A hilariously abrupt portrait by Gabriele Münter, at Tate Modern, shows a pink-faced man at a dinner table, eyebrows raised with candid amazement. His eyes are two startled blue dots. He is the Russian painter Alexej Jawlensky, and Münter’s firm black outlines curve affectionately round her friend’s balding head, down his tweed jacket and into the small theatre of objects on the table, culminating in a neglected sandwich.
Listening (Portrait of Jawlensky) is the title of this 1909 painting, but Jawlensky is not absorbing music. According to Münter, he is actually listening to her lover Wassily Kandinsky rabbiting on about his spiritual theories of art (inspired by theosophy, to which he had a lifelong attachment). Indeed, Kandinsky is still holding forth, this time visible and centre stage, in Münter’s double portrait of 1912 with the painter Erma Bossi.
