Recent Headlines

I have compiled articles from the New York Times and other relevant news resources concerning some of the museums we have visited, Vienna as a city, and the UN. Since my other posts tend to be long, I have decided to compile excerpts from these various articles and my responses to them in a concise narrative in one post.

NYTimes July 20, 2010 - "Leopold Museum to Pay $19 million for Painting Seized by Nazis" by Randy Kennedy - In 1938 an Egon Schiele painting ("Portrait of Wally" 1912) was seized by the Nazis from Lea Bondi Jaray, a Jewish gallery owner in Vienna. In 1954, Mr. Leopold acquired the Schiele painting through good faith and a legal transaction, making it part of his personal collection now housed at the Leopold Museum. In 1997 the painting was lent to the MOMA for a temporary exhibition, but was seized by the US government who claimed that Leopold did not have rightful ownership of the painting. The MOMA and the Leopold Museum believed the painting should be returned to the Leopold. However, the US government was stubborn in its insistence that the painting was not legally owned by the Leopold. In the end, the Leopold paid $19 million to the Jaray family for the Schiele painting, the painting spent some last weeks at the MOMA in a temporary exhibit, and the US government dismissed the case upon the Leopold Museum's payment for the painting. This entire situation is an ongoing struggle, with many families coming out and claiming that paintings within the Leopold and within the Belvedere collections were stolen by the Nazis and that they should be returned to the original owners. These legal cases are modern manifestations of the ongoing effects of the Nazi regime into the cultural realm of Vienna and eastern Europe as a whole.

NYTimes June 8, 2010 - "U.S. Presses Its Case Against Iran Ahead of Sanctions Vote" by David E. Sanger - Today at the U.N. we learned about the Non-Proliferation Treaty regarding nuclear weapons. Iran is a member of this treaty, but has been found in violation of many of its articles and in enriching uranium. There is an ongoing battle between the U.N. specialists and Iran, the U.N. asking why there are tests and nuclear materials unaccounted for and articles violated while the latter is stating its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. This article states that the U.S. is putting forth new information, revising its previous findings from 2007 that although production of Iran's nuclear fuel had increased, Iran's leadership had suspended work on nuclear weapons designs. However, the U.S. is now pressing for sanctions to be put on Iran by the U.N Security Council as the fourth round of votes for sanctions against Iran comes up. The U.N. and the Obama administration is presenting evidence to the Security Council showing that Iran has revived elements of its design program for nuclear weapons. According to the IAEA, suspicion of Iran's nuclear programs has risen due to its "possible military dimensions to its nuclear program" and that Iran "has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities." After today at the U.N., it seems that if Iran was truly using uranium and nuclear technology for peaceful activities, the tests and enrichment of uranium would be easily explained and there would be transparency regarding their tests and their actions. Iran's lack of cooperation seems to point to other uses of nuclear technology for non-peaceful ends. [This article is a follow up on an article from May 2010 which stated that Iran had expanded its work at its nuclear sites and that it has enough nuclear fuel for two nuclear weapons].

NYTimes July 13, 2010 - "U.S. Wary of South Korea's Plan to Rescue Nuclear Fuel" by Choe Sang-Hun - Aside from tensions with North Korea and Iran about their nuclear tests and production of nuclear weapons, tension between South Korea and the U.S. is beginning to emerge due to South Korea's desire to recycle nuclear fuel. The article states that South Korea is quickly running out of room to safely store used nuclear fuel, and has expressed interest in reusing this fuel for nuclear reactors which provide 40% of the nation's electricity and in reducing waste. However, S. Korea is still under an agreement with the U.S. from 1974 that prohibits the nation from recycling nuclear fuel since recycling produces plutonium which can then be used for both nuclear reactors (and thus electricity) and nuclear bombs (in the example of North Korea). S. Korea insists that its only aim is to reduce waste while producing electricity, but the U.S. has not lessened its suspicion on South Korea's attempts from the 1970s in making nuclear weapons and believes that it will set a precedent, thus encourage North Korea's nuclear weapons project since tensions between N. and S. Korea are also not diminishing. This entire situation revolves around politics more than it does science, especially since the U.S. has allowed India (not part of the NPT) to recycle its spent nuclear fuel. Even with alternative options such as pyroprocessing (the plutonium produced would not be pure enough to use in nuclear weapons) and recycling the fuel outside of S. Korea, the United States remains overtly wary of South Korea's attempts at nuclear recycling.

NYTimes July 9, 2010 - "Vienna Still a Spot for Cloak-and-Dagger Work" by Nicholas Kulish - This article discusses Vienna's role as an international city, especially in regards to the recent exchange between agents at the Viennese international airport. Vienna is the home of the United Nations in Vienna, contains the IAEA, the UNODC, and is a key city between the east and the west. During the Cold War, Vienna was at the edge of the Iron Curtain yet remained neutral, encouraging spies to conduct business here; only spying against Austria is a crime - espionage in itself is legal. Even Vienna's high concentration of emigrants contributes to a high number of intelligence officers within the city reporting on political and social dissidence within these communities. However, in contrast to the still high concentration of intelligence officials and espionage activities within Vienna, the Mercer Human Resource Consulting firm listed Vienna as its most livable city in the world. This second NYTimes article ("The Best Place to Live?" by H.D.S. Greenway, May 26, 2010) states that "Vienna used to seem a little sad - all those grand imperial buildings with no empire left, stuck on a dead-end street at Western Europe's Cold War frontier. But with the Iron Curtain gone, Vienna is once again at the center of the Central European crossroads and is enjoying its place in the sun." Having seen both the imperial side of Vienna at the Hofburg and the diplomatic side of Vienna at the U.N., I can agree that Vienna is a meeting place of intelligence officers for good reason, yet I can more than readily agree with the second article stating that the tension between imperial with no empire and an old Cold War center with a war no longer cold is finally being reconciled, producing a city culturally, diplomatically, and historically beautiful.

