KLIMT, SCHIELE, MOSER, KOKOSCHKA — VIENNA 1900
Grand Palais (until January 23, 2006)

First of all, a caveat: go early. You want to be leaning on the doors at 10am, preferably clutching a ticket you’ve bought in advance (see below for details). This is the first time for nearly 20 years that the art of the Secession has been featured in France, and in a city that has almost nothing from Vienna’s golden age in its permanent collections, it’s bound to attract le tout Paris, so the busiest times are going to be unbearable.

For all the quality of the work on display, though, this is one of the worst-hung exhibitions I’ve ever seen — the pictures packed into low, underlit rooms, the walls painted in gloomy and overbearing colours.

Don’t let that put you off. Vienna in the first two decades of the 20th century was one of those rare places, and moments, where talent and opportunity collide, and many of its most memorable products are on show here. Sadly, the two icons of Klimt’s oeuvre, The Kiss and the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, are still in the Belvedere, Vienna, but many of Schiele’s masterpieces have been gathered in this one space. Not surprisingly, it’s his talent that shines most clearly — and never more so than in the final room. One of the annoying things about the hanging is the way it’s buried several of the most important stories — notably the meteoric development of Schiele’s powers of expression between 1909 and 1910. Even so, the message leaks out. All you need do is compare his portrait of the painter Hans Massmann — a timid, flat thing from 1909 that, perversely, hangs by the exit — with the holy trinity of works from the following year, portraits of Eduard Kosmack and Arthur Roessler, as well as, most memorably, his incendiary self-portrait. Ninety-five years on, the sense of energy is still breathtaking.

Admissions: open daily, except Tuesday, 10am-8pm, and until 10pm on Wednesday; £7.20. For timed tickets, call 00 33 1 44 13 17 17 or visit www.rmn.fr or www.fnac.com.

RUSSIAN ART IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY
Musée d’Orsay (until January 8, 2006)

It’s currently the avowed intention of the Musée d’Orsay to expose Paris to the works of other nations and cities of the same era. The Klimt & Co show — curated by the president of the Musée d’Orsay, Serge Lemoine — is one example. This is another. Subtitled “the quest for identity”, it examines Russia’s rediscovery of itself, through painting, architecture, photography and the decorative arts, after 200 years of aping the rest of Europe.

So, you will find not only evocative canvases of vast Russian landscapes, but plans for new dachas and railway stations, as well as ethnographic photographs of peasants and merchants from the outer reaches of the Tsar’s domains.

The only pity is that there isn’t more painting. Most of the work on show is deeply conservative in style, but in its choice and treatment of subject matter, it has a revolutionary impact — never more so than in Sergei Vassilievitch Ivanov’s On the Road, the Death of a Resettler, from 1889. In the hands of an Englishman or Frenchman, this would be a mawkish scene — returning from an unsuccessful attempt to forge a new life in Siberia, a Russian peasant has died, leaving his wife and child utterly bereft in the middle of the sun-baked steppe. Ivanov’s gaze, however, is unflinching, his touch measured and realistic — and all the more heartbreaking for it.

Admissions: Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-6pm, to 9.45pm on Thursday and from 9am on Sunday; £6.50. For timed tickets, visit www.fnac.com or go to the kiosk by the museum’s main entrance. Again, you need to come early, especially if you haven’t got a ticket — aim to be at the door half an hour before it opens. For more information, call 00 33 1 40 49 48 14 or visit www.musee-orsay.fr.

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()DADA
Centre Pompidou (until January 9, 2006)

Finally, Dada — the irreverent, iconoclastic movement that spread like wildfire in the years immediately after the first world war. Eventually, it gave birth to surrealism, but this new show, on the sixth floor of the Pompidou, stops before that second phase. More’s the pity, because of all the great avant-garde moments of the 20th century, this is the one with the least to show for itself. A few short films, some yellowing collages and opaque abstracts, and the angry paintings of George Grosz, Georg Scholz and Otto Dix — and that’s pretty much it. On the evidence presented here, the Dadaists were too busy writing letters and having parties to manage more.

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