Vienna

It’s tough to see everything you should or mean to see, even on a relatively leisurely trip.  Even more frustrating is trying to remember more than a fraction of what you do get to see.  I can recommend everything I’ve seen in this post, so I don’t know how useful it will be for prioritization.

Even if it were completely empty, the Belvedere would be well worth a visit because, as the guides are happy to repeatedly point it, it is one of the best examples of Baroque architecture in the world.  Really, it is two examples, since there is a Lower and an Upper Belvedere, the later built when the Lower was judged insufficiently extravagant. By it’s owner, Prince Eugene.  (quick parenthetical- it’s kind of funny that in France you an find statues of Napoleon, and nearly everywhere else in Europe, of people who fought him).

I had a good look at the Impressionist and Romantic , and at the Symbolists and Decadence exhibition.  They also have Klimt’s “The Kiss” here, and if I recall correctly, I think I’ve seen it twice because it was at the Neue Galerie in NY a while ago.  I don’t think I understand the reasoning behind the symbolists, and am generally not sympathetic to mysticism, but there are certainly some very striking images.  Unfortunately, I only got the briefest look at the inter-war period. As for Gironcoli, I only saw what was inside, not the garden, but when it comes to this (and some contemporaries no less an authority than MOMA assure are among them most important artists, like Beuys) I'm a philistine.  It’s not clear what the social or political points are, or how this responds/ to or refutes an artistic tradition.  Nor do I see the aesthetic appeal or innovation.  Maybe it will click at some point.  Regardless, Belvedere is not to be missed.

The Leopold museum was the only one I think I saw most of, which was exhausting but worth it.  Someone told me once Klimt is excessively feminine, based mostly on the supposed popularity of the Kiss posters with college women.  Even if you buy this (I don’t) seeing a broader selection of work would likely change your mind.  Death and Life has a particular impact.  Egon Schiele is well represented.  The fauves might be considered more evolutionary than revolutionary with the benefit of hindsight; but one can only imagine how provocative Schiele must have been.  He’s still pretty provocative today.  It’s not surprising to see a Freud quote on the wall next to one of his works.

The Murmoc is abruptly modern compared to its surroundings.  The portion of the permanent collection seen had some really nice things from the first half of the 20^th C, including more Schieler.  They (audio guide again) say this piece can be seen as a metaphor for life:

 

There’s a death’s-head if you look closely.

 The main exhibition is Albert Oelen.  His work is more interesting with guide.  I appreciate his using painting and 2 dimensional works when much of the contemporary avante guard insisted the form was inherently “reactionary” and “dead”.  Yet I can’t help wondering how it will stack up over time against some of the greatest works from centuries ago.  I wonder if some of his work is representative of much of the art world becoming too self-referential, relating primarily to previous artists and artistic movement, to the detriment of the artist and the world as a subject.  Though much of his work was about “de-contextualizing”, he allows for some influences:

At the War Museum, the WWI section is closed.  The most arresting exhibit was the car Franz Ferdinand was in when assassinated.  He was killed when his visit to victims of a previous, failed attempt shortly before provided a target of opportunity to another enemy.  The museum also includes the bloodstain uniform he wore and the chaise long on which he died, greatly bringing to life the precipitating event of the First World War.  There is also a comprehensive display of interwar and WWI related exhibits, including the famous 8.8cm German gun, and all sorts of Third Reich and “Anschluss” related material. 

I'd hoped I might find a little more the trip about how Austrians see themselves.  Do they consider themselves primarily German, but through the twists of history it did not work out?  Or rather do they consider their independence a close run thing to be proudly preserved?  There is some evidence for both views.  Today, all the guides insist the German annexation was the darkest day in Austrian history.   This seems somewhat disingenuous.  Ethnic nationalism was one of the main forces that undermined the Hapsburg empire, and there was at the least a substantial portion of the population which enthusiastically welcomed the union with Germany.  On the other hand, language notwithstanding, the Hapsburgs had fought the Prussians, whose empire Germany could broadly be considered between 1871 and 1945. 

In any case, the museum also includes a surprisingly expansive navel section, and a tank garden.

