translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
070311: MUSA – Museum auf Abruf Lieselott Beschorner – Between Abstraction and Grotesque
MUSA – Museum auf Abruf
Lieselott Beschorner – Between Abstraction and Grotesque
01.02.11 – 12.03.11
Emotionalisms and grotesqueness
In recent years the Austrian exhibition market has rediscovered female artists. The Kunsthalle Krems presented works by Paula Modersohn-Becker for the first time, the Bawag Contemporary displayed beautiful bulky installations by Phillida Barlow, who – until then- was practically unknown outside of Britain, and the Kunstforum devoted itself to Birgit Jürgenssen.
Currently, the MUSA is displaying the exciting, contemporary, diversified and, at times, in its quality faltering, oeuvre of the Viennese artist Lieselott Beschorner. She was among the first female artists to be accepted as a member of the Vienna Secession in 1951. Yet even this “knighthood” did not keep the now 83 year-old to withdraw almost completely from the art market.
Beschorner’s early works proved to be rather conventional – landscapes and nude paintings, skilfully made but not really innovative. Her subsequent “emotional” works are committed to the aesthetics of her time, drawings in which she piles eyes and faces on top of each other; as well as collages created with torn paper. However, even more fascinating than these works, with which Beschorner definitely proves her enthusiasm for experimentation, are her eerie woollen dolls that remind of Voodoo fetish and their materiality reminding of Louise Bourgeois’s work; equally original are her surreal collages, in which photo snippets of mouths, eyes and noses float on waves in the style of Pop Art, which Beschorner described as “Grotesquenesses”. And with her “Stocking object”, entangled legs with stockings and ladies shoes, she seems to have pre-empted a subsequent concept of sculpture.
But possibly it is Beschorner’s own house that can be denoted as her most important piece of art. Walls in her house, decorated with a remarkable number of wax and button dolls, are depicted in the exhibition catalogue, as well as a closet with “spice stockings”. Lieselott Beschorner rightfully deserves her rediscovery, despite her ambivalent oeuvre.
By Nina Schedlmayer
MUSA – Museum auf Abruf
1010 Vienna, Felderstrasse 68, near the Town Hall
Tel: +43 1 4000 8400
Fax: +43 1 4000 99 8400
Email: musa@musa.at
http://www.musa.at
Opening hours: Tue – Fri: 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Thu: 11 a.m. – 8 p.m., Sat: 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
070311
MUSA
1010 Wien, Felderstraße 6-8, neben dem Rathaus
Tel: +43 (0)1 4000 8400, Fax: +43 (0)1 4000 99 8400
Email: musa@musa.at
http://www.musa.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di - Fr: 11:00 - 18:00, Do: 11:00 - 20:00, Sa: 11:00 - 16:00 Uhr
MUSA
1010 Wien, Felderstraße 6-8, neben dem Rathaus
Tel: +43 (0)1 4000 8400, Fax: +43 (0)1 4000 99 8400
Email: musa@musa.at
http://www.musa.at
Öffnungszeiten: Di - Fr: 11:00 - 18:00, Do: 11:00 - 20:00, Sa: 11:00 - 16:00 Uhr