19-10-2026: VIENNA, CITY OF WONDERS
I was in Vienna from October 3rd to October 10th. Back in the nineties, I had a great gallery there; I ‘knew’ the city.
There is so much to share that I have divided this blog into several parts; like an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert...
THE CITY
Vienna was once the capital of a global empire; everything is laid out on a grand, expansive scale comparable to London or Paris.
I stayed in a very quiet apartment far from the city center. This wasn't an issue; the public transport is excellent. Furthermore, I have gray hair, and people in this city are very courteous; I lost count of how many times I was offered a seat.
I have coffee (and an apple strudel) for breakfast; in this city, that’s a real treat. And for lunch I once had a Wiener schnitzel...
Lunch in an authentic Viennese café was an experience. The waitstaff were dressed in distinguished black and white, there were Thonet chairs, and at the table next to me sat two elderly ladies, both wearing hats, enjoying a slice of Sacher torte. I didn’t take a photo of the ladies... but I took it all in and gave it my seal of approval.
THE KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM
Naturally, I was drawn to the collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings. I will not talk about the two self-portraits by Rembrandt this time, he is one of my all time heroes; I’ve already written so often about him...
In the same room, there is a floral still life by Rachel Ruysch. I saw two of her still lives in London, and there is another one in the Gallery of Honor at the Rijksmuseum. I am deeply impressed by her work. Is it because she was a woman that there isn’t a good book to be found about her paintings?
Inevitably, I must talk about Vermeer’s painting 'THE ART OF PAINTING'. Much has been written about this canvas, but that holds little interest for me. I sat before it for about half an hour. Everyone visits a museum in their own way.
We live in an age of 'haste and stress'. Nonsense. It is a matter of mindset. It’s not that I spent the entire time staring at the painting, or that I was pondering all sorts of questions about it.
Instead, I try to let the painting present itself to me, to approach it with an 'empty' mind.
The light... the light that seems to hover above the table, vibrating... The refinement, the love with which everything has been painted... the silence that emanates from it...
And then, suddenly, a woman in a blue jacket stands in front of it... she gazes at the painting for a few seconds, then checks her mobile phone to see what it depicts, who created it, and whether it’s an important work. The whole process couldn’t have taken more than nine seconds. What surprised me was that she didn’t take a selfie, blue jacket and all...
Most visitors rush through a museum like that. Take a look, snap a selfie, and on to the next attraction.
After Ruysch and Vermeer (and, of course, the two self-portraits by Rembrandt), I decided to leave the room featuring the Bruegels for next time.
One thing I did have to pay attention to, however, was 'Velázquez’s little dog'. Gala loves both cats (she looked after the cats at my place, together with her mother) and dogs. So, a photo had to be sent.
According to my art history teacher, this is the most beautifully painted little dog in the history of Western art (and I agree with him). It lends a sorrowful quality to the portrait of the poor Infanta, an effect heightened by the dark, foreboding background. The Infanta did not live long. In the Habsburg family, there was a bit too much intermarriage among cousins and other close relatives.
On my way out, two things caught my eye, and I had to turn back. The breasts of Hélène Fourment...
She proudly displays them to her husband, who hangs on the opposite wall in the same room. And she also shows them to everyone in the hallway, pointing the way toward the department of Flemish and Dutch painting... It is actually quite remarkable, given the current climate of the new kind of prudishness.
AROUND 1900
Around 1900, Vienna was an incredibly fascinating city. There are too many names to list: Freud, Wittgenstein, Kraus, Loos, Mach, Boltzmann, Klimt, Mahler, Musil, Richard Strauss, Schönberg, Hofmannsthal... not to mention all the politicians who made such a mess throughout the 20th century.
I visited four museums: the Belvedere, the Leopold, the Vienna Secession building, and the Albertina. I’ll lump them all together here.
I’ll be brief about the Vienna Secession. The building has always intrigued me. I viewed Klimt’s mural and was pleasantly surprised to find that, using headphones, one could listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony while in the room with the mural.
It is a building that hosts exhibitions of contemporary art; the exhibition on display, held little to no appeal for me.
In the magnificent Leopold Museum, I admired, among other things, works by Max Oppenheimer and a few interiors from around 1900.
Max Oppenheimer (a discovery for me) was initially good friends with Egon Schiele. This later turned into enmity. The reason is unclear to me. Artists; a strange crazy breed...
I prefer Egon Schiele to Gustav Klimt... More on Klimt later.
Initially, Schiele was a follower of Klimt, but he eventually departed from that path, embracing a more adventurous approach to his way of painting and his choice of subjects.
