Elese arrived safely, if a bit groggy. She´s been a real trooper the past few days. I gave myself three days to sit around and get over the jet lag; she hit the ground running. She reports that she turned the corner on Sunday evening and is starting to feel more adjusted. We spent the afternoon in the Alte Pinakothek, one of the world´s great museums. I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of heavy hitters--the quality of art is so high, it´s a bit hard to process. On my next visit I hope to visit the other 2 Pinakotheks, both of which are supposed to be great.
I need to keep reminding myself to not go to a town with too many preconceptions about it. I expected to love Vienna, and had very mixed feelings about it. It´s very expensive, not particularly friendly, and has a very strange way of organizing its art. From what we saw, the art collection in the area is massive. It´s spread through the city in dozens of museums, not necessarily by subject, artist, or era. I was really interested in seeing Klimt, but wasn´t up to the challenge of going to 3 different museums in different parts of town that all charge ten euros.
What I did see: The Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was awesome. In addition to having a central hall decorated by Klimt, it has over 200 wonderful paintings by a wide variety of artists. It´s worth going to Vienna just to see this museum. Some of my favorites:
Raffael´s Madonna in the Meadow (this was one of Elese´s favorites too)
Caravaggio´s David and Goliath
Guido Cagnacci´s Death of Cleopatra
We both also loved the Leopold Museum, which I think is devoted to Austrian art of the last 150 years (we focused on the temporary exhibit, and just got a quick look at the permanent collection). Elese raised a good point about my dislike about "modern art"--I really need to define the term better. I generally just take issue with post-WWII art, not works prior to that period. We saw a large exhibit of pre-WWII modern art (well over 100 pieces) on the various representations of nudity and sexuality by Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Kokoschka, which was fascinating, as I´m sure you can imagine. The museum was well designed and the lighting was awesome (lighting is a major problem in European museums, the majority of which were designed before the invention of electric lights). I actually think the Leopold salvaged Vienna for me--I was leaning towards not liking it at all.
Traveling with someone is definitely a change, but it´s a good one. I enjoy having someone to share my experiences with. We´ve done a good job so far of taking breaks from each other and recognizing when we have differenty priorities (I visited the Vienna treasury while Elese went to one of the modern art museums, for example). We´re now in Hallstatt, which is a major change of pace from the big cities. More on that soon...
For a new perspective, here are some of Elese´s comments. She´ll be adding to future posts.
I'm jealous of Alicia's blog so I'm going to post short comments to her posts. Quick thoughts while sitting in the Umbrella Bar in Hallstatt (Salzkammergut):
- Where are all the tourists? There are no Americans anywhere. I can't decide if that's good or bad: It's pleasantly uncrowded but there aren't many options for meeting fun people & hearing their traveling adventures.
- I am unable to digest large quantities of religious art.
- Alicia is the most organized person I've ever traveled with.
- I love the Alps.
Elese
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