In Which Naked Men Are Not Actually My Favorite Thing About a Museum

So, we are making up a bucket list of Stuff We Want To Do For The Six Months That The Weather Is Disgusting in Vienna. It includes a bunch of museums because they have art, which my husband likes, and they are indoors and warm, which I like.  (Actually, I like art too, but I like being warm and dry even more!)

Last weekend, I brightly suggested that we go to the museum that has been advertising a Nude Men exhibition all over town. My husband rolled his eyes and agreed to accompany me because he hadn’t been to the Leopold yet. And, he pointed out, he has probably seen a lot more naked guys in his time than I have, so no biggie.

As it turned out, Näckte Männer was just so-so. I had heard that the concept was something along the lines of: there are naked women in fine art all the time, why can’t we portray the beauty of the male form in the same way? Heck, I was all for that. So were a lot of other people: the exhibition was very crowded, with both straight and gay couples. There were even families with young children in tow. This is Europe, after all. I just hope those parents had a cheat sheet prepared for the of the inevitable questions!

Unfortunately, this exhibition was a bit self-conscious, for lack of a better word. There were some good pieces (so to speak) but most of the artwork seemed to be making fun of men. In short, there were really a lot of deliberately very ugly, or cartoonish nudes. Not portrayed sympathetically, like Lautrec’s ugly, aging prostitutes, for example.  And, I won’t get into it,  but there were a couple of pieces that you definitely wouldn’t see with an exhibition of female nudes  and I didn’t think belonged in this kind of museum. I’m just saying.

Interestingly, the older artworks displayed a more sincere appreciation of male anatomy. Which leads to the question: if male artists in earlier times (gay and straight) felt perfectly comfortable drawing, painting and sculpting beautiful men, what changed? Why do modern works depicting men have to be either ugly or blatantly sexual? What happened to just appreciating human anatomy as a work of art?

Laying such weighty questions aside, we very much enjoyed the rest of the exhibits.I had been to the Leopold when we first came to Vienna.  I liked it then, and I like it even more now.

There is a nice collection of works by Egon Schiele, an artist that I had never heard of before coming here. He was a weird dude who died tragically young (in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic), but I quite like his work, especially the landscapes.

Also, some Japanese prints and watercolors that are pretty eye-popping even though they aren’t my usual thing. And some miscellaneous Secession-era and Wiener Werkstatte stuff, which is always easy on the eyes. Then the inevitable Klimt, but they have to include him or the tourists won’t pay to visit, sigh.

Another nice thing about the Leopold: they let you take photos.  So, please to enjoy a few pictures from our visit. Next week: the Museum of Art Fakes?

Please note: for some reason my photo captions do not show up in Google Reader.  So, if you are viewing this post in Reader, click the post title, above, to open the full version and then you can see the captions.

The advertisement that has the ladies all a-twitter. (Blur-out mine–this is a family blog, after all!)

Klimt. Because there is always Klimt in Vienna. I am sure someone here sells Klimt toilet paper. When I find it, I’ll blog about it.

Klimt refrigerator magnets in the “Klimt shop.”

Klimt eyeglass cases, coasters, and matchboxes (?)

On the other hand, I sure likes me some Secession graphics.

This is really neat. Makes me want to design a quilt.

A Jefferson Airplane poster displayed to show that the Secession style either persisted until or came back in the sixties. (The placard was in German, sorry.)

The Wiener Werkstatte did some cool, forward-thinking furniture. If you look close you can see that this is the Barca-lounger of wicker rockers. Everything is both handcrafted and cleverly adjustable. Art with the left side of the brain!

Egon Schiele. A scrawny little dude with major talent.

A Schiele townscape. Love the laundry hanging on the line.

Another townscape, of a an island town in the Danube.

One more, just because I like them.

A Schiele nude. Kinda bawdy, but still beautiful in its way.

Durer drew naked men in a bathhouse.

Can’t remember the title, but it is a 19th century depiction of a life drawing class. With a nice looking model.

Just thought this was cute–it is from a book of models for classical paintings.

Classic statuary. The one at the end is a store mannequin wearing a t-shirt.

A little Cezanne.

At least this is funny :)

Early gay softcore. These are a hoot. But no sillier than early girlie pinups.

I liked this one the best. I think it is adorable (blurring mine). Nice looking men on the job. Now that’s art.

18th century Japanese watercolor. Wow.

An 18th century “Edo” Japanese print.

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