Jugendstil and Judaism

"Nothing impractical can ever be beautiful."

- Otto Wagner

Today we had a tour at the Leopold Museum, the personal collection on display of Mr. and Mrs. Leopold. The museum is fairly new, housed in a specially constructed building to highlight the expressionist and Jugendstil art. Leopold began collecting art when he inherited a stamp collection from an uncle, which he then sold, making enough capital to begin purchasing art in the 1950s. Upon graduating college, he turned down an offer for a car from his parents in order to obtain a painting by Egon Schiele from London, thus beginning his long time fascination with and love for Schiele's paintings and sketches which were hardly famous at the time.

Leopold also had a strong affinity for Gustav Klimt's work - the main painting in the gallery being Death and Life (1910).

Before this particular expressionist style of painting, Klimt was associated with the art of the Ringstrasse group, embracing historicism and classical motifs. However, after three of his paintings were rejected by the University (who was responsible for the paintings' commissioning), Klimt left the Ringstrasse culture and became involved with the Secessionists, eventually becoming their president and painting Death and Life. This particular painting refers back to Klimt's unfinished painting in the Belvedere of The Bride, in both its figures and its positioning. In Death and Life, death is depicted as almost playful or sly, creeping on tip toes over to those alive. In 1915 when death was abounding amidst the unfolding drama of World War I, Klimt came back to revise this painting, adding another column of figures to contract the space between the dead and the living. In the group of the living, a mourning couple is positioned in front, while an older woman with the same coloring as death (and thus she has some association with death) is behind them. The top figures look very much alive, yet sleeping peacefully. The figures on the left, tucked in closest to death are the added figures, their open eyes forcing us and allowing us to relate to death; they are acting as the mediators between the dead and the living.

Another Secessionist who had left the culture of the Ringstrasse was the architect Otto Wagner, most famous for his Jugendstil buildings and his green Stadt Bahn stations. He famously stated and promoted the notion that the art of the past should not be copied, but that new art should be made. He championed function over form, thus rejecting the essential nature of the Ringstrasse culture.

Another room displaying furniture and artifacts collected by Leopold highlighted the Vienna workshop, co-founded by Josef Hoffman and Koloman Moser. Their main aim was to bring together artists, architects, and various other talents to provide various items accessible to the public. However, once this style became popular, the public was no longer able to obtain the items, defeating the workshop's original intent. Along with this room, Adolf Loos was also mentioned, being an architect of the mindset that when the best materials are used in a building's design and construction, there is no need for ornamentation. He thus rejected the decoration and ornate brass details embraced by the Secessionists, designing buildings 'without eyebrows'.

After this room, there were several others which highlighted artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Richard Gerstl, and a special exhibit with many (dark and depressing) paintings and sketches by Egon Schiele.

Our tour ended in the Schiele exhibition, and was followed by a walking tour through the older part of Vienna and the Jewish quarter. The Jews have a long history in Vienna (as already explored in a previous post on the Jewish Museum), and today allowed us to see the physical places where this history was established and created.

The Jews were part of the high medieval economy, playing an integral part in the long distance trading between the Ottoman Empire and Austria after they were expelled from Spain in 1492 and settled among the Turks. In 1238 however, it became legal for Jews to live in Vienna, allowing them to build a synagogue as well. Although the Jews were legally allowed to live in Vienna and German territories, they were confined to certain area, qualifying them unofficially as ghettos. In 1420, a case of host desecration was committed in Enns, near Vienna, reverberating within the Austrian territories and leading to the mob violence against and the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna in 1421 by Duke Albrecht V (their synagogue was also destroyed at this time). There is still a plaque in the Judenplatz today which praises the pogrom of this time.

Also within the Judenplatz stands a modern memorial, taking up a large portion of the square and falling within the old boundaries of they ruined synagogue. It was built in response to the two memorials outside of the Albertina, one commemorating all those who were victims of war and fascism (dedicated to those non-Jews whose apartment was bombed) and and the other showing a Jew bound in barbed wire forced to scrub the streets. It is designed as a square library, but with all its books turned spine in, and with doors lacking knobs. This library has no access. Around the base of the library, all 41 camps where Austrian Jews were killed are listed, and there is an inscription stating

"In commemoration of more than 65,000 Austrian Jews who were killed by the Nazis between 1938 and 1945."

The books symbolize the Jews as a people of The Book, but these books - the life stories and the religion of the Jews - became inaccessible through the death inflicted by the Nazis, thus we as people can see the books, but we cannot see their titles nor their content. The Jew's contribution to the cultural intellectualism of Vienna and to the world at large is lost, and not seen - the lack of titles shows an evident cultural void.

There was a lot of dissent and disagreement among our group, with many feeling that since the inscription specified "Austrian Jews," it should have also specified that they were killed by "Austrian Nazis," their fellow citizens and countrymen. However, I don't feel that this monument aims at making a political statement, nor does it aim at pointing a finger. I believe that this monument was made for Austria, thus specifying the Austrian Jews whose lives were cut short. This monument remains ambiguous in its use of the term 'Nazi,' allowing the blame to fall on all those who declared themselves Nazis and not one specific type of Nazi. I do believe that it is important to distinguish and point out that Austrian Jews were indeed killed by their fellow Austrian Nazis, but this monument was not intended for that purpose. Rather, this monument is an appropriate commemoration of the Jews within the Austrian borders (hence the monument is IN Austria) and avoids making a political statement by refraining from engaging in the conflict between Austrians killing their fellow Austrians.

This monument does, however, fall into the area of discussion brought up by Ruth Kluger, namely, are these sorts of stereotypical images and monuments beneficial to the memory of the Holocaust, or should the images from individual stories be sufficient and be embraced over the physicality of memorials?

Sunday Religion

Today I had to myself since a group of people had gone away for the weekend, so I decided to head to Cafe Central and then to the Kunsthistorisches for my third (and last) time.

