Rinsed Through at the Belvedere, Vienna, Then the Karlskirche «

Rinsed Through at the Belvedere, Vienna, Then the Karlskirche

Wednesday 15th July 2015

I’d never heard of the Belvedere at Vienna, but Harry Rollo said, You must go and be sure to take the lower entrance. So we did and got the beauty of it from a distance. At the top of the gravel sweep was Rufus Pitman, newly arrived by air from London in Vienna in a Viennese outfit. Never have I been so rinsed through by an art gallery in a long time. Usually there’s always a portion of oneself that can’t wait to get away. But this time I could have gone round all over again at the end. The Klimts! I thought there was only that one in New York there was the row about and the Beethoven cycle of course. But the Belvedere was sumptuous with Klimts. The woman in the pink dress is ravishing. The frock is kind of fluffy. Someone asked me later, ‘What was it made of?’ I couldn’t really say. It wasn’t quite real. So rich and dreamy, like an iced cake, rather like Singer Sargent but there’s always a ghostly quality to Klimt. This painting was before he had the idea of making their dresses into seemingly flat designs with the faces poking out which the Gay Mother can’t bear. She couldn’t bear the famous Klimt in New York. Absolutely visceral recoiling. Shudder. But usually a person is ravished by the Klimts as well as spooked. Few artists have dared to be so delicious. Then Rufus and Reggie introduced a new artist called Sheila, so they said. But I think really it’s Schiele (rule of German spelling: have 3 vowels where 1 would do). Schiele was completely thrilling: mad but beautiful. I think he was Expressionist. Certainly he had a lot to express. He didn’t commit though, surprisingly, because the Spanish flu got him first and then a day or two later his lady wife. What a loss to art! But he’d done enough. Had he lived I get the feeling that suicide would have been on the cards at some point. Another artist did commit: that was Gerstl. He painted himself laughing manically then committed. He’d run away with Schoenberg’s wife but she ran back to from whence she’d come. Gerstl was in a wretched state; nobody would take any notice of him. He not only committed but incinerated all his works. Not very thoroughly though. A remnant survived and later proved to be of museum standard. So now he’s in the Belvedere. Rufus Pitman stood before the painting and did an imitation of him laughing manically before committing. We progressed into 19th and 18th century rooms. Reggie introduced some new artists as he always does but I can’t remember who they were now. Such light and airy rooms, such a world of art, even if the Art sometimes provoked Rufus to wonder how it would be as a 1000 piece jigsaw. Rufus always does a jigsaw every Christmas. One time the cleaner in New York removed the 1000th piece.

I don’t remember where we lunched but soon it was on to the Karlskirche (don’t tell me it’s got accents!). There was a once-in-lifetime opportunity to ascend by lift up the builders’ scaffolding right into the dome of the Karlskirche. Reggie said it meant more to him than anything to be up close inside a baroque cupola. Odd because instead of being carried though all the tricks of perspective to the vanishing point, we were at the vanishing point seeing the building splayed below. Terrifying especially with the scaffolding creaking and moving about apparently. Mercury, Mr Kitten had gone up a day or two before and had a breakdown. Or rather he’d gone straight back down again. A Germanic woman was having a breakdown and had to be comforted through the downward lift journey. We saw her later in the street and she cut us dead. I did wonder whether this is the attitude that lead to Hitler.