Study Visit Klimt/Schiele at the RA

I had the most amazing introduction to Klimt when I accidentally wandered into the Secession building in Vienna (also here). Although as a child of the 70's I was aware of his work through the phenomenon that was Athena nothing had prepared me for seeing his work in real life. It's an introduction that I thoroughly recommend, I can still feel the excitement of seeing the figures and the colour in such a lovely space.

So obviously I had to go to the exhibition at the RA and I combined it with meeting a friend who, although she is not an artist, is one of the few people who I can experience art with. I confess that I wasn't excited by Schiele before our visit because his art that I had seen online or in print looked like bad porn to me. The RA is a lovely building and it was great to ascend a staircase which had been tastefully added to a courtyard. The exhibition room was small and sadly only included drawings (as advertised, but it would have been good to see reproductions of the finished pieces that Klimt's studies were for) I was surprised to find that I like, and can understand Schiele's work so much better in the flesh. Black haired nude girl standing (1910) has the most amazing brush strokes which the camera doesn't pick up. They perfectly describe the way her skin is shaped over her bones even though when you look closely at them they are simple blocks of grey paint from a large brush. Although the painting is provocative it doesn't seem pornographic, just hauntingly beautiful and sad, a comment on the plight of sex workers and child prostitutes. He was an amazing draughtsman, there were 2 lovely line drawings of houses as well as his figures which are so lively and expressive.

Both artists worked on off white paper, often brown packing paper. I also prefer toned paper because I like to pull the light colours forward as well as pushing the darks back. I like Schiele's technique of adding a white border to his figures, apparently he believed in some sort of aura. The end result really highlights the figure, it's something that Sally Muir also does in some of her dog paintings, I wonder if Schiele was an influence or whether she came to the same idea independently. It takes confidence not to colour in the whole background.

I usually view this sort of exhibition alone but it was interesting to get another perspective. My friend was fascinated how she could tell that 2 of Klimt's drawings were of the same person even though his lines are so spare and many aspects of the faces were different.  We compared Klimt's use of line, sometimes he seemed very confident and made a single bold line, sometimes you could see him searching for the right line and sometimes he was using the thicker line to highlight a particular area. Then, confusingly, on other drawings multiple dark lines were shadows and didn't draw the eye in the same way.