Cafe Central has come to be one of my favorite cafes in the central area of Vienna. It is close to the Hofburg rather than the overly crowded Stephansplatz, and is a few blocks back so the amount of foot traffic is significantly less. Although all of the guide books say that this old-school cafe now caters to tourists, I would have to disagree. The small front patio is definitely filled with tourists, but once inside, there is a definite balance between tourists and locals. The inside is very old fashioned with iron chandeliers, high arched ceilings, red velvet booths and chairs, marble columns. The service is spot on, and the Wiener Eiskaffee is amazing (it is this heavenly drink we discovered upon our first visit of chilled coffee, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and pirouette cookies on top). If only Starbucks made this sort of iced coffee...

After working on some background information for the artists I was about to study, I headed over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum to visit the Baroque and Renaissance art collections on my own. It being a Sunday, it seemed oddly appropriately to work on a comparison between Catholic and Protestant art since both collections seemed to focus on the theme of religion.

The Protestant Artists:

1. Rembrandt - Rembrandt was a dutch painter who transformed classical iconography to fit his own experiences. He had an extreme empathy for the human population, including the Jews.

Artistically, he employed the technique of chiaroscuro - the theatrical employment of light and shadow (similar to Caravaggio). His Self-Portrait illustrates this technique wonderfully - the dark shadows and background of his smock and his studio stand in stark contrast to his face. His self-portrait also shows the critical influence which the Protestant Reformation had on his artistic creativity - namely, moving away from the glory of man embodied within the Renaissance, Rembrandt saw (and thus painted) himself as a humble man before God and grace. The glory of man thus came to be replaced with the baseness of man, both in his own life and in his paintings.

2. Vermeer - Vermeer was a Dutch baroque artist who painted many pictures of the middle class making popular the genre style of painting. He used light and color in a specified style; in his The Art of Painting differing shades of blue and yellow are used to compose the entire painting; he often layered loose colors onto his canvases in a manner called pointille. His Protestantism was well known in his day (although he married a Catholic), leading him to paint genre scenes of daily life rather than engage in the religious propaganda embraced by Catholic and Protestant artists alike.

3. Bruegel - Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a renaissance painter from the Netherlands who was the first to begin painting landscapes for his own sake rather than for the sake of religion. He painted many genre paintings, and used peasants as his main figures. He was not associated with a religion in particular, viewing the institution of religion as an obstacle to God, but his The Fight Between Carnival and Lent shows the religious paradoxes between the religiously emaciated group "celebrating" lent against the excess and inebriation of the revelers during Carnival. Hence, we see a man struggling to interpret religion against both the backdrop of Catholicism and the challenging notions put forth by the Reformation.

The Catholic Artists:

1. Rubens - Rubens was a Flemish baroque artist who used sensuality, movement, and light to promote the cause of the Counter-Reformation.His Annunciation of Mary made for a Jesuit organization in 1610 shows the careful use of light and shadows to contrast Mary and the angel Gabriel - her royal blue dress and the symbolic red curtain behind her are separated by darkness from the golden hair of Gabriel and his orange robe. The white dove above also shows the contrast between light and dark and shows the fluidity between the heavenly and the earthly.

2. Titian - Titian was a dynamic painter from the Venetian School of art who used broad brushstrokes and vivd color to convey his messages. His Assumption of Mary has been used for religious doctrine within the Catholic church; his Violante (the painting's coloring is drawn from the violet tucked into the woman's dress) also is considered Catholic since it shows the stigma of prostitutes during the Early Modern Period. The woman is dressed in the grand dress which prostitutes were told to wear in order that they would be publicly recognized and the yellow color of her prominent skin and hair was used as a stigma for the outcasts and the prostitutes.

3. Raphael - Raphael was a painter during the High Renaissance and was employed by the Vatican (Pope Julius II) to create frescos within the Vatican rooms. He was the standard to which renaissance artists compared their works - after his death, mannerism and the baroque style were embraced. His Madonna in the Meadow embraces the spiritual thinking of the renaissance, illustrating the eternally valid in the horizon and the appreciation for humanity amongst the triangle of figures.

Amongst all of the artists shown within the Kunsthistorisches Museum, there were a lot that stood out, both for their content and for their beautiful paintings. However, the above artists are some of the more well-known artists and their works have had a profound impact on religion. Most of the artists shown have at least one religious painting - the question of Catholic or Protestant lies, rather, in the interpretation of and the message conveyed within the painting itself.

Spanish Influence

Yesterday after the Jewish Museum, Sidney and I had the chance to tour the stables and the winter riding school of the Spanish Riding School near the Hofburg. After seeing the horses up close, I decided to attend their morning practice today.

The Habsburg court always had a riding school, with horses used both militarily and recreationally. In 1562, Archduke Maximilian bred the Lipizzaner horses systematically to obtain the pure white color for a uniform look. The Lipizzaner horses were the most elite horses in the world, thus the horses were imported for the imperial court from Spain - hence the school's name. In 1572 there is the first mention of a riding school, and in 1580, Emperor Charles II of Austria founded the court stud Lipizza where he brought in horses from Spain. However, it wasn't until 1681 that Emperor Leopold I commissioned the design and construction of an official riding school. Emperor Charles VI rebuilt and restored the riding hall, commissioning Fischer von Erlach as its architect; the building which we see today is Erlach's design.

The morning practices themselves were neat - four sets of five horses and riders warm up and practice for 30 minute intervals, switching out and showing off. The horses, however, don't perform, but only practice techniques and such.

