Edvard Munch, “Puberty,” oil on canvas, 1914-16 (the Munch Museum, Oslo)
Neue Galerie
1048 Fifth Ave. at 86th St.
Through June 13 (closed Tuesday & Wednesday)
212-628-6200
www.neuegalerie.org
In 2007, Neue Galerie New York presented “Van Gogh and Expressionism,” which examined the influence Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh had on German and Austrian Expressionism. Now the curator of that exhibit, Dr. Jill Lloyd, has teamed up with Dr. Reinhold Heller for a fascinating follow-up, “Munch and Expressionism,” creating a compelling back-and-forth dialogue between works by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) with such German artists as Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gabriele Münter, and Emile Nolde and such Austrian artists as Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele. “The radical qualities of Edvard Munch’s work — his extreme originality and inventiveness — have frequently led to him being linked to the art of the future,” Dr. Lloyd writes in her catalog essay “Edvard Munch and the Expressionists: Influence and Affinity.” She adds, “But whereas van Gogh . . . is justly deemed a precursor or ‘father’ of Expressionism, Munch, by contrast, both inspired and participated in the movement.” The splendidly curated exhibition groups a pair of Munch self-portraits, 1906’s “Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine” and 1923-24’s “The Night Wanderer,” with Beckmann’s 1938 “Self-Portrait with Horn” and Gerstl’s 1907 “Self-Portrait in Front of a Stove,” as if the men have come together for a chat. Munch landscapes “Winter, Elgersburg” and “White Night” feel right at home with Münter’s “The Blue Gable” and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s “Footpath,” in both color and abstraction. Munch’s glorious “Puberty,” seen in both an 1894 drawing and an exciting 1914-16 oil painting, takes on added meaning alongside Heckel’s “Standing Child”; the apparent communication continues through Heckel’s “Bathers in a Pond” and a quartet of bathing paintings by Munch, including the bold, extraordinary “Standing Nude Against Blue Background.”
Edvard Munch, “The Artist and His Model,” oil on canvas, 1919-21 (the Munch Museum, Oslo)
A small room is dedicated to Munch’s most iconic work, “The Scream,” with its spectacular color palette and powerful emotion. The 1895 favorite is joined by several print editions as well as a trio of self-portraits by Schiele and Heckel’s woodcut “Man in the Forest.” Other standout groupings include Munch’s “Mountain Road” with Kirchner’s “Women on Potsdamer Platz,” Munch’s “The Book Family” with Kirchner’s “Street, Dresden, 1908,” and Munch’s “Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones)” with Schiele’s “Man and Woman I (Lovers I).” An exploration of Munch’s printmaking methods is another aspect of this show, with multiple woodcuts of “Towards the Forest II,” “Angst,” “The Kiss,” “Evening. Melancholy,” “Old Fisherman,” and “Madonna,” echoed by Nolde’s “Young Danish Woman,” Hermann Max Pechstein’s “Lovers,” and Kirchner’s “Head of a Sick Man.” However, the dialogue occurred only in their art and not in person. “There is plenty of evidence that the Brücke artists sought out Munch, inviting him, for example, to send work to their group exhibitions in 1906, 1908, and 1909, although Munch carefully sidestepped these overtures,” Dr. Lloyd notes in her essay. “Nolde and the Brücke artists apparently confronted a brick wall when they tried to enlist Munch to their cause, despite his stated admiration for their work.” Even if these artists from Norway, Germany, and Austria never broke bread together or sat down and discussed art, this exhibit creates quite an intriguing visual conversation between them.
“All of my stakes are in my work. I have given up in all else. I do feel I am an artist, and one of the best. I do, deeply,” German artist Eva Hesse explains in Eva Hesse, the debut feature by Marcie Begleiter, which is being brought back by popular demand for two screenings per day from May 25 through June 9 at Film Forum, following runs there and at Cinema Village. Begleiter, who has previously written the play Meditations: Eva Hesse and directed the short film Eva Hesse, Walking the Edge, examines Hesse’s too-brief life and career, as she dealt with feelings of alienation and deep loss through her art. “The power of her purpose was more important than what was going on in her life,” fellow artist and friend Rosie Goldman points out. Born in Germany in 1936, Hesse was determined to be an artist from an early age, first turning to drawing and painting, then to sculpture. The film features narration taken from Hesse’s journals, interviews, and letters between her, her main confidant, Sol LeWitt, and her father, William; Eva is voiced by Selma Blair, LeWitt by Patrick Kennedy, and William by Bob Balaban. Begleiter speaks with such contemporaries of Hesse’s as Richard Serra, Carl Andre, Nancy Holt, Dan Graham, Mike Todd, Roberth Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Hesse’s husband, Tom Doyle, who seems a little too trite given how they eventually parted. She also meets with Whitney curator and Hesse scholar Elisabeth Sussman, photographer Barbara Brown, art writer Lucy Lippard, and Hesse’s sister, Helen Hesse Charash, who sheds light on her sibling’s difficult childhood. But at the center of it all is Hesse’s inspiring art, which challenged the status quo as Expressionism shifted into Minimalism. “I will paint against every rule,” Hesse wrote, and she took that approach with all of her creations, including sculptures made of latex, metal, fiberglass, wire, and other industrial materials. The film firmly sets Hesse within the framework of the tumultuous era in which she worked, the 1960s, a time of great social and artistic change, but she still comes off as a lonely woman who could express herself only through her art. It’s both a sad and exhilarating documentary, a paean to the critical role art can play in life.