Vienna is a guarded, secretive city, where people go about their business privately, and very often, quite literally, turn underground. When I think of the artistic climate in which we live, the prevailing worship of autobiographical indulgence and ill-eduated expressiveness, it’s no surprise that artists who care for draughtsmanship, intelligent mark-making and the knowledgeable construction of pictures exist at the fringe. Without even a chance to secede, for we were never admitted in the first place, we retire to the cellars beneath our city and keep our happy occupations among ourselves.
Only, we ourselves have grown so much since we tentatively began meeting over a common interest in investigating the human form. Our collective expands and changes, absorbing new members with their own priorities, and our sessions adapt organically, organisational responsibilities shift hands, emphases adjust. But our many faces reflect a common conviction that makes us something of a movement: our very existence asserts with Wittgenstein (1953: 178),
‘Der menschliche Körper ist das beste Bild der menschlichen Seele.’
(‘The human body is the best picture of the human soul.’)
© Christine Schmidl
On Thursday we put on our second group exhibition. Our familiar Keller was bursting at the seams, filled with the merry faces of our dear friends and families, of long-lost acquaintances; the walls were decked with the astonishingly diverse works of twenty artists—some amateurs, some professionals, some students, some in sister artistic fields, and at all stages in between. Quick, gestural notations hung alongside careful, long-term studies; painted portraits beside pencilled figure drawings; shape-laden abstractions beside colour-drenched impressions of the figure; animated marker drawings next to fresh digital works.
Our hunger for more visual material connects us with so many other circles—our friends include musicians and dancers and scientists who all submit to our voracious appetite for interesting faces. It also means we are fortunate enough to be closely acquainted with exceptional musicians who enchanted us with Grieg and Debussy, performing with gravity and with spunk, showing us that finely-tuned expressive control over their auditory media which we search for in our own visual ones.
© Christine Schmidl
If Vienna has taught me anything about life, it’s that if you can’t find your place, go underground. Rilke (1997 [1903]: 14) urges us from the distant past,
‘Sie sehen nach außen, und das vor allem dürften Sie jetzt nicht tun. Niemand kann Ihnen raten und helfen, niemand. Es gibt nur ein einziges Mittel. Gehen Sie in sich.’
(‘You are looking to the outside, and that above all you should not be doing now. Nobody can help and advise you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself.’) And when you turn inward, sometimes you are pleasantly surprised to find that you are not alone after all, and the like-minded fringe-dwellers will find you. The glamorous, reticent yet ebullient Vienna of our dreams is alive and well, and eluding you just beneath the surface.
© Christine Schmidl
Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1997. Briefe an einen jungen Dichter / Briefe an eine unge Frau. Diogenes: Zürich.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Basil Blackwell: Oxford.