After the morning practices, I headed over to the Belvedere again, to more closely examine the art and follow the timeline of the artistic styles showcased. [Pictures were not allowed so all the following pictures are courtesy of Belvedere images.] The Belvedere was Prince Eugene of Savoy's summer baroque palace, with the upper Belvedere housing his guests and the lower Belvedere housing himself. Since Prince Eugene was honored and revered as the conquor of the Turks, he fashioned his guest house to reflect it. Turks captured as prisoners of war show up as motifs throughout the architecture of the upper Belvedere; they hold up walls and pillars, they are shown holding up the palace's main fountain, and they are shown agonizing under the weight of marble decorations. The upper Belvedere shows Prince Eugene as the warrior; however, the lower Belvedere shows Prince Eugene the art lover. The upper Belvedere as well is heavily baroque, emphasizing the grandeur of Prince Eugene; even the ceiling frescos are meant as optical illusions to create an elongation and dramatization of size and stature. Today, the lower Belvedere houses mainly medieval religious relics. However, the upper Belvedere houses medieval, baroque, and biedermeier art.

The lower level of the Upper Belvedere has an entire wing of medieval religious art work. The Znaim Altarpiece was one of the largest relics on display. It was created sometime between 1440 and 1445, and is one of only a few surviving large-winged retables of this time period. Its style shows early realism; the Sunday side shows high reliefs of the passion and an association with Bavarian art. The weekday side shows scenes from the life of Christ (from baptism to flagellation).

Works by Rueland Frueauf the Elder were also on display; an altar piece made between 1480 and 1491 with Mary's life depicted on the weekday side and Jesus' life and the passion depicted on the Sunday side resided once in a Salzburg church but is now at the Belvedere. His use of rhythm, color, and landscape made him a prominent artist during his time.

My favorite piece was by Johann Georg Platzer, titled Samson's Revenge; painted between 1730 and 1740, it crosses artistic lines by combining the heavy and dense details of the scene with the timelessness and objective lives of the carefree characters.

In another wing on the first floor are the buffs of Xaver Messerschmidt, referred to as the "crazy heads" since he himself never named them. Messerschmidt worked for Maria Theresia as a sculptor (late baroque period), and was trained in Munich by his uncle in the craft of sculpting. Alongside being the court sculptor, he taught at the Academy in Vienna.

His crazy heads were made in Bratislava, however, where he had bought a house. He was rumored to be schizophrenic, and he created these heads to scare away the demons and pain he felt in the night.

The next floors contained works from Vienna in the 19th century - namely works of classicism, romanticism, biedermeier, historicism, and impressionism. Famous works of Monet's such as Garden at Giverny, Van Gogh's Wheat Fields Near Auvers, Renoir's The Red-haired Bather, and Digas' Harlequin and Columbine are shown.Renoir's classical womanly figure was the epitome of beauty for the impressionists, and the landscapes depcted by both Monet and Van Gogh attempted at capturing the true essence of an experience or scene - realism was a top priority in their art. David's Napoleon Bonaparte also dominated one of the rooms, an example of the historicism which many artists desired to portray.

In the next rooms, there was a large collection of works by Gustav Klimt (his work The Kiss among them), Koloman Moser, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, and Carl Moll. Klimt's works took up much of the exhibit. In all of his figure paintings, the woman's silhouette is outlined clearly and is positioned in the front; the man is always positioned in the back and he is less concrete and more abstract in form.

The Kiss was the only picture of people by Klimt which I liked - there was a tenderness there that was lacking in his other figures. However, his landscapes were very appealing. Their almost impressionistic style (more similar to pointillism) was beautiful, mixing blues and green into beautiful landscapes. Kokoschka's Prague Harbor was a combination between impressionist technique and the appearance of sketching. Schiele's focus on people with odd profiles and hardly any landscapes was definitely an form of expressionism within the modern boundaries.

Moser's Self-Portrait exhibited a direct use of color and purpose to communicate beauty through function rather that form. Finally, Moll's Twilight and Interior of the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene were created with an intense depth and meant to portray texture.

The final upper rooms were dedicated to the Biedermeier genre, where under Metternich's attempt at restoring the pre-Napoleonic years and implementing a conservative government through censorship and the secret police led to interior 'immigration'. The family unit was thus valued both at home and in art. Domestic scenes of the immediate family were in popular by the middle class during this time of urbanization and conservatism. Friedrich von Ameriling's portrait of a father and his three children remembering their mother is a perfect example of this notion of the closed family unit, as is Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller's Morning of Corpus Christi with the contrast between the peasants and the aristocracy manifested in the playing children. Finally, Josef Danhauser's Game of Chess was the first painting to represent life within the salons and illustrates the domestic nature of the Biedermeier period. The constant notion of the woman over the man is prevalent throughout the painting, with the woman standing and the man sitting; the queen of chess on the board; the woman winning the game; and the sculpture of Hercules enslaved to Omphale.

The entire Belvedere was quite large and overwhelming, but using the Wien Museum as a guide through each culture and artistic period of Vienna's history, the floors and paintings were easier to understand and comprehend.

I turned on the TV for the first time since being here in Vienna and was watching CNN (they don't have many English options over here...). Surprisingly, it wasn't much different from CNN back home - many of the same programs were aired, including interviews with Anderson Cooper and a special on the heros of Hurricane Katrina. The only difference seemed to be that there was a greater ethnic diversity among the channel's news broadcasters and that the commercials seemed to all be promoting or associated with the Arab world. There was not one commercial which did not try and promote a business in Dubai or did not deal with the region of Saudi Arabia. This is not as surprising as it may seem due to Saudi Arabia's wealth and obvious vicinity to Europe since Europe is its closes Western neighbor. It seems that for as conservative culturally and religiously as Saudi Arabia may be, it is definitely making a concerted effort to include itself among Western economies and business markets.

Jewish Museum

Today after class we headed over to the Jewish Museum to try and see what we could learn about such an integral culture within Vienna. The museum's lower level had artifacts concerned with the various holidays throughout the Jewish year, including those relics used during temple services and associated with the Tabernacle. However, the second floor is where the history truly began.

