Lange Nacht der Museen

Have I ever shared with you my love for socialist governments 

(ok that was a little exaggerated...the only thing I love about them is all the free culture and art events...but even that in the end comes with a price...mob mentality...and the overcrowded cultural events that come with it) 

Yesterday we enjoyed the Lange Nacht der Museen-one night a year, all the museums in Vienna are open from 6pm till 1 am and if you buy a ticket for 13 euro, you can visit as many museums as you want in that amount of time. Pretty stellar considering the overpriced rates of visiting museums in Vienna. And your ticket is even good as a public transportation ticket. Thank you socialist government. 

Monika and I spent most of the time going around together....while Alina and Fr. Jacques went their ways. Here are some highlights...

1st stop: Künstlerhaus | HANS MAKART (and also some ugly or empty installations that people like to call art.)


An entire societal and artistic era is named after him. his studio was as famous as the art created there. he was lavish and cultured. i think the best word to describe both him and his art: GRANDIOSE

HIS STUDIO : 
(the following is taken from the utmost credible and intellectual source....WIKIPEDIA)

The prince Von Hohenlohe provided Makart with an old foundry at the Gusshausstraße 25 to use as a studio. He gradually turned it into an impressive place full of sculptures, flowers, musical instruments, requisites and jewellery that he used to create classical settings for his portraits, mainly of women. Eventually his studio looked like a salon and became a social meeting point in Vienna. Cosima Wagner described it as a "wonder of decorative beauty, a sublime lumber-room". His luxurious studio served as a model for a great many upper middle-class living rooms. 

The opulent, semi-public spaces of the Makart atelier were the scene of a recurring rendezvous between the artist and his public. The artist became the mediator between different levels of society: he created a socially ambiguous sphere in which nobility and bourgeoisie could encounter one another in mutual veneration of the master, and aestheticized the burgeoning self-awareness of the bourgeoisie by means of historical models drawn from the world of the aristocracy. In this way, an artist like Makart lived out the image that high society had created of him.

Makart became the acknowledged leader of the artistic life of the Vienna, which in the 1870s passed through a period of feverish activity, the chief results of which are the sumptuously decorated public buildings of the Ringstrasse. He not only practised painting, but was also an interior designer, costume designer, furniture designer, and decorator, and his work decorated most of the public spaces of the era. His work engendered the term "Makartstil", or "Makart style", which completely characterized the era.

2nd stop: Secession | GUSTAV KLIMT (and some more rather empty but sometimes amusing installations that people like to call art.)

The highlight of Secession is Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, where no pictures are allowed to be taken. I am of course an admirer of Klimt's work, but this work of art blew me away...at first by the beauty, and then one again after learning the allegory behind the beauty and being drawn deeper into humanity through his art. 

(here how it is displayed currently)

Hopefully you will get to see it at some point in your life, but if not here is the explanation with some images from the internet: 

"Gustav Klimt created the Beethoven Frieze for the XIVth exhibition of the 'Association of Visual Artists--Vienna Secession," which took place from April 15th to June 27, 1902. The exhibition architecture, designed by Josef Hoffman, gave prominent form to the secessionist idea of the total artwork or Gesamtkunstwerk. Conceived as a homage to Ludwig von Beethoven, works by twenty-one Secession members related spatially and thematically to Max Klinger's recently complete statue of the composer. 

Klimt's monumental fresco was located in the left aisle of the main hall, the first space entered by visitors to the exhibition. Today, the frieze is perceived as an autonomous work of art and is widely considered to be among the chef d'oevres of Viennese Art Noveau (Jugendstil....ahh....one of my fav. art movements!!!)

The frieze takes its theme from Richard Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and depicts humankind's search for happiness. To symbolize this yearning, Klimt chose floating genii who lead us into the story, recurring several times in the frieze as a horizontal chain of figures. 

On the left-hand wall, this horizontal band is only interrupted by one group of figures; a naked woman standing and a naked couple kneeling-symbols of suffering humanity-beg the knight in shining armor for help. The "Well-armed Strongman" sets of in search of happiness on humanity's behalf, inwardly spurred on by the two allegorical female figures behind him: Ambition and Compassion. 

In the scene on the narrow wall, humanity must face the dangers and temptations of the "Hostile Forces". 

The giant Typhoeus, a hybrid monster with shaggy fur, blue wings, and a snake-like body, extends across almost the entire wall, fixing the viewer with mother-of-pearl eyes. To his left stand his daughters, the three Gorgons, and above them, mask-like female heads stare out of the pictures, allegorical representations of Sickness, Madness, and Death. The woman to the monster's right symbolize Lasciviousness, Wantonness, and Intemperance, the latter identifiable by her large belly. 

Slightly further to the right cowers the emaciated female figure of "Gnawing Grief". At the top right of the narrow wall, we see the head of a floating genie. In Klimt's narrative, this stands for humankind's wishes and desires overcoming the "Hostile Forces". 

