Again, I learnt and thought a lot, thanks to that.
I could not exploit any of my fidelity cards to obtain a reduction. Full price: 8 €! I'm afraid the price of culture is raising both with the one of petrol. We're very near to put oil barrels in Museums, too! (Maybe I'll soon review a visit to the oil station).
It's all based on the original frieze made for the Secession Building in Wien (here there is a made-in-Italy faithful reproduction).
Klimt made a lot of preparatory drawings for that masterpiece, almost 400, and the exhibit presents some of those, in semi-darkness. "For conservative reasons, the drawings cannot be light with more than 30 lumen" a notice was saying. The final effect is like seeing the private collection of Bruce Wayne in his Bat-Cavern.
The papers are very delicate but clear and powerful. Few lines to define the femininity of the luckiest Klimt models, or the tough muscles of the poor ones. The body is at the center of his research, seen from undisclosed points of view, innovative and strongly criticized. Klimt was very touchy and got very angry with the "chaste" society of those days. His wife, on the contrary, was more compliant and open-minded towards that abundance of cheeks and "femininity".
These drawings, very simple, were very different from what I expected from Klimt (because everybody always expect something from the authors studied on school books).
I was used to rich paintings and mosaics "Klimt style", and here I made my first discover: line is the base for Klimt comprehension. You must first follow the lines to better discover the paintings, sometimes so full that one could risk to loose the smallest details in them. Follow the lines, then look at the portions of his drawings, then concentrate on the textures and finally discover the main characters.
(just an example, among hundreds, of Klimt research in drawings)
After this, I'm ready to talk about the frieze.
I had no idea of how it was. I only made a psychological mesh with what I expected from Klimt and the ancient Greek typical friezes. I was figuring on that image and I entered the dedicated room.
It took me 5 minutes to find the starting point of the frieze and 3 lectures of the explicative boards to understand the followings:
* the reproduction was 2/3 of the original
* the first part was not reproduced
* each character's name
* the logic of the frieze
* the connection with Beethoven n°9 symphony
but what really shocked me, was the fact the half of the 2/3 was… white! No paint on that! I thought of a mistake, a missing, lack of time in the reproduction process…
I soon discovered that white was only a pause. Pause in the presented "story" and pause to guest (in the original first exhibition) Beethoven's statue.
It was just a pause, not a mistake!
(What I call a pause)
This made me think that, nowadays, we have a lot of difficulty in accepting a pause.
We are bounded by images, we are full of stuff, always connected and surrounded by any kind of information. No space for a pause, for a white page.
I initially couldn't accept a white part in the frieze, because I expected more. I'm used to see everything full of things.
Klimt's pauses, Gustav's breaks, are there to make you more concentrated on the main issues. They let you appreciate the story.
Listening to the symphony (played by a stereo) and enjoying the breaks, I could really understand all the frieze, step by step, pause by pause.
The frieze is very interesting, I would say even genial, but if you are not enough receptive, you could think to see "a little" exhibit, with too few things by Klimt (the preparatory papers are no more than 15/20).
An ancient Confucius' saying tells that it's the emptiness that gives value to full parts. We should always accept pauses and stop to concentrate on what is really important. And not only in art!
ps. If you google "Beethoven frieze", you'll mainly find only the "full parts" of that. Nobody seems interested in the white parts.
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