The current exhibition "Egon Schiele: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections" on view at the Neue Galerie in New York until February 20 2006, is undoubtedly one of the most eagerly awaited art events of this season. My wife and I, patrons and lovers of the Neue Galerie, were looking forward to such a landmark exhibition for many months. Once it came and we visited it, we couldn't be more disappointed.
The show, for it is a veritable "show" more than an "exhibition", is -as Ken Johnson's review accurately described it in The New York Times- "The Wider, Not Wilder Schiele". Yes, there are many works on display, but they fail to offer anything new, exciting or thought-provoking on the artist. In fact, this show feels like a regression and involution from the Egon Schiele we all love and treasure. The passionate artist with nerve, tension and prone to expose the eroticism and harshness of the human body and existence looks now at the Neue Galerie like a master draughtsman, a prolific creator with an academic profile in portraits and landscapes. Bland and innocuous.
"The current exhibition provides an opportunity to deepen our understanding" of the artist, says Ronald S. Lauder, President of the Neue Galerie and longtime Schiele collector, but this is sadly not true to the trained eye and Schiele-lover after one single visit to the Neue Galerie these days.
Quantity does not mean quality is a very appropiate aphorism for this show- or merely accumulating pictures does not suffice to mount an exhibition that transmits energy. It has been said that Schiele "represented the body to explore the soul", yet it is difficult to see a soul in the "Egon Schiele" blockbuster at the Neue Galerie. Many bodies and a missing soul- the striking Schiele cabinet the museum had before was far more powerful and revealing than the two-floors current show.
Truly enough, we cannot blame Serge Sabarsky and Mr. Lauder for collecting the Schieles now generously offered to the public, but we should lament this missed opportunity to offer "a real Schiele" to the American audience, that Schiele one can see in Austria in the public museums or in the excellent Leopold Collection: devastating portraits of himself, drawings of little girls, exposed vaginas, young boys and girls masturbating like if it were the last thing they will ever do... If both Sabarsky and Lauder did not completely avoid the thorny core of Schiele's art, they certainly did not focus on it, preferring the more conventional portraits Schiele made of his friends and family, as well as landscapes and cityscapes.
Even a very small exhibition of works on paper from the Wien Museum that circulated in Spain with almost no publicity this summer and fall had more nerve, angst and sex than the current New York blockbuster. It was eloquently titled "Egon Schiele- In Body and Soul".
One has to go to the excellent catalogue published by the Neue Galerie to find scholarly studies, fresh views and engaging aspects of and on Egon Schiele. As weak and dull as the blockbuster is, the catalogue strikes me as easily the most important addition to the Schiele literature since Jane Kallir's catalogue raisonné. Insightful and innovative essays trace the uneasy reception and painfully slow acceptance of Schiele in America and the influence of the artist in contemporary art and culture. This monumental catalogue is a magnificent volume I count as among my favorites in my library.
The foremost victim of the Egon Schiele blockbuster concoction is the Neue Galerie itself. Renee Price, Director, is quoted in the Neue Galerie website as saying the Egon Schiele show "is drawing large crowds" and "The Cafe Sabarsky has become a cherished spot". Certainly, and those large crowds are the reason why long-time patrons of the Cafe and the Galerie like my wife and I feel upset and sad to see our favorite museum and cafe in New York overcrowded and impossible to enjoy. The cherished spot, gone.
Thousands of tourists fill the Cafe Sabarsky where before the Schiele venture a table was always available on Friday nights to enjoy Viennese delicatessen before proceeding to the museum, always almost empty and a marvellous pleasure, now something similar to the Museum of Modern Art- an attraction park. The Neue Galerie has lost its charm searching the economic benefits of a blockbuster.
Raising fees, the Cafe assaulted by tourists, the galleries packed, the art made hard to enjoy.
Is it worth to convert the most elegant and tranquil museum in New York in just another noisy-lousy tourist attraction for Middle America in the name of money? Is this the future and new direction we can expect from the Neue Galerie? I find it extremely displeasing and sad.
I can only hope the sparsely-attended, well-curated cabinet exhibitions that were a Neue Galerie signature return soon, and this dream-turned-nightmare Schiele business venture gives place to the old Neue Galerie we love, in which the sound of the piano soared from the Cafe to the third floor on Friday nights, creating that magic, fin-de-siecle atmosphere now lost. Wasn't the museum designed as an upscale, elitist venue of sophistication with 500-dollars memberships? In risk of being labeled as "old fashioned", I would say let's preserve the spirit of the Neue Galerie. For blockbusters and cheap entertainment, tourists and masses can go to the Met and Rockefeller Center.
