Among the initial observations prompted by “Alexei Jawlensky” at the Neue Gallery—the first U.S. retrospective devoted to the Russian-born Expressionist—is that Jawlensky was a better Van Gogh than Van Gogh himself. Toward the beginning of the exhibition, viewers encounter Portrait of Marie Castell (1906), a canvas that could be mistaken for the real thing. The thickly applied brushstrokes, acidic colors, stiffly rendered contour, flattened composition, and prole-ish character of Castell—poor Vincent couldn’t have done as well. And, in significant ways, he didn’t. Sure, Jawlensky followed on the heels of Post-Impressionism; pictorial tics that were revolutionary ten to fifteen years earlier were, if not outmoded, then accepted by advanced painters. Still, it’s worth noting how adept Jawlensky is at navigating space, delineating anatomy, and bringing variety to the picture’s facture and chromatic range. Talk all you want about how Van Gogh’s ham-handedness connotes passion and commitment—he rarely achieved the virtuosity, the light and electricity, of Portrait of Marie Castell. That, and Castell looks at us with a degree of self-possession. Van Gogh smothered sitters with an overheated temperament—his own. For Jawlensky, “heat” was an option, not the sine qua non. So much so that the “Expressionist” tag seems misapplied over the course of the oeuvre.
Jawlensky’s claim on history is guaranteed by his being a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter.
“Alexei Jawlensky” spotlights a talented stylist of limited scope. Organized by Vivian Endicott Barnett, a curator specializing in German and Russian Modernism,