Drawing by Durer

The Albertina in Vienna is a lifeless showpiece of a mansion that you can tell was made to be lived in by the most boring people on earth. People who were far more interested in being impressive externally than internally. The exhibitions were small but interesting (modernists, naked women, and facsimiles of Austrian art through the ages).

• I moved through the gallery very aggressively. Last day in Vienna and I was a little over the whole decrepit, touristy scene of museums. The girls are not attractive in Vienna. The lack of class in the east European girls was especially distasteful. Pink tshirts with sparkles? Really? And when four of your friends are already wearing them?
• There was one print in the Naked Woman exhibition (I’m sure it was called like the Body and Image or something like that) from Helmut Newton, and at the time I wrote: ‘Newton lacked ideas. Having naked women to shoot makes life easy.’ But this was before I visited the Newton museum in Berlin. Will write about that later. Needless to say that he didn’t lack ideas.
• I liked the thoughtfulness and care of Kandinsky. He spent months on his crazy ideas.
• Jawlensky’s colour impressed me again.
• The way Picasso saw was so interesting. The way he could break reality and make lines not connect where they should but still create a highly coherent picture.
• Thought Chagall was very, very funny with his penis jokes. One picture had a girl lying on a dark blue hillside dreaming. Then off to the top left of the large painting there is a very random vase with bright colours that is supposed to attract the eye. But then off to the top right, in barely visible simple gray lines is a picture of the girl hugging this huge phallic dragon. Very funny. I still don’t like the way his things look, but I like him now.
• Art is a big joke played on society by those who don’t want to participate in the general interests of the masses. You can’t take it all to seriously. It’s just a way to live.
• Margritte. Tackily conceptual.
• Feininger’s The High Shore was very interesting. Nearly cubist.
• I realised that I should have some of the ‘strange’ pictures in my Night Set. It should be a cacophony of reality and unreality. Of the problems and dreams that happen at night and how difficult it is to tell between the two.
• In the last exhibit I was very impressed by some of the realist work by Karl Kuntz. Cartoon-like but amazingly detailed on the weight of light in a scene. Also not afraid to do a shaded dark place with very uneven, nearly oddly heavy light. Too bad these were facsimiles.
• Durer was fucking incredible. Total respect for the patience he had. Need to reproduce in myself.

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• art

Posted 2 years ago