I took a guided buss tour took me to Schonbrunn, the “mini” Versailles of the Hapsburgs.  It is an incredibly beautiful palace, as a quick Google search will affirm.  It is free to access the grounds outside, and it was nice to see people using such a beautiful venue as a park (as with Belvedere).  It was incredibly crowded, reminding that tourism is now the number one industry of the city.  If the reader goes, I recommend a guide.  You’ll get bits you’d otherwise likely miss.  For example, an impressive painting of a Royal wedding is even more so than it first appears, because each portrait is of an actual attendee whose portrait was separately made by the artist and then transferred to the larger work , which must have taken years.  All the attendees are accurately recorded with one notable exception- the Queen had a young Mozart painted in even though his first visit to was two years after the wedding.  The tour also shows the “Napoleon” room, which is the room used when he twice occupied Vienna, and the room in which  his son died a few years after his ultimate defeat.

            Vienna is known as much for music as visual art.  A Mozart Concert at the “Golden Hall” in the Musikverein seemed like it would be enjoyable and exceeded expectations.  The singers, hamming it up quite a bit, seemed to enjoy putting on the show and the packed hall, itself beautiful, also did.

The cheapest ticket had me on the floor looking up rather than down as most of the rest of the audience, but the view was still fine, the sound exactly the same.

Vienna orderly, quiet,  about 15% smaller than about 100 years ago on eve of WWI.

Vienna Art Museum (Kunsthistorisches  Mudeum) – I spent a couple of hours here, which is a mistake.  Though not a sprawling monster of a museum like, for example, the Met in NY, about twice that time is called for, and possibly more if you are up for it.    An interesting factoid is that this museum and the nearby science museum, where commissioned by the Hapsburgs and designed for purpose.  This is unusual in Europe, where converted palaces are more common.  The Dutch Golden period art should be seen:

  

In the face of paintings like these, when people claim that painting is dead, or that craft is irrelevant, the perhaps apocryphal story of the late  19^th century patent officer comes to mind.  He claimed that he and his office would soon be irrelevant, since all possible inventions would soon be patented.   Sometimes it feels like contemporary artists have forgotten how to paint, or maybe can’t be bothered; this sort of thing took time and care, which might explain there being only a few dozen odd known Vermeers.

There are also amazing objects, like this salt and pepper Cellar:           

Or this hand carved stone bowl, apparently as few as 2 mm thick in spots:

Not that a week in mostly in the center spent often in or looking for a museum can give any sort of realistic view, but Vienna as a whole give an impression of placid prosperity, which belies it’s turbulent history.  It is interesting to note that it is about 15% smaller now than it was a century ago on the eve of the Great War, perhaps reflecting its transformation from a bustling cosmopolitan capital of a major empire to a mid size capital of a small, wealthy, homogeneous country.  One of my subjective impressions was of literal quietness; the extent to which you can hear your own footsteps or a spoken conversation a half block away.

Albertina Museum

I recommend the Matisse and the Fauves show at the Albertina wholeheartedly.  Even with a colicky toddler, multiple guided tours and several high school classes, this is worth seeing;  it is one of the most beautiful and interesting collection of paintings I’ve seen.  Matisse has always been a little hit or miss to me, but his best is undeniably beautiful.  Some of these artists are so iconic it’s tough to imagine the uproar they caused a hundred odd years ago. It’s also curious that Cezanne and Van Gough, who are often referred to as strong influences by the audio guide and which can be seen to varying degrees in the paintings, didn’t pave the way for the “Fauve” with the critics more than they did.

That said, my favorites were by Derain, specifically the paintings of London commissioned by his dealer.  Braque, not known as a Fauvist, was part of the group, as was Marice de Viaminck, who I didn’t know before.  Georges Roualt doesn’t look like the others; his dark, gloomy pictures seemed to presage the dark social commentary of German interwar artists, but the audio guide assures he belongs.  There are other important artists also and there’s no point going over the whole list here; just click or copy http://www.albertina.at/jart/prj3/albertina/main.jart?rel=en&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1202307119260&ausstellungen_id=1313041137172

 Into your browser to get a better idea of what your in for if you go.