On the right-hand wall, humanity's yearning for happiness finds fulfillment in poetry, portrayed as a female figure with a lyre. This is followed by an empty section under which, in the original exhibition layout, an opening gave a view of Klinger's Beethoven sculpture. 

With this visual inclusion of the Beethoven icon, Klimt prepared for the frieze's dramatic climax: in the final scene, female figures symbolizing the arts lead the way into the ideal realm of art. Klimt's apothoesis of art consists of a kissing couple in front of the "Choir of Angels," referring directly to Beethoven: the final chorus of Beethoven's Ninth, based on Friedrich von Schiller's "Ode to Joy," contains the words,

"This kiss to the whole world."

3rd  stop: Albertina | MAX WEILER


Monika, the lovely übergenerous friend that she is, gave me 2 tickets to the Albertina for my birthday so that we could go together. I have been dying to see the Max Weiler exhibit there and we've just been waiting for the right time to go. Unfortunately the exhibit is finished at the end of this week, so I took the chance during the night to go through the exhibit to get a preview before really diving into it on our visit together later this week. 
As soon as I entered the gallery and stood before the first picture I had the strangest feeling...I felt like dancing. But really, there was breath, joy, delight. It was airy and whimsical, but real and strong in its simplicity. Oh I can't wait to go back. Here is a little preview of what I am taking about, but its nothing compared to the experience of standing before his work. Phenomenal! 




< Whenever I stand in nature, I am overcome by an enormous sense of exaltation. I look, I see and I am moved by a variety of times of day and seasons, by a variety of localities. A feeling of union with nature seizes me. Nature becomes quite transparent for me. I am drawn into the weaving of its being. A great sense of calm streams from the expansive, fulfilled plenum, the most perfect contentment – a joy of becoming one with an immense, sublime creation. Huge respect in the face of such a creative force. Boundless reverence. This would seem to be a world feeling. It becomes visible in artists from different times, almost always in the same way, in a most magnificent way by the Chinese of the 10th to the 13th centuries. (1973)> 

I sense joy less than pain – it’s almost as if pain gives me more pleasure. Give me the pains of joy, the severity of joy.  (1974) 

You may do whatever you want, but it has to be accomplished with intensity as something big, significant, powerful, I cannot find better words. (1961)

I am a thoroughly sensual painter, all that I want to express is above all expressed through my way of painting on the surface, how the lines run on it, how the colours lie on it. Everything can be said with this, and I do say everything with it. And whoever has eyes to see, will see. (1986)

Do not forget: Often, it is the shifting of natural feelings like coldness, clouds, rain, hail, thunderstorm, haze, snow, ice into the soul’s landscape that matters. If I like them out there in nature, I also like them in the soul. One only has to dress properly. (1980)

If you doubt – wherever is more love, that’s the right place. (1986)

I have a love of longing. I also like fulfillment, but I prefer longing. It is bigger, wider, more fantastic, more glowing. Also the one of an idea, of a phantom. And it is good that way. (1981)

4th stop: MOYA | (mostly) Melanie Nief


The Museum of Young Art is housed in the Palais Schönborn in the first district and is usually not open to the public. The art from today's young artists of Vienna hangs on the antique walls of the old, high-Viennese society styled balllrooms, dining rooms, grand stairway and other spaces of the Palais, the contrast of which lends to a delightfully unique viewing experience. We were allowed to take photos, so as you can see I enjoyed myself (with the wonderful camera I recently received in the mail.....THANKS mom and dad!!!). I wish the pictures did justice to the work of this particular artist, Melanie Nief. Her paintings really struck both Monika and I because her technique was something I had never seen done before, or done so well. Unfortunately I am not an art critique so describing the paintings and the technique would be useless....but let it be said that she has definitely made a name for herself in my book! 

5th stop: Leopold Museum | EGON SCHIELE 
(unfortunately accompanied by some crude and masochistic installations of profane sexuality and self-mutilation)

<The picture must radiate light, the bodies have their own light which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from outside.>

<To restrict the artist is a crime. It is to murder germinating life.>

<I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds.>

«Ich bin froh, dies alles und noch mehr zu erleben, denn gerade diese Erlebnisse, die traurig sind, klären den schaffenden Menschen.»

Self-Portrait by Egon Schiele
I exist for myself, and for those to
whom my unquenchable thirst for 
freedom gives everything, but also
for everyone, since insofar as I am able 
to love - I love everyone. Of noble 
hearts, I am the noblest - and the most 
generous of those that yearn to give love in return. 
-I am a human being, I love death and I love life. 

In the midst of searching through the Museum's Quartier complex to find Monika (life without a cell phone results in this usually) I searched through a couple of museums....sightseeing along the way :

6th stop: MUMOK | 1st floor modern chaos (then straight to the exit)

7th stop: Halle E | Salvador Dali (among other acid trips)


All in all a successful 7 museum evening. Thank you socialists.