Making Faces With Klimt, Napoleon, Egon Schiele, Enjoying Prince Eugene’s Hospitality

Klaus Zynski Invades Europe, Part 15

First, A Note: If you notice a change in this travelogue’s style, tone, or tense as it enters its final stretch, there is a good reason for that. Every prior entry was written in Europe on my trusty yellow legal pad. Everything from here until the end of the trip was written after my return to America, most often on a computer, though I may attempt future handwritten entries if the mood strikes me, or if people request it.

Transparently Yours,

K̸̗̠̣͓̾ḻ̷͚̆̾̈́̉́ͅa̴̗͇͂͂̀̃̒̍͘ư̸̢̢̺͇̟͐̏̋͐̌͝s̴̺͇̔̃͊̒̅ ̶͔͋̔͒Z̶̨͕̦̪̄̓y̴͉̼̤̯̥̑̋̂n̵͖̍̃̏ṡ̶͍͇͖̂k̷̺̝͍̔̇̅̽͛̕i̶͈͕̫̒̎̾̇̀̕͠

Late afternoon train to Prague. Like a pair of jewel thieves we decided we needed one last big score before we skipped town. It was time for the Belvedere museum. The museum, the real part of it anyway, meant an entry time, the Austrians won’t have a wall-to-wall crowd crush while we attempt to enjoy the various great works of their country’s most famous art museum. It made perfect sense to rise early, get out of the Airbnb, wear ourselves out with one last museum, and then sleep on the train to Prague.

A last-day-in-town excursion meant checking out of our Airbnb and taking the show on the road. I think Vienna was where I had to confront the ambient anxiety I’d feel with my luggage while out in public. I’m in that genre of American that fears being perceived as American whilst abroad, not because I’m particularly worried about being confronted for some national misdeed (Reddit is not real life, as always) but merely because I assume I’m like Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs with my good bag and my cheap shoes: I look like a rube. Two big suitcases and a nice backpack in a major metropolitan European train station always felt, to me, like wearing a big neon sign around my neck reading: “Please come pick my dumbass Yankee pockets.” Never happened, thank God.

We squeezed into a light rail train loaded far past any reasonable max capacity and arrived at Hauptbanhof without incident. All that was left was to dump the bags. This was old hat by this point, we’d done it in Berlin, Dresden, Budapest, now we’d do it in Vienna. Train stations mean coin lockers.

He just like me for real.

This was, I am not being hyperbolic, the most stressful experience of the trip. Think zombie movie, think 70s overpopulation scaremongering sci-fi. Narrow hallways between lockers, no working cash machine anywhere, lockers that only took coins, and very few of them. Everyone seemed to have had the same brilliant idea we did and so we were battling a crowd to secure storage for our luggage. If not for the assistance of a lovely Swiss couple, we would have been lost. It was a funny sort of feeling. I get anxious when traveling and the light rail system, being unknown to me, activated this particular aspect of my personality. Liz and I bickered, as couples do, then got on the train, we may have spent longer stewing if it weren’t for the crowd crush locker station. On the other side of that ordeal, we felt cleansed, full of love for all mankind and understanding for each other. Mosh pits, good ones, have a similarly curative effect.

The Belvedere Museum is housed within the former residence of the famous military leader Prince Eugene. Like many of his imperial line he kept a lovely home (or, rather, many servants and such kept it for him) and now that we’ve deemed princes obsolete and done away with them, even common folk like us are free to enjoy the hospitality of the house, gardens, and the former stables, now the “lower Belvedere.” Another strong crowd management tactic from the Austrians, shame they couldn’t apply it to their train station locker annexes.

The lower Belvedere is a fine appetizer but it’s not, in and of itself, worth going out of your way for. It houses a rather compelling exhibit on restoring and studying (by means of lasers and x-rays and other such techno-dissection) some of Klimt’s paintings and a fairly nice collection of medieval art. Whether the so-called “dark ages” were as devoid of mirth as the phrasing would suggest is up for debate, but they were certainly a time without irony and this makes them intermittently hilarious to my modern sensibilities. There’s a certain Curb Your Enthusiasm quality to a man looking, at worst, somewhat bemused while attached to a device wherein someone turns a crank to pull your small intestine out through your navel.'

