Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900

National Gallery, London

9 October 2013 –  12 January 2014

Gerstl, "Nude Self Portrait with Palette" (1908).
Leopold Museum, Vienna. From here.

A disappointing exhibition, though Richard Gerstl should get his own retrospective.

The curators of this exhibition appear to be following an old idea about ‘the modern’ along the lines of this is an Age of Anxiety. There may be something to this thesis, though we might also point at ‘the modern’ being a rebellion against oppression, or an attempt to live aesthetically satisfying lives. For the anxiety thesis, the link with Vienna during 1867-1918 is almost entirely a link to Freud, perhaps Mahler.

The curators argue that anxiety in Vienna was linked to the emerging bourgeoisie, a ‘new Viennese’ that looked back to ‘old Viennese’ bourgeois in an attempt to find an identity. And of course, Vienna during this time overflowed with ‘minority’ cultures, most notably an extremely important Jewish community, themselves all understandably anxious.

These socioeconomic anxieties, the curators claim, can be seen in the portraits commissioned by the bourgeoisie. Well, I didn’t notice it.

In fact, anxiety is not expressed in any of these paintings, except perhaps one remarkable defaced self-portrait by Richard Gerstl that ought to have been the highlight of the show. Unfortunately it was presented upside down, as he had reused the other side for a full portrait.

His other self-portrait exhibited (above) conveys the opposite of anxiety. Here, surely is a new Siegfried or Adam, and the intentional reference to Dürer suggests deserved arrogance rather than fear and trembling.

Death seems to have fascinated the nineteenth century Viennese (the waltz having a death wish built-in). But while characteristic, I’m not sure the deathmasks on display here, apparently collectibles at the time, illustrate any greater anxiety than stuffed animals did for the contemporary British. Morbid curiosity, yes.

Vienna in 1900 was an extraordinary city, hosting an astonishing culture, and it helped define whatever the modern is. But there are many facets to this, and the economic, class-based side is just one.

Improbable historical theses aside, what of the art here? It is fascinating to witness proto-expressionist portraits next to the more conventional, naturalistic portraits of the earlier, mid-century generation. The latter make their impression in a quieter manner, somehow, but are not less impressive overall.

Perhaps the difference between the late Romantics and the early moderns, in this show, is this greater discretion, minimising the drama of a portrait. Tastefulness has its shortcomings, and the later artists rejected it, though I am not convinced Schoenberg’s daubings here, self-consciously primitive, refute the careful work of the older generation as he imagined they did.

None of the portraits here are bad, except perhaps Schoenberg’s selfies. His approach varied though and his portraits of others are more interesting. Most of them are interesting, especially so in comparing different styles. And it’s good to discover Gerstl.

But it should have been much better.

Othello

National Theatre

23 April – 5 October 2013

Rory Kinnear (Iago), Adrian Lester (Othello). Photo by Johan Persson.

In failing to make sense of the key characters, this contemporary Othello is a relative failure, though that doesn’t significantly reduce the powerful impact of this tragedy in the theatre.

Since FR Leavis argued that Othello is clearly supposed to be a villain, the older view, which rather took the hero’s own position that he loved not wisely, but too well, has been harder to maintain, at least in the theatre.

I think this is partly due to our mistrust of heroism. In Nicolas Hytner’s updated production, the Venetian general is in the British army, in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and consequently wears combat fatigues. This pretty much guarantees he will be seen as ambiguous, if not downright villainous, as soon as he wears them.

Luckily this isn’t how we first see him, after he has successfully wed Desdemona. He wears a smart suit, looks attractive and seductive, although not necessarily heroic.

I don’t think the creative team intended to confirm Leavis’ interpretation, but that only reveals the pitfalls of modern productions of this drama. The central conceit, that a supposedly great man kills his wife in a rage of sexual jealousy over a handkerchief, might be thought almost too absurd, though it is clear to me that the author was fully serious, including stressing Othello’s genuine greatness.