The exhibit began with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, where they fled to North Africa and into the Ottoman Empire. In 711 Spain was conquered by the Moors, but later the Reconquista pushed the Muslim influence out of the region. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain signed an edict expelling all Jews, participating in a mass ethnic cleansing. Some Jews fled to Portugal and then later to Amsterdam due to persecutions, and some established economic communities in the Balkans (parts of which were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire). These Sephardic Jews ('sepharad' is Hebrew for Spain) became assimilated into the Turkish empire, and were welcomed freely. When the peace treaty was signed between the Habsburgs and the Sublime Porte (referring to the Ottomans), Turkish citizens began to reside in Habsburgs lands, and Austrians began to settle in Turkish lands. Thus, due to these new cultural and economic relations, Sephardic Jews began to settle in Vienna. The Sephardic Jews became mediators between the east and the west, between orient and occidental, and between Asia and Europe.

In 1735 a treaty established the Turkish Sephardic Community in Vienna, but in 1830 the new Israelite law ended the community's autonomy, and they were incorporated into the Israelite community (The Association of Turkish Israelites).

Jews also settled in Bosnia (Sarajevo) after their expulsion from Spain, but with the establishment of the Yugoslavic state in 1918 and the subsequent German invasion , 75% of the Jews were sent to the Jasenovac Concentration Camp. The survivors after the war immigrated to Israel in 1948; only 1000 Jews remain today in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

When the Habsburgs were able to recapture Hungary from the Ottomans, there was a large influx of Ashkenazic Jews in Budapest, making the Sephardic Jews who had fled to Budapest now a minority.

The Ottoman conquest of Belgrade by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1521 led to an influx of Sephardic Jews in the city. Fights between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans over Belgrade continued until 1867 when the Kingdom of Serbia obtained complete independence. The Jews who fled to both Bulgaria and Thessaloniki were deported to concentration camps when the Germans invaded during WWII.

In Italy, the exhibition mentioned that attitudes toward the Jews were ambivalent and oscillating between acceptance and discrimination; the Republic of Venice was the first nation to implement a Jewish ghetto.

The Jewish musicians in Vienna were executed and exiled, and after the war, many refused to return to a land which had denounced and ignored their contributions to culture and history. As the exhibit mentioned, in exile they became a testimony to Vienna's past - while valued abroad they were only distantly remembered at home.

The exhibit itself focused mainly on the regional diaspora of the Jews after their expulsion from Spain, and did not detail the Holocaust. However, the second floor had a temporary exhibit of Ernst Toch, a classical and film score musician, who went into exile during WWII to avoid Hitler's wrath. The exhibit included more history from WWII, but was extremely modern with everything displayed on glass holograms and a mock pool patio as the backdrop.

Apart from the top floor, the Jewish Museum was extremely enlightening and gave a much needed and yet concise context for the Jewish culture in Vienna.

Albertina

The Albertina is the best museum in Vienna, hands down. Today we decided to visit one of the only museums not required for class, the Albertina. In 1794 Emperor Franz II gave the palace as a gift to Prince Albert of Saxony (Duke of Teschen), the son in law of Maria Theresia, married to her eldest daughter Maria Christina.

It was extended and rebuilt several times to accommodate changing styles, including the building of the Habsburg statesrooms. These apartments were used as guest corridors when needed, with the Spanish room, built by Albert's heir and nephew Friedrich, being the only lodging for the Spanish Habsburgs outside of Spain. These rooms were emptied and damaged by the bombing in World War II, but recent renovations and conservation efforts have restored the rooms, complete with period pieces and tapestries.

Duke Albert was an avid arts collector and patron, and amassed a large personal collection, serving the higher purposes of 'education and the power of morality.' When the palace and staterooms where acquired by the Republic of Austria in 1919, more artwork of the Habsburgs was brought in, creating the current collection within the gallery today. However, since it is one of the largest collections of graphic and modern art, only small portions of its collection are shown to the public.

Pictures were only allowed in the staterooms, a practice I find unnecessary and pretentious since most Viennese museums do allow pictures, but the books in the gift shop had every piece within their collection showcased, so I didn't mind too much.

The staterooms were beautiful, housing sketches by Michaelangelo and paintings by Durer. However, the unique and grand architecture and design of the rooms was more impressive than the paintings the rooms contained. There was a rococo room, suited from ceiling to floor in yellow, the spanish rooms dressed in red velvet, the wedgwood room with blue and white wedgwood covering the walls, and so many more. Each room's theme was distinct and evident; there was even a grand ballroom with Greek statues framing each large window and mirror. The pastel watercolors and light marble walls and columns all gave off a sense of air and light, reflecting and continuing throughout the entirety of the museum.

The permanent collection went in order in terms of artistic styles throughout the period of modernity. The first room contained works by impressionists, neoimpressionists, and post-impressionists, such as Monet, Renior, Cezanne, Manet, and Van Gogh. These artists used color and movement to portray emotion and to convey a particular mood, with visible brush strokes and copious numbers of landscapes. The individual strokes aimed at catching the true qualities of an image or landscape, attempting at embracing realism. The neoimpressionist movement, especially, was highlighted in the gallery. Neoimpressionism was founded by George Seurat with contributions by Paul Signac, using the techniques of both pointillism (using small dots to form an image) and divisionism (using single dots of color to interact optically).

The next room contained works by the "fauvists," translated as wild beasts. This style grew out of Signac's pointillism, Cezanne's impressionism, and Van Gogh's post-impressionism, but was short lived, lasting only three years. The major artists showcased from this period at the Albertina were Henri Matisse and Andre Derain.

The expressionists were next, more radical and sexually provocative than the fauvists. These expressionists belonged to the German group Die Brucke, wishing to convey an inward experience of the world. Works by Nolde and Pechstein were showcased in the gallery. Another group closely associated to the expressionist movement was Der Blaue Reiter, a German group of artists from Munich, among them Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger. This group was inspired by orphism (abstract uses of bright color) and cubism.

