The Paintings and My Reaction

The exhibit did not disappoint. The Neue is an old Beaux Arts Fifth Avenue mansion that has been converted to exhibition space, without destroying the lovely proportions and details of the rooms. When you come into the building, the ground floor contains the bookstore, the gift shop which mainly has reproductions of craft items, and the Viennese cafe. The Klmits were on the second level gallery, up the gracefully curved staircase.

The second floor consists of a long landing and 3 good sized, but not huge, rooms. The central room contained the exhibited Klimts and two side galleries held items relating to the era that the Klimts were painted. The right hand gallery contained sketches and drawings by Klimt of Adele and other models, sketches by Egon Shliele, Otto Dix, Max Beckman and Oskar Kokoschka, artists who were contemporaries and influenced by Klimt. In the left hand gallery were craft items from the Viennese workshops of the time: plates, silverware, mirrors, chairs, and a couple of other paintings, including another Klimt landscape and a beautiful Egon Shiele I had never seen before. All the gallery items served to put the paintings into a proper historical context. But really, they didn't need it, the Klimts on display speak perfectly for themselves. They don't need a time period or a context. They are Art.

The golden portrait of Adele is astounding. The general public is well-acquainted with Klimt's "golden" paintings. "The Kiss" is a very familiar image and some of the details have been used in everything from jewelry in a Signals catalogue to carpeting.

But to see one of the golden paintings up close is mesmerizing: swirling, sinuous lines, little blocks of color, details that come to look like eyes... the gold is not one solid sheet, nor even one shade of gold, but is layered on and has textures and directions. And Adele's face! Her astonishingly alive face. Her skin is the pale, aristocratic, almost bluish tones of John Singer Sargent's "Madame X", but its the eyes and hands that are the most vivid -- dominating the painting far more than the gold or the patterns. Serene, yet sad , Adele looks out at the viewer in a way that is not bold or arrogant but direct and shyly curious, as if she didn't have time for social games. Her hands are clutched in an odd position, perhaps resting on a portion of a hidden chair, or simply a gesture that was entirely her own. I came back several times to stand and look at the vivid woman with the brilliant dark eyes, cloud of black hair and red lips in a pale face.

The other paintings were lovely and interesting but somehow did not speak to me as intensely as Adele's portraits and I have to say that the reproductions of them in the brochure had more vivid color than the actual paintings themselves. The painting of a village by Egon Shiele in the left hand gallery was far more compelling as a landscape. The techniques that Klimt used on his landscapes seemed like an uncertain bridge between the pointillism of Georges Seraut and perhaps Cezanne in his early cubist stages. They didn't have the surety and strength of his paintings and drawings of Adele on display and even of his paintings like "Medicine" and "The Kiss". His best work, among those on exhibit, it seemed to me, involved people, not places.

The Museum Experience:

I went after work on a Friday night when the Neue is open until 9:00. It was a very monied group of museum goers paying the $15 entry fee (the Neue is a private museum and charges an entry fee; unlike the Metropolitan and other publicly financed museums that have a "suggested" admission). Although not terribly crowded (ideally, of course, I'd be alone at exhibits), most people took the damned handheld recorded tour. I hate those things with a passion. People play them waaaay too loudly and, like iPods and cell phones, they make the listener tend to block out the rest of the world. I'm looking at the painting of Houses on the Unterech, trying to catch the subtleties of the brush strokes, and some Chanel-clad, pearl choker wearing woman, or Gucci shod, Burbury scarved man walks directly in front of me, handset held to ear and eyes on anything other than my feet or shoulder or view.

There was a long line to get into the Cafe Sabarsky (which is not an inexpensive eatery, believe me) and the security guards were a bit on the brusque and rude side. I had my little shopping bag examined by a guard at the door when I came in, bought my ticket and went to go up the stairs. Another guard stopped me, saying I had to check my "second" bag. I said, it had already been examined and all that was in it was my uneaten lunch and a shawl. He got rather irritated about it and just insisted I had to check it. So, with a good bit of grumbling (after all, couldn't the first guard have told me that?), I checked the bag, retaining my handbag (purse, pocketbook, whatever) which held, in no particular order: a camera, several markers, a sketch pad, and a pocket knife. Since that bag was never examined at all, I have to ask -- what the hell were they looking for? Didn't the security staff and directors of museums learn anything at all from when the Munchs were stolen a year or so ago, or a decade ago when entire paintings, frames and all, were lifted from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum? I could have easily and quickly slit a sketch or two from the frames and slipped them into my bag, (the paintings were a little large for quick slashing and behind glass) or down my shirt or something. Or I could have taken photographs, downloaded them to my computer and used them to make my own art. However, I didn't do any of those things.

I went through the central room first, giving a quick look at each of the exhibited paintings. Then I did the right hand side gallery to look at the sketches, spending a few minutes on each (especially some of the Shieles and the Klimts which were as expressive as the paintings) and returned to the central room. I viewed each of the paintings again, spending a little longer this time, studying color and brush strokes. I then went into the left gallery and looked at the furniture and table setting displays quickly, spending a bit more time on the Klimt and Shiele landscapes. Then back to the central room to really spend some time studying the Adeles. I stayed about a half an hour all told and it was well worth the time.

Museum Info

The Neue is located at 1048 Fifth Avenue (corner of 86th Street), New York, NY. Open Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Friday open 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Klimt Exhibit is at the Neue until October 9th. For the final weekend, the Galerie will be open until midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, October 6, 7 and 8.

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