I take the drama as an attempt to illustrate the degradation of a great man and the sickening reality of murder. Iago, who tends to dominate the drama with his multiple soliloquies, is too quick-witted a creation if we assume Othello is credulous. A malevolent buffoon does not need an honest Iago to lead him by the nose.

Undoubtedly Shakespeare did not help a modern producer or actor in trying to convey his central character’s positive qualities. At the beginning, and then pathetically at the end, Othello reaches great poetic heights, but otherwise he is perhaps undercharacterised.

Gravitas, charisma; these are the essentials in playing Othello, and sadly these are not parts of Adrian Lester’s performance. There are many fine details, but these tend towards the Leavis view, as when he essentially bullies his men after striking Desdemona in public. Conversely, he makes too little of some of the greatest lines, such as ‘the pity of it Iago’.

Rory Kinnear’s Iago is better, but this is very often the case. A very blokey performance, which makes sense in context, though as usual, it is not easy to see why he is willing to risk so much to destroy Othello, given that he is cunning enough to exploit people like Roderigo with no-one the wiser.

Ideally, an Iago would somehow make his absolute loathing of the moor obvious in almost every scene, and Kinnear doesn’t do that – in fact, he doesn’t convey convincing hatred at any point. This seems a mistake.

As if to compound criticism of Shakespeare’s characterisation in this drama, Desdemona is also a fairly passive thing, which makes her on stage murder all the more shocking, even now.

But the actress can grant her greater presence than does Olivia Vinall, who creates a convincingly flirtatious teenager, but one who is merely petulant in response to her husband’s mistreatment, thereby avoiding the possibilities of being either noble or pitiable.

After all this, Emilia’s characterisation would surely be unimportant, except she somehow connives with Iago over the without handkerchief connecting this to later events. I didn’t see this explained through Lyndsey Marshal’s portrayal, though Hytner highlights the fateful handkerchief theft appropriately.

The production has many good touches, such as Othello’s epilepsy taking place in a lavatory. And the final scene is indestructibly powerful and affecting. Finding fault in a performance of Shakespeare is something to do upon reflection, for in the theatre I am simply grateful for the overwhelming experience.

Koyaanisqatsi

Barbican, 14 December 2012

An excerpt from the film, depicting urban industrial life.

A peculiar birthday celebration for a great composer, showing a film that beautifies even industrialisation.

This review falls naturally into two parts, first on the form of this event and then on its content.

This was a concert performance of Philip Glass' music for the film Koyaanisqatsi. The film was shown on a screen behind a fairly large orchestra and choir.

The effect, then, was quite different from watching the film in a cinema. The screen was further and smaller, the sound more immediate. Whereas the stream of images comprising the visual aspect of the film would take precedence in a cinema, here it was the music that had the greater sensory impact.

We're familiar with this idea in relation to rescoring of silent films from 80 or so years ago, but this was the first time I'd experienced a film with its original soundtrack presented in this way.

The experiment was unwise. Scoring that may have been justified for the film in cinemas seemed extravagant for a concert hall. What were all those string players doing? And the brass? For most of the time they seemed silent, needed only for the crescendos of the insistent 'tracks'.

The concert was staged as part of the Barbican's birthday celebrations for the composer's seventieth, but I felt it didn't display his music at its best. I hadn't heard it previously; perhaps in its original cinema context it comes across as less second-rate Glass.

The images might also have been more impressive if they dominated my field of vision, as they would likely do in a cinema. Especially the first part, astonishing footage of various natural wonders and landscapes.

I suspect director Godfrey Reggio intended to have a very different impact than the one I experienced. Apparently the title translates from the Hopi as 'a life out of balance'. The first part of the film depicts 'unspoiled' majestic nature and the second part shows us our urban experience, or parts of it, normally sped up.