Tragically, Egon Schiele died far too young from the Spanish flu; he was only 28 years old. It is astonishing how much he managed to create in such a short span of time.
And he is not the only one to have left the stage too soon. I was not very familiar with the work of Richard Gerstl, who took his own life at the age of twenty-five, an act that followed his involvement in an affair with the wife of Arnold Schönberg. As for his paintings, they tend toward formlessness and aimless, frantic brushwork; an overzealous pursuit of a "modern, wild, and expressive style."
Women... I’ve ended up in a different country twice because of a woman: we truly are the weaker sex!
Another man who struggled with a woman was Oskar Kokoschka. He was head over heels in love with Alma Mahler, who left him for Walter Gropius.
I once had a video in which Nicole played one of the many 'Almas' in a wonderful theatre play, one I unfortunately never got to see in person. Alma certainly flitted from man to man...
Poor Oskar had a doll made that looked just like her.
The amusing end to the story of the doll is that, having freed himself from his hopeless love, he beheaded the doll and buried her during a grand garden party. The police, alerted by the neighbors, assumed he had murdered a woman. For the full story, click on the doll.
I have seen the 'Mona Lisa' of Vienna: Gustav Klimt’s 'The Kiss'.
Perhaps it was the lighting. I found it a bit underwhelming. I prefer this woman holding a severed male head: Judith and Holofernes.
I am still at the Belvedere...
PICASSO AND BACON
I return to the Albertina. It just kept getting better. Find the restroom!
The permanent collection is definitely well worth seeing. Among other things, I admired Dürer’s 'The Hare'.
Every single hair... And here, I must add a critical note. How is it possible that a hideous pink replica of this creature stands above the museum entrance? The idiot who created this 'work of art' is Ottmar Hoerl. I would have guessed Jeff Koons...
Too often, I find that many artists in contemporary art have slipped into the muddily banal.
I cannot hold my tongue; in the exhibition 'PICASSO-BACON, what it feels like to be human,' I encountered quite a few unsavory works.
Visiting this exhibition is a must!
I didn’t expect much (WRONG!!!), especially after having seen the exhibition 'Francis Bacon: Human Presence' at the National Portrait Gallery in London two years ago. I wrote about that exhibition; click on Francis Bacon to go to the blog post.
And Picasso... It must be said, credit where credit is due. Picasso opened the doors. And yet...especially in this exhibition, he really falls short for me. The word 'human' appears in the title of this exhibition, but all too often, I find a lack of humanity in Picasso’s work. While the human element is frequently palpable, and can even be painful in Bacon’s art, in Picasso’s work often it feels like mere illustration; his figures are like acrobatic puppets; they may be weeping, but to me, these are nothing more than cartoon tears. There is no flesh on them, certainly no human flesh. It is masterful bungling... What about this cat; what are we to make of its body, constructed like a set of building blocks for children?
In my view, one should transform the realistic depiction by forcing a credible kink or break, strengthening the image by deviating from the faithful representation. In too many of Picasso’s works, I find the complexity forced and devoid of soul. With Bacon, things can sometimes verge on the banal, yet his paint becomes 'flesh', capable of inflicting a genuine impact.
In the case of so many of Picasso’s works, isn’t it the recognition of his genius that compels you to bow before them, when, in reality, you might just be bowing to an overly self-assured, shallow macho?
It becomes truly painful for me when he reaches old age and descends into the ramblings of an old man, obsessing over cunts and tits (sorry, I can’t think of any other words for it). While with Rubens I might feel the desire to lovingly caress the breasts of Hélène, in the work of the elderly Picasso, I see only hasty, slapdash strokes meant to represent tits and cunts.
It’s not just the haste, the haste driven by the death that was nipping at his heels in his later years. I can’t help myself: "How many cunts did you paint today, Dick-asso?"
Too often, I’m reminded of museum visitors who dash from canvas to canvas, convinced they have to see everything in a single afternoon. Quantity over quality.
In Picasso’s work, a vagina is reduced to a 'cunt', just a stroke... 'from one cunt to the next'.
I have no idea what’s going on in the minds of the hasty visitors.
If this exhibition has made one thing clear to me, it’s that this kind of virtuosity all too often descends into empty, banal drivel.
I am very glad to have seen these canvases by Francis Bacon (for the first time!):
There are more great ones to see, but for those, you’ll have to head to the Albertina!
After Vienna, I went to Rome for a portrait commission, which turned into three. Italy always does me good. I saw a wonderful exhibition of works by Pontormo. Perhaps more on that later.
Rome
For now, I’m happy to be back home, ready to immerse myself in the scent of turpentine.
The cats are happy, too; I cooked fresh fish for them and now they’re sitting with full bellies purring away...
