August 11
* I love how the Belvedere Palace is right in the city, this glorious Baroque style museum that was originally the summer home to Prince Eugene of Savoy. Although the Upper Belvedere isn’t elevated that much, the view from the building provides a great panoramic of Vienna’s city center as your gaze goes past the gardens and fountains that lead to the Lower Belvedere. Today’s time was spent in the Upper building where inside was just as beautiful with a plentiful art collection. The main attraction was the striking Gustav Klimt collection. I had heard of Klimt before and knew of his more famous paintings like ‘The Kiss,’ but I didn’t know too much about him or his style. In general seeing a painting in person isn’t all that different than seeing it in book, but seeing Klimt pieces in the flesh was a different experience altogether mainly since his colors and his famous gold doesn’t carry over as well in reproductions. It is definitely something worthwhile to see in person. Knowing that Klimt was one of the main leaders in the Secession and Art Nouveau movements in Vienna helped to further understand the iconography of his paintings. There is a struggle between the faces and bodies with the overwhelming gilded and fragmented backgrounds, which could possibly be the competition of tradition versus Klimt’s own new non-traditional style. You can see that there is an ambiguity in depth, an absence of time, and much of his work is very geometric. I particularly liked ‘Judith I’ from 1901, which tells of the Biblical heroine known for cutting off the head of Holofernes, because it hardly shows the head in the bottom corner while the rest of the painting is so seductive. It is extremely different from Baroque artist Carravagio’s version of the same story from 1599; It is amazing to see how much art has evolved, yet many of the same stories are being told through the canvas.
posted by lauREN @ 9/11/2006
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