I'm not sure why the Albertina's iteration of Gothic Modern has decided to highlight three big names: previously in the Scandinavian versions of the show, the more evocative, and optimistic, descriptor was 'From Darkness to Light.' There are indeed wonderful works by Munch, Beckmann and Kollwitz but ultimately this is a thematic, multi-artist exhibition where the ideas and the connections between works and across time are more important than individual names. On the surface Gothic Modern sounds like a crowd-pleasing attempt to attract a younger audience, something reinforced by the prominence of Van Gogh's Skeleton With Burning Cigarette in the publicity. In reality, the curators present a complex narrative which encompasas both Gothic (Medieval and Early Renaissance) art and architecture, and the popular death and angst interpretation of the term whilst also, more interestingly, exploring the assumption than 'modern' necessarily means forward-looking and new. Maybe there is just too much in the mix but this is a beautifully presented show, full of an eclectic selection of interesting art. You can argue that not everything here is gothic or modern, but everything is worth looking at.
Gothic is of course a moveable feast of a word. We can all conjure up an image of soaring, spired architecture, and many people will think of flattened figures and complex colourful patterns. In this form it is art about God rather than the devil, and there are, perhaps incongruously, Edward Burne Jones' Adoration of the Magi and Marianne Stokes' Madonna as well as a wall of stained glass light boxes, included here. The Medieval world also had its share of the (sometimes humorously) grotesque and the gruesome, think Bosch, doom paintings, misericords and gargoyles, and it is in this context that Van Gogh's Skeleton is presented. This more historical definition, has, however, since the early nineteenth century been overshadowed by the eerie amorphous weirdness of gothic literature - graveyards and vampires, sex and death. Deep purple and red walls set the tone: a group of three archetypal Munchs (Vampire, Eye in Eye and Ashes) arguably anchor the whole show.
The vast vagueness of the term gothic brings its own problems.Many of the so-called gothic obsessions on display are simply human nature, visible throughout time and across art forms. Fear of mortality, of the unknown; an association of darkness with evil; sin, temptation and the devil. Images of the Adam and Eve are not inherently gothic. Is Holbein's Dead Christ, for all it's exaggerated emaciation, intrinsically any more gothic than Mantegna's highly foreshortened version? Equally, in juxtaposing the Medieval and the modern, the exhibition by-passes Romanticism, another fin de siecle which shared many of the concerns and neuroses of the 1900 generation - war, modernity, introspection.
Despite these issues, the fundamental argument, that modernism was not simply a forward- looking rejection of the past, is compellingly presented. Kollwitz and a Medieval pieta present two faces of maternal despair; Durer and Beckmann both take us to cacophonous women's baths; Schiele images himself as St Sebastian. By the time you get to Kirchner's Rhine Bridge, the picture seems less an Expressionist dystopia of alienating, distorted space and more as if the modern structure is an organic extension of the cathedral behind. Set against light blue walls and opposite Munch's sunrise it creates an optimistic end after all the gloom. Throughout, the curators have created a series of beautiful groupings and sightlines which bring out the best in the art. Munch and Stokes' Madonnas, polar opposites which nevertheless share a tilt of the head and a weighty pathos. A whole series of male nudes which resonate with the dead Christ. There are enough moments of gothic absurdity for the purist: Hans Baldung's Three Ages and Alfred Bocklin's self portrait with leering skeleton. But it is a, sometimes terrible, beauty which really triumphs here.
Gothic Modern is a big exhibition with a big idea which is carried through with commitment and style. It wears its scholarship lightly, and presents a dazzling array of works on paper, sculpture and decorative art alongside the paintings. There is a decidedly Nordic and Germanic focus and as such, for this viewer, the added benefit of introducing new artists: Hugo Simberg, his symbolist Wounded Angel carried by two very earthly and resentful boys; Joseph Alanen giving Disease and Death a Art Nouveau elegance. With my partisan hat on, I feel Britain deserves a bigger role. Juliet Simpson is a co-curator and the later Pre-Raphaelites get a walk-on role, but what a fabulous show we could have had at a UK venue. Anyone lucky enough to be in Vienna before January should not miss it.
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