As a side note, we were talking in class recently about Arnold Schoenberg and how he was an Austrian composer associated with modernism and expressionism. His classical compositions do have a logic to them much like expressionistic art, and one can tell that he hears the logic and hears a magic that is not readily heard by everyone else in his music. For me, I don't mind his music, but I also don't prefer it over other classical composers. It seems like it should match a film score or a silent film more than it suits an orchestra and its audience.

The Russian Avant Garde room followed, in which Marc Chagal's works were the most prominent. Chagal's vivid and colorful paintings in turn anticipated (both historically and literally) the surrealism presented in the next room. Works by Joan Miro, Max Ernst, and Rene Magritte were all showcased, mixing the unreal with the real. The last few rooms contained paintings and works of the cubists, such as Picasso, who took particular aspects of an image and reinterpreted (or analyzed) them. Later in the cubist movement, these separated aspects of an image were again reunited in the manner of a collage-style painting.

The museum as a whole was absolutely astounding. The major works in the permanent collection are a recent acquisition by the museum, given over by the Batliner family who are avid art collectors.

Today's German Word:

Moglich - 'possible'

Jugendstil & Biedermeier

Both yesterday and today we focused on the response to the Austrian government and social structure under Metternich after the Napoleonic wars. Much of the art reflecting these attitudes are found at both the Belvedere and the Wien Museum.

Metternich was the political minister in Austria during and after the Napoleonic wars, enacting social measures to oppress and suppress revolutionaries. The revolutionary attitudes abundant in France during and after the French Revolution were feared by European rulers, and Metternich in Austria was afraid that the revolutionary spirit would spread to Austria. Thus, he is known for his suppression of democracy, instilling fear of the public and of those one does not know. The almost xenophobic attitudes he created led to a direct artistic response by the social classes, especially the middle class. His suppressive, or reactionary, government lasted until revolutions did begin in 1848.

The class of art which developed from this oppressive regime of Metternich's is referred to as Biedermeier, and was commissioned and purchased largely by the middle class. The Biedermeier style of art reflects the family, domestic unit, performing daily rituals and promoting the traditional gender roles within the family. Women were meant for church, the kitchen, and children; men were the head of the house - men of "modest ambitions and sober pleasures"; young girls were dressed in dressed, bows, and curls; and young boys were always in play (Parsons 195). However, these traditional roles portrayed in art did not aim at suppressing women and uplifting the man as the dominant male; rather it served to create a familiarity in an era where fear was associated with the outside world and strangers. Scenes were focused on activities within the home, where the family unit was gathered. The paintings of the Biedermeier period exuded a sense of gemutlich, or coziness with comfort and kitsch thrown in. These idyllic scenes portrayed an inner immigration into the safe homes and nature of the middle class and the notion of Biedermeier came to imply both appreciation and respect for "the culture it describes" (Parsons 196). The Wien Museum has a large collection of Biedermeier paintings, as did the Belvedere, portraying the middle class domestic family in traditional familial activities.

With the end of Metternich's government due to revolutionaries in 1848, the Biedermeier style was quickly dropped, and nationalism was embraced.

After revolutions broke out in 1848, another art style was embraced under the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph. With the tearing down of the old inner city fortification and with the establishment and growth of a new aristocracy, new attitudes developed. Economic growth, rapid urban development, and universal male suffrage in 1907 all led to a new class of wealthy aristocrats - the Ringstrasse barons - who established factories and created a free labor market, sending traditional guilds and craftsmen into poverty. The ascendency of the new aristocracy was rapid, and they tended to mimic the old aristocracy. Thus, the built large "palais" surrounding and radiating out from the Hofburg (royal court).

Many were built on Herrengasse ('lord's ally') and all were built within the first district. When the old city fortifications were torn down, new space for building was available, and the new aristocracy took hold. The Ringstrasse barons built lavish apartments and palaces where the walls used to stand, thus encircling the first district (hence its name, the Ringstrasse). These new buildings were built in the historicism style, a style which copied history's architecture; neo-classical, neo-renaissance, and neo-gothic buildings were the most prominent to be built.

The Opera house, Parliament, city hall, the Kunsthistorisches, and even the university were all designed and built during this time of historicism. This is the only time within the history of art and architecture where a new style was not made, but rather styles were copied and repeated.

However, this historicism was rejected by many, most notably the Secessionists. The Secessionists rejected the lack of imagination and the concern for form over function; instead, they embraced the freedom of art, the function of the art, and simplicity. A culture of 'critical modernism' emerged at this time, described by Allan Janik as a "rejection of the conventionalities of both established historicist culture, and also of aestheticist modernism" (Beller 172). Instead of criticizing modernity, or the lack thereof in the historicist style, they criticized the new modernity from within their new art. They "sought to restore an ethical imperative to modern art, rejecting the 'phrases' of convention...Schoenberg put it most succinctly that [music, art, architecture] "should not be an ornament, it should be true" (Beller 172).

The ornate decorum and the pomp and circumstance of the neo-gothic and neo-renaissance was replaced with organic motifs of flowers, trees, and leaves representing art's freedom. This new style started by the Secessionists was called Jugendstil ('new style'), known as art nouveau to many, and is on display at the Secession building. Function was highly valued over its inferior brother, form.

The most famous of the Secessionists was Otto Wagner, who prcolaimed that function itself was decoration. He built the Stadt Bahn stations still seen throughout the city (20 of the original 36 remain). He also designed two apartment facades in 1899 facing the Naschmarkt, complete with green leaves, bright flowers, and gold swirls. Gustav Klimst is another Secessionist, whose art work can be seen at the Belvedere and the Wien Museum, and who combined artistic techniques with the art of his goldsmith training. His paintings almost appear to be a precursor to cubism and expressionism due to the lack of clear lines and abstract shapes throughout his works. The Kiss, one of his most popular paintings (picture was not allowed) did appeal to me, unlike most of his other works. There was a tenderness and timidness in it, not found amongst the chaos and harshness of his other works.

