5.08.12

     This morning I tracked down a triptych by one of my favorite artists, Hieronymous Bosch, in the {art institute, bildinisch Kunst}. The gallery was set up to lead towards the painting, past a series of smaller landscape artists and time-piece art. Do they feature more Austro-German artists? How much of their budget did they expend to get the Bosch, and why specifically that piece? It was massive, displaying the fear of Hell, and all its horrors. Brüggel reminded me of Bosch, with the series of smaller events in a larger frame.
     Class afterwards consisted of another trip with the incredible Doctor O, this time through the Viennese History Museum. We started with the most ancient period, before even the Romans.
Doctor O went on to illuminate the ingenuity of Roman heating, as well as how the ancient walls defined what became the very innere stadt of Wien.
     The armor came next, with the ceremonial crowns that would sit at the top of the knights' lances. I tried to get a good picture of Ben standing behind the armor, but it was too dark in that room. Doctor O showed what I'll now forever find in Gothic painting, the S curve, and how it gets more and more exaggerated in paintings as time goes on. None of us could resist standing like that. It's intended to give a sense of lightness, of wafting away.
     I was disappointed that Doctor O did not get into the intricacies of the artwork inlaid on the suits of armor upstairs. She mentioned that she did not think her student could write a paper on it, and he proved her wrong, but then she did not go into any details. What a tease.
    Also in that floor were paintings of the siege of Vienna of 1683. Perhaps the main piece of information I will always carry in my head now is that croissants were invented after the siege in the fashion of the crescent blades of the Turks.
   My favorite thing in the museum would have to be looking at the models of Vienna through the centuries. I like seeing how Stephensdom towered over the city for so long, until other buildings began to crop up to challenge it as time went on. And now nothing can surpass it, but perhaps they'll change the height regulations in the new city across the river?