Face the Modern

From 9 October to 12 January, the Viennese fin de siècle will be much in evidence in Trafalgar Square. Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900, the National Gallery's major exhibition about portraiture's role within the arts in Vienna and the upheaval that marked the years around 1900, brings together works by Klimt, Schiele, Schoenberg, Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl, alongside the paintings of their Biedermeier and Gründerzeit predecessors, as well as the death masks of Beethoven, Mahler, Klimt and Schiele. Many of the exhibits are being shown in Britain for the first time.

And many of these works of art cry demand contextualisation. I'm not only thrilled that the National Gallery is programming an impressive series of cross-cultural events but also that I'm personally able to take part. On 7 October at 1pm I'll be giving a lecture entitled Confronting our own fin de siècle, looking at the way in which our life and culture today eerily mimics that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 100 years ago.

I'll also be speaking at the Exhibition Study Day on 30 November, talking about Alma Mahler's role within 'Vienna 1900'. Further details of that event will be published in due course. Alma will also feature in a music and discussion event on 9 December, which is part of a larger series of concerts connected with the exhibition. I'll be discussing Alma and Gustav Mahler's songs with Sholto Kynoch, the Artistic Director of the Oxford Lieder Festival, in the context of the Mahlers' often difficult marriage. And Sholto and I will also be introducing the Sounds of the Salon on the 11 January, with music by Schubert, Brahms and others. More information will be posted soon about these and the musical events.

This kind of programming has proved strangely rare in Britain to date, but with the recent Ballets Russes exhibition at the V&A, Vermeer and Music at the National Gallery until this Sunday, and the forthcoming Facing the Modern show, exhibitions celebrating the correspondence between the visual, the music, the literary and other artistic disciplines is becoming more prevalent. Given the success of Alex Ross's new-historicist approach with The Rest is Noise, in turn inspiring this year's Festival of the same name at the Southbank Centre, we should do more to build these contextual bridges. If we learn nothing else from the Viennese fin de siècle it is, as E.M. Forster put it, that we should 'live in fragments no longer'. Click here for more information on Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900.

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