...of waltzes and Waldheim...(2 - Culture)

There are things you simply have to do when you visit Vienna, and I didn't do any of them. You must take a ride around the city in a horse and trap (there are hundreds to choose from, most of them driven by unhappy-looking men in bowler hats, and pulled by poor nags that stamp neurotically and repetitively at the cobbles beneath their hooves, while waiting for their next heavy load of strudel-stuffed customers. No thanks.). You must go to the opera (shrieking reminders of the ghastly three years when the house next door was occupied by a professional soprano who practiced her scales for up to six hours a day just might provoke a Manchurian Candidate response in me, so not worth the risk, or the money.). You must go to the Spanish Riding School (not comfortable with training animals to pose and trot unnaturally for entertainment, thanks, though I did get great fun from putting a wig on my dog years ago.). Oh, and you must eat cake at least once an hour (as mentioned in the previous post, my sweet tooth departed long since, but hey don't let me stop you. Tuck in.).

Instead, I did what I always do when I visit a new city; I walked the length and breadth of it by day and night, stopping to try new food whenever possible, I watched people like a hawk and came to unjustified and unprovable conclusions about them and their internal lives, and I went to as many galleries as I could bear. Vienna is relatively small as cities go, but is packed with such variety and riches that I left with a third of it barely explored, and a further third of it not seen at all. You can't rush a place like this. There are a hundred museums alone,  and not all of them in the Museum Quarter though this area makes a good place to start. First on my list and highly recommended as a building alone is Mumok, the Museum of Modern Art, which houses all the off-the-wall art wackiness you could possibly need, stuffed to the rafters with the likes of Klee, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Picasso, Duchamp, and (inevitably) a huge helping of shocking and confrontational/juvenile and childish (depending on your own personality) masterpieces by the Viennese Actionists, who seemed to be rebelling against most elements of Austria's past using anything they could lay their hands on (including each other's bodily fluids, genitals, leftovers from supper etc - you probably get the idea.). I spent almost three hours wandering around enjoying myself, and cast sly glances at the home-grown visitors sporting sharp geometric black outfits and expensively treated geometric hair as they peered coolly at the artwork. So many looked like extras from a European language film about the highly-repressed collective neuroses of the over-cultured affluent Mittel-european intelligentsia. So don't go there if you hate this sort of thing, that's my advice. I had a great time though.

The main feature at several of the other large museums at the moment (and for the rest of 2012) is the work of Gustav Klimt, those dreamlike, erotic, pagan, neo-Byzantine images of ecstatic women cradling severed heads, or lovers embracing awkwardly under a golden cloak (just me I imagine, but I always thought the Kiss looks like he's got her in a head lock. Don't read too much into my interpretation.). The main exhibition is sited at the beautiful Belvedere palace, which is worth a visit in its own right, a stunning baroque iced cake of a mansion built specifically as an proud statement of obscene wealth by Prince Eugene in the early 1700s. It was busy on the day I went, but not packed and there was plenty of time and space to get a long look at the paintings, which pack far more of a punch in real life than I was expecting. I'd always been a bit dismissive of Klimt as an 'early 20s artist', which is my snotty way of saying I saw his work as the sort of thing you send postcards of to friends when you're about 23 and keen to demonstrate that you are now mature enough to admit to a taste for beauty and romantic pan-European imagery (but you're way above all that heavy, over-literal Pre-Rapaelite nonsense like 'Flaming June' with her great big thighs and coarse hair.). Seen in real life, the canvasses are stunning, mesmerising things that you want to take time over and appreciate slowly, to notice every tiny curlicue and detail and fleck of light. I took the Belvedere exhibition very slowly, and later on lingered in the beautiful Secession building over the crazy Beethoven Frieze, noting how much the redhead who is supposed to portray 'lasciviousness' reminds me of Farah Fawcett in the famous 'red swimsuit with nipples' pinup from the Seventies. Someone had obviously been taking notes about the enduring power of certain depictions of female pulchritude.

Less endearing but equally interesting was the vast collection of Klimt's pencil drawings and sketches in the Vien Museum at Karlsplatz (not to mention his actual death mask and post-mortem sketches by his enfant terrible chum Egon Schiele.). One huge wall is given to a spread - in all senses of the word - of 'intimate studies' of his female models, a sort of pen and paper equivalent of a giant 'see everything' jazz mag.  When you read more, and discover that sex with Herr Klimt was one of the 'privileges' of getting to model for him ( and he was known for being fairly forceful in his conquests, which were legion), and consider the fact that several of his subjects were young girls of fifteen or so, a whole other raft of questions emerges about his attitude towards women. Of course the art eclipses it all... doesn't it? I'm not so sure. But in any case his work deserves to be viewed thoughtfully, and not just through the dazzling veil of his delicately applied gold leaf. There are far darker layers beneath. And take it from me, you won't want to see The Kiss again for a while once you leave Vienna as it is emblazoned absolutely everywhere in the city, from umbrellas to teacups to duvet covers. You can overdose on anything, but there's far more to this commemorative Klimt beanfeast than that one canvas so if you're passing through you'd be daft to ignore the show.

Outside of the official galleries Vienna is one great show in itself, a city whose eighteenth-century redevelopment was born of a blatant effort to rival and beat Haussman's 'new' Paris. It's hard to judge who won overall. The best I can offer is that Paris, through it's pale stone and open, light boulevards, retained a femininity in its aesthetic whereas the centre of Vienna is indubitably, robustly, stockily, masculine. This led to a well-documented 'action and reaction' sequence in the progress of its architecture, with the beautiful, delicate Art Nouveau blocks which emerged by the Nachtsmarkt in the late nineteenth centrury, in turn succeeded in turn by the clean lines of the  Secessionists, Deco and Modernism after that. This all means that just walking around the city and looking up every so often (or down, as I did at one point to see a small brass tribute inlaid in the pavement, to several residents of the district I was in who were taken off to the camps by the Nazis.) is an education in itself. There are nooks and crannies everywhere that will lure you off your chosen route - just let yourself be lured.

If it's shopping you're after, too, the place is teeming with small, independent retailers offering to reset your avarice levels to 'critical'. Freihaus and Spittelberg are the best to explore on foot; take your time and restrain yourself if you can. My big regret was that there was no time to get to the railway arches along the Gurtel, which is apparently the cosmic centre of Euopean electronica, and packed with live venues, clubs and bars. But there's got to be something to go back for, has there not?

Anyway, I've gone on far too long as usual. No wonder I couldn't get on with Twitter. After this, Vienna Part 3 - The People. May or may not contain Midge Ure.