Cathy's Art Diary

Super three-day online course from Art History in Focus on art and architecture in Vienna. Led by Sian Walters over three mornings this acted like a lovely weekend break in the city. I like Sian’s friendly welcome to these online sessions and her mix of an online lecture then opening the session up with videos for the Q&A to give you some sense of the other people involved. She used good images with clear labels. A good use of Zoom. Day one gave us a brief overview of the history of the city and then a look at the highlights of the major galleries, day two concentrated on architecture at day three the important role of portraiture in the city with a focus on Klimt and the Expressionists. Most interesting was an insight into Sian’s phd thesis which looked at the paintings of the composer Schoenberg and whether his starting and stopping painted reflected changes in his music.        

First week of a two part course at the National Gallery looking at the current exhibition “Facing the modern : the portrait in Vienna 1900” and putting the works into context. This week led by Rachel Barnes concentrated on Vienna and was a good description of the exhibition taking us through the pictures and discussing why they have been hung in the way they have and what dialogues this sets up between works and artists. Because the show jumps around in chronology the talk did too and I would have liked just a bit more structure to it. I would also have liked a bit more context on how and when the Succession was set up and what society was like at the time. It was a fun talk but I think I was just looking for a bit more. The second half looked at Klimt in a bit more detail but as the first session had overrun this was quite brief and again I would have liked a bit more and a bit more of run through his life. It would be great to have done the same with some of the othe...

Introspective exhibition at the National Gallery looking at portraiture in Vienna around 1900. I liked the fact that it wasn’t just the expressionist artists you might expect but also included more classic works. I also liked the fact that it was arranged in the themes but it did mean it jumped around quite a lot chronologically and it covered a much wider period of time than the title implied. The familiar space of the Sainsbury Wing exhibition space was broke up in a different way by false walls which gave an interesting claustrophobic feel which matched the art. It gave a real view of the society at the time looking both at what it wanted to show to the world but also at the problems they faced. I liked the room of self-portraits of artists and the room on death was morbid but fascinating. My favourite picture was “Nude portrait of Mariette” by Bronica Koller, a picture of an artist’s model but presented as a portrait with her head against a gold square. There were...