Personal Feeling Is the Main Thing sees the acclaimed British artist Chantal Joffe setting out on a journey with art historian Dorothy Price in the footsteps of the pioneering German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876 – 1907), the first female artist to paint a naked self-portrait. Returning to London, Joffe undertakes new paintings of her friends, the novelist and writer Olivia Laing and art historian Gemma Blackshaw, heavily pregnant. Richly illustrated with works from throughout Joffe's career – depicting her daughter Esme, friends, artists and writers – alongside works by Modersohn-Becker and Polaroids by Joffe of the artist's home in Worpswede, this book offers a rare window into Joffe's practice through the prism of Modersohn-Becker, working a century earlier. Revealing texts by Dorothy Price, Gemma Blackshaw and Olivia Laing further illuminate the integrity, as well as the psychological and emotional force Joffe brings to figurative painting. 'Though separated in time and place, Modersohn-Becker's intensity of vision still speaks directly to Chantal Joffe; both artists are invested in an unflinching approach to their subject matter. They are at once fierce and tender in their acuity.' – Dorothy Price Personal Feeling Is the Main Thing is published by Elephant in association with Victoria Miro Gallery.

Chantal Joffe: Personal Feeling is the Main Thing

Arts & Photography

Blackshaw, Gemma

JOFFE, Chantal

Price, Dorothy

History & Criticism

Laurence King Publishing

An engaging look at how the middle classes of fin-de-siècleVienna used innovative portraiture to define their identity During the great flourishing of modern art in fin-de-siècleVienna, artists of that city focused on images of individuals. Their portraits depict artists, patrons, families, friends, intellectual allies, and society celebrities from the upwardly mobile middle classes. Viewed as a whole, the images allow us to reconstruct the subjects’ shifting identities as the Austro-Hungarian Empire underwent dramatic political changes, from the 1867 Ausgleich (Compromise) to the end of World War I. This is viewed as a time when the avant-garde overthrew the academy, yet Facing the Modern tells a more complex story of the time through thought-provoking texts by numerous leading art historians. Their writings examine paintings by innovative artists such as Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele alongside earlier works, blurring the conventionally-held distinctions between 19th-century and early-20th-century art, and revealing surprising continuities in the production and consumption of portraits. This compelling book features works not only by famous names but also by lesser-known female and Jewish artists, giving a more complete picture of the time.

Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900

National Gallery London

Rising to prominence in Vienna alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka in the turbulent years around the First World War, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is one of the most important artists of the early 20th century and a central figure of Austrian Expressionism. He produced some of the most radical depictions of the human figure created in modern times – so radical that in 1912 Schiele was imprisoned for two months for exhibiting his ‘offensive’ nudes. At the trial the judge is alleged to have burned some of the artist’s drawings in open court with a candle flame. Accompanying the first ever museum show in this country devoted entirely to the artist, this publication will explore in detail one of Schiele’s most vital and original subjects – his extraordinary drawings and watercolors of male and female nudes. It will bring together an outstanding group of the artist’s works to chart his groundbreaking approach during his short but urgent career. Schiele’s technical virtuosity, highly original vision and unflinching depictions of the naked figure distinguish these works as being among his most significant contributions to the development of modern art. This sharply focused catalogue will be provide an opportunity to examine more than thirty of these radical works, assembled from international public and private collections for the exhibition. Schiele arrived in Vienna in 1906, aged just fifteen, to train as an artist. He quickly proved his precocious talent and the following year sought out Klimt, who mentored Schiele and helped establish his reputation. Nothing he produced during these first few years in Vienna prepares us for the extraordinary breakthrough Schiele made in 1910 when he began to draw the figure in an entirely new way and the subject of the nude took on an increasingly important role. Highly gestural and expressive, his nudes from this year are manipulated to perform a psychologically charged body language that soon became a hallmark of his art. This catalogue will begin with a rich selection of nudes from this seminal year including a number of Schiele’s powerful naked self-portraits. The main section will explore his provocative nudes of the following few years when he pushed artistic convention to offer a more direct expression of human experience, bound up with themes of self-expression, procreation, sexuality and eroticism. Many of these works affronted contemporary standards of morality and were considered pornographic. The last part of the book will look at works from the final productive years of Schiele’s short life before his untimely death in 1918 from Spanish influenza, aged just 28. His later nudes suggest a more classical solidity and sometimes lyricism, whilst retaining their unflinching rawness as naked bodies. Throughout the book will be a number of major self-portraits, demonstrating how Schiele’s approach was linked to his sense of self and his ongoing examination of his physical and psychological make-up. An important aspect of all these works is Schiele’s unique draftsmanship and the authors will investigate the development of his technique and approach to the medium that he made so distinctively his own, as well as his wide-ranging influence on the course of modern art that still resonates today.

Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude (The Courtauld Gallery)

Vergo, Peter

Wright, Barnaby

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Paul Holberton Publishing

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