Flotsam and Jetsam

Ceiling Paintings in the Karlskirche

An art historian friend once confessed to me that ever since having a childhood nightmare she had experienced a morbid fear of Baroque churches. Being in Rome, we started her therapy with a visit to the exuberant church of St Carlo Borromeo. But going inside I could see what she meant. There can be something very unsettling about Baroque churches: the over-the-top architecture, the exaggerated theatre that emerges from the Catholic dogma of Borromeo after the Council of Trent. It is not a homely Christianity, but a lofty, and sometimes haughty grandeur. The architecture can literally diminish us as individuals; we become tiny as we stand in the nave looking up at the twisting columns, arches and domes, as if being judged from on high.

Recently I visited the Karlskirche in Vienna, which is also dedicated to Borromeo. From the outside it declares its self-confidence, a grand portico like a Greek temple surmounted with statues of saints, flanked by two columns that recall Trajan’s column in Rome, and above a majestic dome in the shape of an elongated ellipsoid. Usually, on walking inside the visitor would experience a lofty view right up to the painted interior of the dome, but at the moment there is instead an enormous scaffolding structure. It’s equally dramatic, and actually rather exciting because it emphasizes the perfection of the architecture. A lift whizzes you upwards, like Charlie’s Glass Elevator, to a platform at the base of the dome from which everything looks very different. I’m not especially good with heights. My mind can’t cope with the notion that I am very high up, but essentially safe on a solid platform. I look at the joints and fixings as if the whole thing might collapse, or look down to see an ant-like person below, which doesn’t help the feeling of vertigo. Yet in a way, going up the dome seems to be related to my friend overcoming her fear of the Baroque churches.

It’s quite remarkable to get up-close to these dome frescoes by Johann Michael Rottmayr (1656-1730) depicting Charles Borromeo floating in the clouds as he intercedes with the Virgin Mary and various saints and angels amidst painted pseudo-architecture by Gaetano Fanti. Seeing the wall paintings in close proximity doesn’t make their imagery any more believable, but it does underline the incredible artistry involved: the gold hatching that would catch the light to produce golden highlights; the fore-shortening of the figures so that they make sense in space when seen from below. Climbing the modern scaffolding structure really emphasizes for me quite how amazing it was that artists would climb up a much less technically advanced structure to paint these vast decorative schemes high above the nave. That ability to produce close-up detail, within a larger scheme set within a vast curved dome it a remarkable achievement. 

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Street Signs in Vienna

These days when people speak about ‘public art’ they usually mean commissions chosen by committees from short-lists of eligible artists, often fulfilling a variety of social agendas. It is often bureaucratic, but occasionally inspiring. To my mind although they are not created as artworks, traditional hanging street signs could often be equally considered ‘public art.’ They have a sculptural, graphic quality that can uplift us.

They adorn our streets, and lift them beyond being purely commercial spaces. It expresses uniqueness, a specialism that runs counter to globalisation and the standardisation of out-of-town supermarket chains. In a single image or form such hanging signs encapsulate what the shop is about: a perfect precursor of graphic design. It is conceptual art at its most basic: a giant watch that tells us so eloquently that here is the shop which specialises in timepieces.

Whilst they may be traditional, they are often beautiful things, and I feel that the streets of our towns and cities have been diminished by their removal as shops close down and chains take-over. I don’t write this as die-hard reactionary, but someone that likes character, uniqueness and creativity.

In Vienna this week I was quite literally enchanted by some of the old hanging signs that I spotted about the city, such as the magic shop with the rabbit being pulled out of a hat. I just wish that shop-owners would find employ sign-makers to adorn their shop-fronts once more.

Gustav Klimt: Up Close in Vienna

Until I visited Vienna this weekend I hadn’t thought much about the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) for several years. As a teenager I had a momentary fascination with his extraordinary groupings of figures that I’d seen in books, and occasionally over the years I have seen single, striking paintings in Prague, Budapest and New York or in auction rooms and catalogues. And then suddenly in Vienna I found myself in Klimt-world: shops full of Klimt fridge magnets, postcards, head-scarves, chocolate boxes, tea-tins, calendars, pencils and badges. Amongst a range of finger-puppets at the airport he was in the illustrious company of Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Shiva. It seemed I couldn’t see for Klimt’s swirling golden arrangements and kissing couples. On one level it has the effect of debasing the originals, until you see them in their visceral reality and it becomes apparent that they really are something quite removed from the tacky merchandise that follows in their wake.

2012 is the year of Klimt in Vienna. Virtually every institution that can claim a link is hosting exhibitions to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth. I started my unintentional Klimt pilgrimage with a visit the Vienna Secession: an extraordinary building designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich, which houses Klimt’s iconic ‘Beethoven Frieze’ of 1902.

Here, the artist Gerward Rockenschaub has created a sculptural installation called ‘Platform’ which enables the visitor to get an eye-level view of Klimt’s seminal mural. It changes our relationship to the figures in his frieze, and to the whole experience of looking at it.

This theme of getting close is continued at the Kunst Historisches Museum, where a platform enables visitors to see Klimt’s wall paintings high above the main staircase in close proximity. Created in 1890, the paintings feature high points of art and sculpture from ancient Egypt to the Renaissance.

At the Albertina there is an exhibition with room after room of his often very ephemeral drawings, some incredibly erotic - surprisingly so for their time. I begin to feel that one can have too much of a good thing. Elsewhere, at the Leopold Museum there is an exhibition featuring every postcard, letter and photograph of Klimt that one might ever wish to see, and even a room setting from his apartment. All this stuff of a life is like padding surrounding the occasional remarkable painting: for example, at the Leopold Museum, his powerful painting ‘Death and Life’ (1910). Yet encountering such a work reminds us why there is such a fuss about Klimt, because while they are beautiful, sexy and decorative, they are also edgy, even today. They have a tension that stops them being about chocolate box sensuality. 

As I looked at the letters, the drawings of pregnant models, and the photographs of various illegitimate children I couldn’t help wondering how his partner Emilie Flöge felt. How did she accommodate all this sharing of him with other women?

The letters I read all seemed so warm, but perhaps she accepted that sharing was part of the package of loving a great man. It still makes me a little uneasy about him. Everything seems to be on his terms.

The Belvedere Palace has the most stunning presentation of his work, perhaps because it focusses on individual works rather than attempting to explores themes or stylistic relationships, with a sub-story of the reception of Klimt’s work. It helps that they have the best examples: ‘The Kiss’ and views of the lake at Attersee presented in a beautiful Baroque palace. Interestingly, at the same time the lower Belvedere has an exhibition of gold in contemporary art, a show that presumably relates to Klimt’s ‘golden period’ and the abundance of gilt in the Viennese palaces. If you can see beyond the kitsch surrounding Klimt there is a wonderful artist to discover, and perhaps this year more than any allows an unprecedented opportunity to have an intimate view of his work up-close.