The Belvedere is, I think, the best pure museum we explored anywhere in Europe. Well-curated, well laid-out, packed to the rafters with great works. Jacques-Louis David’s famous equestrian portrait of Napoleon, Martin Van Meytens’ luxurious portraits of baroque royals, Paul Troger’s moody biblical scenes, Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch’s striking modernism, painted just a few short years before the Nazis stormed in and killed the vibe. They even found space for a full body portrait of Prince Eugene himself, lovely likeness, lovely home you have here, hope you don’t mind if I keep my shoes on. All of this is in addition to the grandeur of the building itself. People used to be awfully serious about having pretty ceilings in their homes.

Of course, as with most heavily-trafficked museums, one great work stands as a tourist attraction unto itself. In the Belvedere (and indeed, in all of Vienna) people come to see The Kiss. The masterwork of the nation’s master artist, Gustav Klimt, is afforded an appropriate place of honor at the nexus where premodern galleries converge. It’s large and high-ceilinged and it’s hard to imagine that any room could be big enough to keep the atmosphere from getting just a bit claustrophobic. At least they don’t make you form a line. You can amble, observe from your angle of choice. I’d resolved to see it in person from the very early planning stages of this trip, and it did not disappoint. You’ve seen The Kiss in about a billion prints and screensavers and anime adaptations but the original truly does shame them all. No replication can properly capture its distinct gilded, reflective quality. It’s as if it generates its own light. That light can get distracting and so I was self-conscious, trying to avoid any excessive jostling. I turned around and found a little Japanese lady in a seafoam green kimono. She stood maybe four feet nine inches tall and I think she weighed about eighty pounds. She gave the impression of being at least as fragile as any artwork on display. Made me think I’d better just plant my feet and leave my hands in my pocket.

As a brief aside: Vienna does seem to have become popular with east Asian tourists. I wonder what the numbers there look like? Maybe the French are losing some ground in those demographics, prosperous Chinese, Japanese, Korean retirees annoyed at being looked at like dirt by French cafe workers and avoiding burning trash and riotous mobs en route to the Louvre looking for somewhere a bit quieter, quainter, more accommodating. Accommodating really is the word. The Germans and Austrians aren’t warm in the ways you’d assume, say, the Italians or Greeks are, but they enforce a pretty universal standard of accommodation for foreign tourists. I was grateful for it, but noted the implication that I’d better not ask for a micrometer more accommodation than I was receiving. Fair arrangement, I figured.

Da Prince

You’d think The Kiss would have been my favorite thing I saw that day, but you’d be wrong. I can’t stop thinking about those lovely little Character Head busts by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. If you’re unfamiliar they’re basically a form of 3-D caricature. Messerschmidt was a well-regarded portrait sculptor and, towards the end of his life, began a personal project exploring expression of human faces in exaggerated terms. Terrible smells, stifled laughs, red-faced screams. I love them for two reasons. First, the way they are presented means that you view them all at eye level, and this means your instinct, as you observe them all one by one, is to try and mimic their expressions. This is endlessly entertaining.

Next, and this is sappy, but please bear with me, is that they’re just so much fun. It’s a vital reminder, in my view, that the point of human expression in any medium is to inspire that sort of emotional response, a simple joy at the cleverness of it all. Even the work of a great master can, and often should, be fun. I like to think that was what Messerschmidt was after, recapturing that fun. As a renowned work for hire sculptor, he likely dealt with a lot of rich, important people with all sorts of insufferable notes on his work and self-images distorted by their inflated egos (“my jowls aren’t that big! Do them over!”) One imagines Franz at the biergarten with his friends, burned out from his latest prima-donna client, saying “God, you know, I just wanna have some fun with this stuff again.” Lessons there for all of us.