Although at some point I had planned to visit the Klimt/Schiele* exhibition (Drawings from Albertina Museum, Vienna) at the Royal Academy in London, it was by accident I found myself there on a Friday in November 2018. With leaden skies and a cold wind at Burlington House the atmosphere was bustling and frantic with tickets rationed. The spiral stairway to the Sackler gallery was busy and the lift crammed to capacity. Who and why on a wintry Friday morning so many people made the decision to be here, I wondered.
Due to the crowds it was difficult at times to see the drawings, firstly by Klimt as you entered the galleries and then Schiele. The delicacy and rawness of the way they depicted the human body was at times even 100 years on unsettling. Â Today viewed with psychological and voyeuristic interest, one can understand why a century ago these drawings provoked scandal and shock in Vienna and elsewhere.
What inspires artists to break the mould, to fracture from the then conventional norm and create great if not disturbing works? Art that intrigues and demands interest many decades later, even in this era of sophisticated technology, an amoral society and liberalism.
But beyond this, what struck me was the skill and deftness in their drawing; not an art form that gets much recognition - it is after all just a mere sketch! If you follow art auctions today, the drawings of major artists sell for a fraction of their paintings, yet there is much to be seen and conjected. The subtle variation in shade, the curvature of line, it is like examining the engineering of a skeleton rather than the smoothness and pale painted colour of flesh and skin.
It was this exhibition that inspired me to search deep into my art materials drawer for a piece of charcoal (something I had not used for many many years) and draw portraits, as a finished product, with all their granulations, scratchiness and my smudgy fingers.
Charcoal is an earthy medium that is blunt and messy but evokes an image that paint doesn’t emulate – I hope you like my charcoal collection.
Best wishes, Filippi
*Gustav Klimt (July 1862 to 6 February 1918)
An Austrian symbolist painter and important member of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his dreamy erotic female portraits and decorative designs seen in paintings, murals and sketches. His often use of gold, sensuous lines and bold patterns are seen in The Kiss and other allegorical and mythical works.
Egon Schiele (June 1890 to 31 October 1918)
An Austrian (expressionist) painter and a protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. Much influenced by Sigmund Freud’s work on the unconscious, his art is typified by sinewy and distorted images including many self-portraits. A prolific painter and one wonders what he may have produced if he had lived beyond his 28 years.