Presumably I was supposed to feel our lives are out of balance, something I would normally be receptive to. Instead, the images of urban life formed as beautiful a pattern as the previous images of rural solitude, and I experienced man's supposedly despoiling effect on the environment as something wholly natural and even beautiful.

It is strange to witness the grinding monotony of industrial life and feel nothing, except perhaps that it is possible to find transcendent beauty even there. A disturbing consequence is the viewer's collusion in dehumanising workers, but if the images are beatiful and the music is beautiful, I don't see how the effect could be otherwise.

Art lies, but I doubt this was supposed to be the response I left with.

I want to end the review on a positive note. The concert reminded me that Glass is a major composer, prolifically creating music that is popular, individual and influential. His willingness to collaborate with others is commendable, personified here in his willingness to become just another player in the orchestra, conducted by Michael Riesman.

The audience gave him a standing ovation, and this seemed fully deserved, in his roles as both composer and interpreter of his music.

Scenes from an Execution

National Theatre, 15 November 2012



Titian's Death of Acteon (National Gallery, London). 
Howard Barker's Galactia presumably conveys the same sickeningly real sense of violence as does late Titian.   

Dramatising challenging issues in aesthetics and morality, what really brings this drama to life is the powerfully romantic central character. A near-masterpiece.

The title is a pun. Nobody is executed, though the central character Galactia is imprisoned and understandably fears she will be eliminated, although the audience understands that the poor old Doge is merely going through the tiresome motions of punishing her.

Rather, it is a work of art that is being executed, and we witness scenes of this work in progress, a vast canvas depicting the Venetian victory at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.

Galactia, anachronistically a woman painter, creates a work of devastating realism, depicting the slaughter of the battle so violently that anyone viewing it is horrified by the brutality of warfare. Naturally, this upsets the commissioners, the civilised Doge and the Venetian state he represents.

So this is a drama of ideas, familiar from a tradition that includes Brecht and Shaw. Conflict emerges from people's different viewpoints and levels of power, and all views are treated sympathetically. The central character is a genius who challenges social, political and aesthetic conventions, in this case questioning the glory of war, or death generally (in the funeral scene). By doing so, she allows us all to examine how we live our lives.

Supposing, like me, you like this approach to drama, you will be delighted that Howard Barker has written something like this, as there seem to be too few contemporary authors in this tradition.

But something special sets this apart from the works of Edward Bond, the other dramatist with similar ambitions that comes to mind. Galactia is a magnificent, full-blooded creation.

Arrogant, violent, earthy, sensual and apololitical, she indeed blazes like a comet, as the Doge remarks. The reported physicality of her art is extremely plausible.

Among the many fine touches, the most original moment in the work is when she inadvertently annoys a cardinal by refusing to defend her painting, not out of contempt, as he suspects, but because she doesn't know how to. And she is right.

In displaying appropriate inarticulacy in the face of brute reality, the drama briefly touches upon what is otherwise its major weakness. A painting conveys its impact without words, or movement, and is therefore intractable to theatre.

But Barker is primarily concerned with what is 'behind the picture', as the cardinal puts it. We cannot see the art, we get only the discussion of its meaning, a discussion in which Galactia's voice is rightly only one among many. It's as if we are witnessing the battle several stages removed, but it feels as if that level of abstraction is where the most important decisions need to be taken.

Among actual paintings, perhaps Guernica is closest to what is being described, but the comic-grotesque aspects of that work do not convey what Galactia's painting is supposed to have done. I left the theatre wondering why nobody has painted such a scene, and what this says about us. For that reason alone, this is an important drama.

Nonetheless, there may be a problem with a work of art (this drama) that cannot show us what is supposedly a greater work of art (the painting), but can only tell us about it.

The cast were lively, and the direction adequate, but the only truly memorable aspect of the performance was Phoebe Nicholls' tightly controlled Rivera, the critic whose words transform what the painting communicates, deadening or celebrating it depending on viewpoint, but in any case highlighting the limitations of visual art.