I also got a quick look at the Gottfried Helnwein exhibition.   It’s tempting dismiss him as shock for the sake of being shocking; itself is something of an artistic tradition.  I mean, bleeding children in Nazi SS uniforms?  Is it Halloween already?  However, there are reasons this is worthwhile.  For one thing, many if the images are arresting.  The painting technique is photorealistic to where some almost seemed like giclees, leaving the viewer to wonder, as with Dutch still lifes, exactly how it’s pulled it off.   As for the content, the audioguide narrator explains, with some help from the artist himself, that much of his art is a reaction to the continued suffering of innocents. Also, growing up in post war Austria, the artist saw a refusal of adults to seriously address issues of their recent history while making a big deal of trivial things.  Therefore this could be seen not just as shocking the midle class but as part of a tradition social and political commentary; a tradition it seems much 20^th century German art is part, and with reason. 

I was there for a little under three hours, which is enough time for either, not really for both.

An Issue with Dr. King’s Legacy

On the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s historic address, there has been much public commemoration and reflection.   The esteem in which the country holds Dr. King is warranted.  Nearly 100 years after the Civil War bloodily redressed America's original sin of slavery, the persistence of pervasive racism, particularly in the south, was unconscionable.   Today, I believe a majority of Americans consider Jim Crow a disastrous historical anomaly, and few, even in the deep south would want to return to those policies, even as de-facto segregation often persists.

Dr. King deserves a great deal of credit for getting to this consensus as completely as is case today, and with less violence than may have been.  Nor do Dr. Kings personal weaknesses detract significantly from his legacy.  His philandering is a personal matter and have no real relevance, and the plagiarism of his PhD thesis, though more problematic in King’s capacity as a role model, pales in significance  compared to his legacy.

Some criticisms King made of the US were, at a minimum, overblown, but also don’t really have much to do with legacy.  (Though you don’t have to be sympathetic to American foreign policy to conclude King’s famous assertion about the US as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” is absurd considering what was happening in China and the Soviet Union at the time.)

So what’s the qualification implied in the title of this post?   

Dr. King bears great responsibility for the conflation of social democracy with civil rights and racial equality.  He came to believe that “If we are to achieve a real equality,” (as King wrote from the Selma, Alabama jail in 1965,) “the U.S. will have to adopt a modified form of socialism.”.  Note that I’ve not seen any credible evidence that King was an agent of foreign powers, or that he was working for any foreign led communist or socialist movements.  He consistently opposed violent means to achieve socialist ends.  Rather, he advocated a peaceful reorganization of the US along socialist lines, and to this day, that position has become inextricably tied to the civil rights movement.  This has hurt the country as a whole and the black community in particular.  King was not wrong to attack the poverty he saw afflicting African Americans and others, but to advocate socialism as redress.  It is not often emphasized today, that was clearly and specifically what he had in mind:  “"the roots" of the economic injustice he sought to overcome "are in the [capitalist] system rather [than] in men or faulty operations".  As early as 1952 King wrote “today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”

To this day, the close association of socialist ideology and the movement King led has undermined the ability of market-based solutions from making inroads in the civil rights circles.  

This is debate worth having.  If it is possible that a market based allocation of the resources is necessary to develop from developing to a first world standard of living, that view should be considered.  For example, check out this synopsis of Hernando de Soto of Peru, who believes that a deeper penetration of capitalist institutions and property rights are the best way to help the poor around the world- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_Polar

I’m not unbiased in this proposed debate.  I don’t believe new wealth can be generated unless there are strong capitalist institutions and the majority of resources are allocated by market mechanisms. As a group, those most in need of a functioning market economy are those with the least.  Those already well off are better poised to game a more politicized system.  This does not mean an anarchic  free for all.  Such an arrangement is necessary for enough wealth creation to support programs for those truly necessitous of them. 

King was a great man who accomplished great things and paid the ultimate price in the service of a noble cause.  However, until the socialist component of his agenda is abandoned, or at least seriously debated within the movement he led, those he most wished to help will suffer for it, and his legacy be clouded.