23 August--Leopold Museum, Jewish museum

Today we got another Dr. O tour, this time of the Leopold Museum. This was one of my favorite museum because of its large collections of Klimt and Schiele paintings. Egon Schiele was a contemporary of Gustav Klimt. Both artists were associated with the Secession movement and the belief that every generation should have its own art. The Leopold family privately owns the entire collection, and the state of Vienna built the museum for the family to house it. The late Dr. Leopold started his collection by selling a stamp collection he had inherited and purchasing several sketches by Schiele for a few schillings. At this time Schiele was not popular and many of his works were considered pornographic.

One of the works we saw were the paintings that Klimt had painted for the Vienna university. In the early stages of his artistic career, Klimt was associated with the Ringstrasse movement, and as a talented painter he was commissioned to paint two of the four faculties that would hang on the walls of the university—the faculties of Philosophy and Medicine. He interpreted these fields differently than one would expect. His portrayal of Medicine is filled with images of death, while his portrayal of philosophy conveys no clear picture of this ideology and is filled with images of despair. Needless to say, the University refused his paintings and this caused Klimt to ditch the Ringstrasse movement in favor of the Secession. This museum also contains the painting Klimt was working on when he died-- a marriage scene. Because it is unfinished, several of Klimt's painting processes are still visible, namely the fact that he would paint his subjects nude, and then 'clothe' them. I think that this is appropriate for someone who spent so much time pondering about the female body. Klimt himself was a lady's man and fathered several illegitimate children.

This museum contains one of the largest collection of Schiele paintings. As previously mentioned, Schiele, born in 1890, was an associate and friend of Klimt’s who both influenced and was influenced by him. Like Klimt in his later years, Schiele was an expressionist painter. Schiele is noted for the many self-portraits he has produced, all in the expressionist style. Many of his paintings are done of nudes, something that got him into trouble before. Schiele was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing several peasant girls, while in reality he was simply painting them. Determined to convict him, the court declared that in his workshop there were nude pictures where underage girls could possibly see them, and so Schiele spent three days in prison. Many of his works deal with themes of death. Schiele’s painting “Der tote Mutter,” which depicts a deathly and downcast looking woman clothed in black cradling a baby, foreshadows the demise of his wife and unborn child at the hand of the Spanish flu. In 1918 the Spanish Flu was raging through Vienna, and Schiele was doing everything he could to prevent his wife from catching it, doing everything for her so she would not have to leave the house often. Unfortunately, she did catch it and died on the 28^th of October. Three days later Schiele succumbed to the flu himself.

Another part of the Secession movement was the creation of the Vienna Workshop. This group put forth the idea thatanything can be art, so long as it is hand made and effort and detail are put into its production.

After the Leopold Museum we embarked on a walking tour of downtown Vienna, highlighting Vienna's Jewish history. We saw the Jewish holocaust memorial, which consisted of a rectangle bordered by bookshelves, with all the book binds pointing inwards. This arrangement does not allow you to see what the books are titled or what they contain. This is a reference to the fact that the Holocaust 'closed the book' for millions of people and didn't allow their stories to be told. It also references the stories that might have been told, if these people were allowed to live out their lives. Now these people's stories are inaccessible. This monument also lists the 41 camps where Austrian Jews died. Across from this monument is a statue of Gottfried Ephraim Lessing, who was a very influential Enlightenment author and proponent of religious tolerance. On a wall facing this square is a plaque commemorating the 1420-21 pogroms in Vienna. These acts of violence were sparked with the accusation of two Jews in Ents of host desecration-- that is, they were accused of stealing a consecrated wafer from communion (which to the catholics was the actual body of christ-- it's called transubstantiation) and subsequently torturing it, because by torturing the wafer, you are torturing Jesus apparently. In response to this, the Jews were burnt at the stake and other Jews were subject to pogroms. I think it is interesting that the plaque commemorating this event praises it as helping 'cleanse' the population.