Thus, throughout the city along the Ringstrasse and its connecting streets and even walking through the museums, one is able to see the progression from Biedermeier attitudes embracing the cozy familial unit to the historicism of the Ringstrasse era and finally to the modernism and functionality of the Secessionists. This evolving modernity was not only a cultural reflection, but a political reflection as well. Modernization and cultural modernity had "brought forth the notion of popular sovereignty," thus psychologically ending the Habsburg's imperial control over Vienna and Viennese culture. Soon after the notion of popular sovereignty developed, however, the reality of the monarchy's weakening powers was seen, and the populace no longer identified with the identity of the monarchy. Thus, the monarchy was "never able to establish in modern form the authority and legitimacy that it had possessed in the premodern past, and so could not finesse national loyalties" (Beller 193).

With the evolving styles of modernity throughout Vienna, from Biedermeier to Jugendstil to Ringstrasse, there is not only a manifestation of cultural ideals, but there is a prominent reflection of changing political ideals as well found within the art, architecture, and music of each era.

Ottoman Turks

17 August 2010

Tuesday in class the discussion centered on the Turkish sieges of

Vienna and the Ottoman Empire, complementing our recent visit to the Military Museum which has an Ottoman Turk exhibit, as well as tying in with today's visit to the Wien Museum.

The Ottoman Empire began in 1299 and ended in 1923 when it was dissolved due to its status as a losing power in World War I; its reign was about the same length as the Habsburg Empire in Austria. Its high points were in the 16th and 17th centuries, during which occurred the Turkish sieges of Vienna (in 1529 and 1683). It politically outshone the European power nations such as France and Spain, and was the only nonwestern nation which posed a challenge to the west.

In 1453, Constantinople fell, allowing the Turks to expand westward. After their attemtped siege on Vienna, the Viennese built a city fortress to protect themselves from further attacks (it is now the Ringstrasse which encircles the first district). In 1683, the Turks again attempted to siege Vienna, but were defeated at the battle of Zenta, leading to the treaty of Karlowitz, giving Hungary and Transylvania back to the Habsburg dynasty. In 1717, Prince Eugene of Savoy, a military general within the Habsburg court, finally defeated the Ottomans at a final battle; he was able to capture Belgrade and thus push the Ottomans back from Austria.

At the Military Museum, there was an assortment of weapons, uniforms, and flags, showcasing both the Turkish and Austrian armies. However, I found that the Wiener Museum presented the Austro-Turkish Wars in a much more straightforward and unpretentious manner; the Military Museum was simply too overwhelming and grand to take in each display case. In the Wiener Museum, the two center pieces communicated the style and culture of the Turkish army extremely well. The first center piece was four horse tails, the insignia for the Ottoman army's military ranks. Soldiers and generals received between one and nine horse tails - the more the better. These rugged looking staffs with horse hair, woven materials, and horns on

top illustrated the barbaric nature of the Ottomans, with an oriental flair in their colors and designs. The Ottomans were from the east, and thus were naturally considered barbaric in comparison with their civilized western counterparts. The second center piece was a large iron pole with spikes extending from it - almost reminiscent of a torture device. Rather, the contraption was used as a warning post; flammable fabrics were wound around the poles onto the spikes and were lit on fire, alerting military generals of a possible danger of retreat.

There were also two prominent paintings on display - each contrasting the other. The first was of Kara Mustapha Pasha, the army Grand Vizier (commander) of the Turkish siege of 1863; he was later executed at Belgrade. The painting shows a forlorn man in oriental dress, elegantly outfitted yet both distraught and committed to his fate. In the same room there is another painting, this one of Prince Eugene of Savoy who had Pasha executed. He is painted as a bold and fearless leader, dressed in robes and his war metals, with his imperial regalia draped around him. This pompous painting stands in stark contrast to the forlorn Pasha, and yet accurately details the Austrio-Turkish war.

The rest of the Wiener Museum was equally entertaining; the museum was constructed into three floors, starting with Vienna's Roman foundations and ending with the city's modern art movement and Biedermeier culture. The neatest piece in the entire museum had to have been the original stained glass windows from St. Stephen's removed during World War II - beautiful ornate images from biblical stories and churches. Absolutely breathtaking; only two panels behind the altar have remained within Stephansdom, the remaining panels are kept at the Wiener Museum.

Today's German Word:

Schmecken - 'to taste'

Schonbrunn

Today we had off, so it became the perfect to day spend at Schonbrunn. Schonbrunn is most famous for being the royal residency and summer house of the Habsburgs during the reign of Maria Theresia. However, the palace has a history of its own. It was built to rival Versailles in France, and was at one point owned by the monastery Klosterneuburg (which we toured with the canons) but came into Habsburg control in 1569 under Matthias II. It became a hunting house, with Matthias extending the game park, and remained a hunting palace for several years. Its name was originally 'Schone Brunnen' meaning fair spring, but was later first changed by Emperor Ferdinand II's wife to its current name, Schonbrunn. However, during the second Turkish siege of 1683, the palace was plundered and destroyed.

Under Emperor Leopold I, the palace was rebuilt and Fischer von Erlach was commissioned as its architect. However, plans stalled, and the palace was never completed according to original designs. Charles VI inherited the hunting palace, but gave it as a gift to his daughter Maria Theresia since he only ever used the grounds for hunting. Maria Theresia transformed the palace and completed its construction under the designs of Nikolaus Pacassi. After the palace was completed, a second phase of construction began in 1750, with Maria Theresia transforming the baroque palace into the more rococo style of the late baroque period. The gold floral ornamentations and the heavily tapestried rooms of rich deep colors are quintessential examples of the baroque style, with elaborate details in every corner and large dramatic frescos lining the ceilings and marble walls. The interior is largely rococo, each room composed of a different palate - one room being of yellow and blue fabric on the walls; two oriental styled rooms; the blue room with blue ceramics and sketches covering the walls; rooms filled with landscapes by Bergl; and then the grand ball room with heavy red velvets, marble, and high frescoed ceilings.

