Life in Motion: Egon Schiele / Francesca Woodman review – an absurd pairing

Tate Liverpool
The Austrian painter and US photographer are great artists who explored frank sexuality and deserve retrospectives – separate ones, that is

There are no sharks in Liverpool’s Albert Dock, as far as I know. The deep, still water overlooked by Tate Liverpool, which opened in a sensitively converted warehouse here in 1988, is devoid of dorsal fins. Yet perhaps there are pelagic predators lurking after all, for this gallery has chosen to mark its 30th anniversary by jumping the shark – or whatever image you prefer for a staggering lapse into the absurd.

Life in Motion, an exhibition that for no good reason asks us to compare the two extremely different artistic visions of the Austrian draughtsman Egon Schiele and the 1970s US photographer Francesca Woodman, is an exhibition so shallow and patronising that it suggests Tate Liverpool has lost all respect for its audience.

Related: 'He took sex to the point of oblivion': Tracey Emin on her hero Egon Schiele

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