Thursday 14th February 2014

St Valentine’s Day – of little interest.

I was telling you about Vienna. Just you wait until I get onto the Coffee-House Owners’ Ball, which occurred last Friday night in full regalia.

Meanwhile, we look at Vienna’s buildings, which divide into heavy, pompous and dull and thrilling, new and fragile. The last Emperor, Franz Josef, ran up a gate to his Hofburg Palais in 1893. Bang opposite, at the same time, up springs a Rene MacIntosh-inspired, Arts and Crafts miracle of slender taste, luxury materials and challenging flat, non bits – the building-without-eyebrows. Emperor absolutely screaming for immediate demolition but had to settle for red geraniums in window boxes to supply the eyebrows.

Further away, at the bottom of a massive, dead-weight of Imperial boulevard, lined with boiling-standard facades is dear, dear Secession. Klimt said ‘Fuck off’ to the Academy and darling Wittgenstein, his father (I mean father of Wittgenstein, not that Witt was father of Klimt), paid for Secession with convenient industrial fortune. Such a two fingers to Habsburg Vienna. Secession is a art gallery, in case you’ve not grasped. For a start, it’s white, not putty like the rest of Vienna. Its surfaces are mostly blank and terrifyingly blind and decoration is occasional outbursts of gold and strange sinuous Art Nouveau flowers. Then the dome! Oh the dome! Of gold filigree.  A hand could crush it yet it blazes on, absolute gold. Within is Klimt’s Beethoven Cycle. A wall painting round three sides of the room showing the quest for happiness, questing in fact for much of the time through blank space, with rich, ornate episodes. First of all the Knight in Shining Armour, who directs merely to a phase of  lust and lasciviousness to be got through. Beyond that at last is Poetry with her Lyre and finally, finally, an angels’ choir and a hot man in perfect nudity (not sure he is really called for).

So, what of the furs of Vienna? Ladies are seen on the streets in furs, with strange Tyrolean hats displaying feathers of birds they have hunted and killed. Former Habsburgs, surely, ladies of iron, unspeakable greatnessess, what one of the Imperial buildings would look like were it to get up and walk. On the other hand, no. In their furs, they are their furs. Their own existence ceases. They are a moving fur.

In this way, we work round again to Secession, and the Poor Little Rich Gays, on the borders of existence.

Habsburg, now I think of it, went over the border and out of existence while Secession and the Building without Eyebrows have grown in allure with the years.

Too much existence will surely be the death of you. Hovering on the borders is a better insurance of existence continuing.

Stodgy, Crippled Imperial Gateway Run Up by the Last Emperor (Strictly the Last but One) in Vienna, 1893

The Ghastly Franz Josef Gateway: Apotheosis of Habsburg Vienna

Dear, Darling Building without Eyebrows, Put Up Dead Opposite Frightful Franz Josef Gateway at the Same Time

Dear, Darling Building without Eyebrows, Vienna

Dear, Precious Secession, Its Filigree Dome Crouching, Fragile yet Fierce

Furred Greatnesses of Vienna in Hats

Furred Greatnesses of Vienna: They are Their Furs

Unusual Sighting of Lone Furred Greatness in Vienna