Page 52 - Studio International - November 1972

has an immediate appeal because it is done which Klimt never knew existed, let alone of softness in Diderot, Rousseau and the
slickly and professionally and even like a rather understood, and it was with the work of his quietists; he was its first embodiment. 'In the
facile graphic designer at times. I think disciples and not his own that the break with history of sensibilité his place should be among
slickness as a facility is something that can be the 19th century finally came. the first, for his Lecture de la Bible preceded the
exploited.' q This book's only flaw is its price which puts dramas of Diderot; his Accordée de Village is
ELIZABETH GLAZEBROOK it out of the reach of all but the best-heeled contemporary with La Nouvelle Héloise; and his
and those with access to a good library. Dr Malediction Paternelle and Fils Puni are far
Klimt put in his place Vogt's book on 20th-century German art is ahead of the later, gloomier, drames bourgeois' of
Gustav Klimt by Werner Hofmann, Studio even more expensive and, weighing several both Mercier and Desforges in the following
Vista, London, £10.50.42 colour plates, 55 pounds, more difficult to read. But these, alas, decade' (p. 108). In her conclusion Dr Brookner
black and white plates, 45 text illustrations. are not the only shortcomings. Dr Vogt, who as remarks : 'His faults are those of sensibilité and
Director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen therefore belong to the wider domain of morals
Geschichte Der Deutschen Malerei im 20. must certainly know his onions, is and taste' (p. 154).
Jahr hundert by Paul Vogt, Du Mont Schauberg, comprehensive, and often tediously so, but Three introductory chapters are devoted to
Cologne, DM 120. 528 pp. 62 colour plates, his book reads too much like an uninspired sensibilité: sensibilité in general, and in literature
315 black and white reproductions. survey, like a recitation of all the relevant and painting. These are valuable, although the
facts, blandly assembled and not given first is somewhat less full than one might like,
During the last ten years a succession of form by any point of view or critical stance. and contains some contentious material such as
exhibitions in Europe and America have It may be that such weaknesses are the bracketing of Madame Guyon and
ensured that the work of Gustav Klimt and his unavoidable given the intractable nature of the St Margaret Mary Alacoque as quietists.
contemporaries is now almost as well known beast. To do anything but baldly recite Dr Brookner identifies the influences forming
outside America as within. Klimt is firmly facts when faced with the task of the art of sensibilité as (1) the popularity of
established as the greatest Jugendstil painter documenting the art of a single country during engravings of Dutch genre painting (principally
and the contribution to Expressionism of an entire century requires a special kind of those of Teniers, Wouwerman, Dou, and
his disciples, Kokoschka and Schiele, is now interpretative genius and almost every survey Mieris) in the 172os ; (2) the sentimental art of
recognised as being of a different kind from volume ever written has lacked this. Dr Vogt's Correggio, Guido Reni and Murillo (Greuze's
that which arose over the border to the North. book is at least no worse than most similar young ladies often bear a striking facial
In spite of such reassessment and studies. It is all there and the choice and resemblance to Reni's saints in ecstasy); and (3)
enthusiasm, both of which have unfortunately quality of the reproductions is excellent. in the 174os and sos, the moralizing pictures by
tended to be uncritical and rather too much Some of them are of little-known works, Hogarth. The aesthetic of this type of art was
dealer-led, literature on Klimt and his circle especially paintings by artists of the expressed by the Abbe Du Bos (`Since the
(Kokoschka apart) has remained unsatisfactory Rheinland done during the 192os and '3os. primary object of poetry and painting is to play
and thin on the ground. True, we have had the In view of the recent vogue for Realism of all on the emotions, poems and pictures are only
Klimt oeuvre-catalogue which costs a King's kinds it cannot be long before the German good if they move and involve us !') and echoed
ransom, the Klimt Dokumentation, brilliant Verists and artists of Die Neue Sachlichkeit by D'Alembert, Diderot and others. This
in every way, and a trickle of smaller come once again into their own. q upgrading of Du Bos at the expense of Diderot
monographs on both him and Schiele. But FRANK WHITFORD is welcome.
almost all of these are in German and there is The second surprise that Dr Brookner has in
still precious little available in English. Risen again store for us is the place she accords to Greuze in
Werner Hofmann's monograph is therefore Greuze: The Rise and Fall of an the development of Neo-Classicism and, in
especially welcome, both for the quality of the Eighteenth-Century Phenomenon by particular, in relation to David. Greuze passed
reproductions and for the thoroughness of Anita Brookner. London : Elek 1972. through a series of influences from Teniers to
the text (admirably translated by Inge Goodwin) xvi +176 pages, 117 illustrations. £7. Rembrandt and then to Rubens; but in 1769 he
which places Klimt against his background, exhibited at the Salon his Severe et Caracalla, a
defines his relationship with his To write a dull book about an interesting artist reflection, if a pale one, of Poussin's Death of
contemporaries and explains his frequently is no great achievement; and it is done pretty Germanicus. The general revival of Poussin,
fraught and difficult experiences as President frequently. To write an interesting, indeed an which formed part of the Neo-Classical reaction
of the Wiener Sezession, that double-headed exciting, book about a dull, or at least against the sensuality and frivolity of rococo art,
creature which quickly revealed itself to be as antipathetic artist is another, and much rarer did not come about until the 178os — David's
reactionary as it seemed to be forward-looking. thing; but Dr Anita Brookner has brought off Oath of the Horatii was not painted until 1784.
Dr Hofmann's text is long. He expands on this achievement. As Dr Brookner remarks :
Klimt's development, less dramatically She has rescued Jean-Baptiste Greuze, that `The date 1769 should be taken as seriously
changeable than is often realised, isolates the painter of simpering young girls with their as 1784 . . . in the story of the evolution of the
sources of the artist's favourite motifs and puppies and dead birds, of moral tableaux neo-Poussinist and Neo-Classical style in
compares his work at every stage with examples which combine deathly seriousness with France. Greuze's contribution is historically
of the kind of academic and historicist seductiveness; rescued him from near historical more remarkable than that of David, for with
tradition from which Klimt's work sprang. oblivion and moved him forward into the front his unlettered but obstinate intelligence, he
Dr Hofmann rightly argues that the view of ranks of the men of his time. I hasten to add seems to have made, quite independently, the
him as a precursor of modernism is too that the author has not made him out to be one discovery that the work of Poussin contained
one-sided and that (in spite of the of the foremost artists of his time — though she lessons by which mid-eighteenth-century
astonishing late landscapes) he should be seen does reappraise some of his neglected works and painting could be corrected. In this, David had
more as a modifier of the existing and sifts the grain from the chaff — but rather one of only to follow Greuze' (pp. 109-110).
conventional than as an original genius who the forerunners of its taste and moral attitudes. That salon of 1769 was also remarkable for
only looked ahead. Kokoschka dedicated his According to Dr Brookner, Greuze was not Greuze's Girl Praying at the Foot of the Altar of
early illustrated book Die Träumenden only a protagonist of the taste for sensibilité, that Love (Wallace Collection) which is a
Knaben to Klimt, whom he revered, but mixture of emotionalism, sensuality and neo-classical treatment of a rococo subject. But
Kokoschka's work was already exploring areas sentimentality which is found in varying degrees 1769 was a fatal year for Greuze. Hitherto he
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