatering risotto to refreshing desserts, Chef Francesco Mazzei's Calabrian roots really come through in this extensive menu. We particularly recommend sitting outside on the heated terrace for a truly atmospheric dining experience.

    Book Map
  • Gazelle

    Walking into Gazelle is like entering a private members' club, discreetly signed, upstairs in an Edwardian Mayfair building with its own elevator. It is perfectly possible to dip inside for pre-dinner cocktail. For a post-dinner moody tryst it is most inviting too.

    Read more...
    Book Map
  • Nopi, Soho

    With a menu that changes with the seasons, Yotam Ottolenghi's Nopi always has something new to offer – although certain classics remain favourites, such as its delicious courgette and manouri fritters. It is best to go for lunch – less touristy and less busy – but don’t forget to book.

    Read more...
    Book Map
34

Art Exhibitions

Things To Do

Modern Art

Royal Academy

2018 Highlights

You might like

  • NG726  Giovanni Bellini  The Agony in the Garden  about 1465  Egg on wood  81.3 x 127 cm  © The National Gallery, London

    Mantegna and Bellini at the National Gallery

  • Review: Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, V&A

    Review: Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, V&A ★★★★★

  • Claude Monet, Tree: Antibes, 1888  © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

    Courtauld Impressionists: From Manet to Cezanne, National Gallery, review ★★★★★

  • Jessica Craig-Martin  Hamptons Cocktail Party, July 1998  , 1998  Cibachrome print   61.3 x 92 cm  © Jessica Craig-Martin, 1998  Image courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London

    Review: Black Mirror: Art as Social Satire, Saatchi Gallery ★★★★★

  • GOOD GRIEF, CHARLIE BROWN! Celebrating Snoopy and the Enduring Power of Peanuts, Somerset House

    Review: GOOD GRIEF, CHARLIE BROWN!, Somerset House, ★★★★★

  • Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery, London

    Review: Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery, London ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • What is Culture Whisper membership
  • Corporate membership
  • Give a gift membership
  • Retrieve a gift membership
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×