Jugendstil (or major art geekery in Vienna)

One thing that was a lot of fun when Sandy, our youngest son Chris and I were traveling together this summer in Vienna and Prague was all of us getting excited about art. Granted that we are a bunch of culture geeks, anyway. But we still don't run around talking about art very often. Usually it's more like wondering how Donald Duck comics have come to affect the Danish vocabulary so much (more on that later).

In his Austria study abroad program, Chris had gotten really interested in the Austrian version of Art Nouveau, called Jugendstil. We had a quick preview of an art week to come when we checked into our hotel and saw a large example on the lobby wall. Cool! And we had not even talked to Chris yet, so this is just in the Austrian air.

As we got mildly lost trying to find where Chris' study abroad office was, I snapped this shot of a subway station just because I thought it was interesting. Guess what, more Jugendstil at the Karlsplatz Stadtbahn Station by Otto Wagner, who it turns out Chris had been studying. Art synchronicity.






We decided to go out and wander around the open market near our house. We saw some really interesting façades. Art premonition.

Turns out they were by Koloman Moser, another polymath art genius who did architecture, design, prints, paintings, stained glass (including some amazing stuff for a church by Otto Wagner).


Here is one stained class image from that church.

We went to lots of museums on the crown jewels, armor, and even the kitsch icon, Sisi, who was the last Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, famously played in a movie by Romy Schneider.

As art synchronicity continued, we also went to the Leopold Art Museum, who had a major career retrospective by none other than Kolo Moser.

Now, I am a real painting geek. Ask Sandy. We have more Brazilian primitive paintings, European prints, etc. than we have walls. It freaks Sandy out that the art broker at the Mercado Modelo in Salvador, Bahia knows me by name. I usually have to be dragged to look at furniture. Still, one of the things that intrigued me the most in the exhibition was how Moser along with a lot of other interesting artists, including Klimt and Kokoschka, had a commercial design collective called the Wiener Werkstätte. Here is a cabinet Moser designed with them. It would look very nice in your house, no doubt ;<)

So as you can see, Familie Straubhaar spent several days happily geeking out on art, from painting to stained glass to some really nice cabinets.

More art geekery to come, along with food, travel and politics. Not to mention the Fall Danish potato holiday, which gets us out of work for a week in October.