Maria Theresia's last contribution to the palace's growth was the gardens - she designed the gardens and hired an architect to construct the Neptune fountain and the beautiful Gloriette - the hill upon which Fischer von Erlach's original palace would have stood.

The palace remained a hunting retreat under Habsburg power until 1918 with the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy, thus becoming the property of the Austrian Republic and used as a museum.

Our own tour which Sidney and I went on allowed us to look into 40 of the 200+ rooms of the main palace, and gave us entrance into all of the gardens. The Privy Gardens and the Orangery, the Palm House (housing the exotic and tropical plants), the bakery (free apfelstrudel classes!!), and the Gloriette (a cafe with a gorgeous view on top) were all covered in our ticket, giving us a great sense of the palace. The range of gardens is only one manifestation of the vast and expansive power which the Habsburgs held over Austria; the palace, too, as well as the estate as a whole, also demonstrate the domination of the Habsburgs and their incredible wealth and absolutism.

It was amazing to see such progressive techniques and styles throughout both the palace and the gardens (requiring hundreds of servants for upkeep) - the steam heaters used to heat the palace, the french gardens manicured so well, and the large fountain all seem to reflect the constantly changing palace and the forever progressive and dominating rule of the Habsburgs.

Heeresgeschichtliches Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum

15 August 2010

After Saturday in Bratislava, it was hard to go back to visiting museums on Sunday. However, we had to go to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (military museum) and revisit the Kunsthistorisches Museum to view the antiquities collection.

The Heeresgeschichtliches had some interesting exhibits, including both the car in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by the Black Hand and which began the first World War, and the exhibition of the Ottomon Turks and their relation to Austria throughout the seiges in 1529 and 1683. The lower level of the museum focuses primarily on Austria during World War I, with a small, slightly out of place exhibition at the end regarding Austria's involvement with the UN. There were many different cases of military uniforms, war medals, guns, etc. It looked much like one would expect during any time of war in the past, only with the uniforms and weapons emblazoned with the crest or flag of the nation they belonged to. The room containing Franz Ferdinand's car was amazing however. The car stood, bullet hole and all, to the side of the room, while the military jacket through which the bullet pierced him was lying in the middle of the room, along with the couch which he bled to death on (the blood is covered). It was definitely a different feeling than one gets when seeing the relics of an American war - to see the remnants of a nation during a war into which it was largely drawn into due to Germany's invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, one has mixed emotions.

The shelled bunker domes and the worn military uniforms give one a glimpse into the weariness of war and of the Austrian morale - a culture which went from complete control under an absolutist monarchy to a war into which they did not directly choose to become involved in.

This desolate mentality and utter despair - despair which any nation at war faces, but which is intensified in a nation with a suppressed culture - is so plainly displayed throughout this exhibit. The end, the exhibit displayed cars and engines used during the war and also displayed various large machine guns and weapons.

The UN exhibition was most definitely out of place within the museum, much less placed alongside the previous WWI display. The staged scenes of UN involvement and of cars and mannequins in mid-action looked cheap and took away from both the importance of Austria's relationship with the UN and from the dramatic display of WWI.

Walking through the various sculptures of military generals and important Austrian military figures, the upstairs is much more grand than downstairs. The marble walls with large frescos of Austrian rulers and war victories, the crests of the Austro-Hungarian empire, including that of Bohemia, inlayed into the marble, and the domed roofs and tall columns all lend to the power and show which the Habsburgs desired. Even though this building was built as an arsenal for military equipment and deliberation with no intention of being a public museum, it was in a sense built exactly for that - as a museum to show wealth. Like much of the Habsburg empire, the arsenal was built for pomp and show, a physical manifestation of power, wealth, and beauty meant to dominate and overwhelm any enemy or common citizen.

After the military museum, we headed over to the Kunsthistoriches Museum for a second visit - this time to see the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities. The Egyptian art and relics were amazing - most everything was in excellent condition and was in whole units, not broken and missing pieces. Most of the artwork or engravings which we saw involved some sort of matriarchal worship, blessing the gods for food and good harvests. The altar of Sety I, an Egyptian Pharoh reigning from 1290-1279 BC and most notable for having captured the Syrian city of Kadush, was also on display amongst the tombs and stone pieces. The most interesting thing for me, however, was the various tablets of writings shown, ranging from hieroglyphs to cuneiform. It is amazing to think that those were common ways of communication, and that somewhere in the world, some one can read these tablets! Also, to see the progression of language throughout the antiquities exhibition as a whole was interesting, noting the transition from hieroglyphs to cuneiform to Greek and then to latin. Having studied the latter two and their complex grammatical systems, I can appreciate the complexity of both hieroglyphs and cuneiform, especially without an auditory basis for each language.

After the Egyptian artifacts came the Greek and Roman artifacts, showing an almost uneven transition in the layout of early and later Greek art. I found it hard to establish a pattern in the exhibit's fluidity, or lack there of, and found much of the later Greek art to have been placed near the beginning of the rooms. Also, much of the Roman art and many of the Roman sculptures were interspersed with the Greek artifacts, making for an unclear and less informative exhibition. Also, referencing back to the progression of languages, many Roman tablets were placed before the Greek tablets, and many of the Greek tablets were near the end, showing an uneven and inaccurate formulation of modern languages.

However, for as much as fluidity lacked, the relics within the rooms were quite interesting. A lot of Roman busts were on display, although there were very few of actual emperors or generals - most were of figures not particularly famous. There was also a lot of preserved jewelry and potsherds - interesting, but after having taking 'Intro to Archaeology' my first quarter at Davis, my interest was lacking. The neatest things on display were the greek figurines of the various gods (these figurines showing a progression over time of both style and perception of worship) and the tablets inscribed with Ancient Greek.

As a whole, the exhibit was interesting to see but hard to follow; individually, each culture within the exhibit was informative and relevant to an earlier Austrian history, when Vienna was in reality Vindobona.