Showing posts with label Austria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Austria. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Spotlight: Knarf
Knarf (Knarf Lumpenpack) was pretty unquestionably my favourite artist of the day. A lot of his pieces seem to be collaborations, but it's a very unique style and the flow of the freehand stuff is amazing. Much of the art seems to be abstract hearts and other organ-looking things, but it's the design and style more then the content that impresses me so much.
Vienna Street Art
Oh boy. So much art. I've picked a few artists that stood out the most for me and set them aside for their own posts, but here's some of the highlights of the rest. A lot of the art was really great, but a lot of it is pretty weird too. Since I know how to go beyond 5 pictures in a post now I'm just going to dump some of the best and most interesting here, but the rest will be on picassa in a few days (I think I took something like 150 pictures in total).
Day 113: The Fruits of Planning
In my days in Vienna I had come across the occasional street art down a back alley, but hadn't really seen much. Any city with such a tradition of the arts -must- have street art somewhere though, so in all that downtime I had I started researching and planning. Between the internet and an urban culture magazine I marked 17 (yes, 17!) locations on my map that were promising to look for art, and mapped out a route to cover all of them (I missed one, in the end - it was just too far out of the way and I ran out of time).
Things started a bit slow at first. Most of the commercial areas I'd noted had a lot of sticker culture, but not really any open walls big enough for much paint. The first few parks I checked out had a few things, but mostly just tags, and not terribly good ones. I had put this quest off in hopes for a dry day, but I ran out of days before Vienna ran out of rain, so I was also hiding under trees and awnings periodically when the rain picked up.
After lunch things started to pick up. I hit a few really nice parks, and then after a few more duds I hit the real sweet spot along a canal offshoot of the Danube. Both sides of the canal had paths with fairly tall brick walls perfect for large art, and they were crammed with paintings for kilometers.
After spending an hour or two walking both sides of this stretch I continued on north to the underpasses of the main freeway over the Danube, which turned out to be another great hotspot. After a massive amount of walking through the day I decided to give up on the last location and take the subway back to the hostel. It was dark by this point anyway, and while I'm leaving the actual art for follow up posts (both general ones and a few artist spotlights) here's one to end with.
Things started a bit slow at first. Most of the commercial areas I'd noted had a lot of sticker culture, but not really any open walls big enough for much paint. The first few parks I checked out had a few things, but mostly just tags, and not terribly good ones. I had put this quest off in hopes for a dry day, but I ran out of days before Vienna ran out of rain, so I was also hiding under trees and awnings periodically when the rain picked up.
After lunch things started to pick up. I hit a few really nice parks, and then after a few more duds I hit the real sweet spot along a canal offshoot of the Danube. Both sides of the canal had paths with fairly tall brick walls perfect for large art, and they were crammed with paintings for kilometers.
After spending an hour or two walking both sides of this stretch I continued on north to the underpasses of the main freeway over the Danube, which turned out to be another great hotspot. After a massive amount of walking through the day I decided to give up on the last location and take the subway back to the hostel. It was dark by this point anyway, and while I'm leaving the actual art for follow up posts (both general ones and a few artist spotlights) here's one to end with.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Weeping Angels
Zentralfriedhof had a lot of interesting art and sculpture with all the graves, and the two most common sculptures were of mourners and angels (and mourning angels). Here's a selection of some of the ones that caught my eye!
There is one important thing to keep in mind of course. Don't blink!
(Sorry, I had to!)
There is one important thing to keep in mind of course. Don't blink!
(Sorry, I had to!)
Day 112: Hunting the Dead
More rain again today, but not nearly as steady. In the morning I decided to fulfil a promise I'd made and took the subway as far east as it goes (on the opposite side of the city from where I am) and then walked a few more kilometers to get to Zentralfriedhof, which is the largest cemetery in Vienna and one of the largest in the world. The part I was looking for was supposed to be pretty central, but I wasn't taking the main entrance in, and with the distances involved finding a central location wasn't trivial.
Eventually I was lucky enough to come across that universal savior to many a lost travaller - the Japanese tour group. I tucked in behind them and sure enough soon found my target - a special plot of graves and monuments for famous Austrians. The origin of the cemetery and the special plot are a bit interesting. In the mid-1800s the Austro-Hungarian empire was booming, and with the growing Vienna at its center the city was running out of room to bury people. In 1863 they set aside a huge parcel of land at the end of the city for a massive cemetery, and to give it some prestige they dug up and shipped in some famous corpses to class the place up. Then, of course, the empire collapsed after WW1 and the city never got as big as they expected, so there's still a lot of empty space.
After lunch I went back to the old city and visited the Alibertina Museum. It's famous for its print collection, and what I saw was nice, but it wasn't as enjoyable as the two galleries yesterday. I walked around a bit more but a lot was closed for Sunday and eventually headed back to the hostel early around 5pm to relax for the afternoon.
Eventually I was lucky enough to come across that universal savior to many a lost travaller - the Japanese tour group. I tucked in behind them and sure enough soon found my target - a special plot of graves and monuments for famous Austrians. The origin of the cemetery and the special plot are a bit interesting. In the mid-1800s the Austro-Hungarian empire was booming, and with the growing Vienna at its center the city was running out of room to bury people. In 1863 they set aside a huge parcel of land at the end of the city for a massive cemetery, and to give it some prestige they dug up and shipped in some famous corpses to class the place up. Then, of course, the empire collapsed after WW1 and the city never got as big as they expected, so there's still a lot of empty space.
After lunch I went back to the old city and visited the Alibertina Museum. It's famous for its print collection, and what I saw was nice, but it wasn't as enjoyable as the two galleries yesterday. I walked around a bit more but a lot was closed for Sunday and eventually headed back to the hostel early around 5pm to relax for the afternoon.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Day 111: Wet in Vienna
There was more rain pretty much constantly all day, but after staying in most of yesterday afternoon I wasn't about to spend the day sitting around. I took the subway downtown and started by just wandering around the old city. Vienna is a bit like Paris in that no matter what street you go down you're going to see huge fancy churches or ornate palace-looking buildings encrusted with sculpture or just streets packed with monuments and old historical buildings.
Vienna has a *lot* of museums and galleries. Since the weather wasn't the best, I figured it would be a good day to check out a few. During my down time yesterday I had done a bit of research and narrowed the places I was interested in down to a handful of 3 or 4. They are nice enough to group a lot of them together in one block, called "The Museum Quarter", with many others nearby in the same area, so it's quite easy to go to a lot of them. The first one I visited is the Kunsthistorisches Museum which is another of the top galleries in Europe. It's sculpture stuff was pretty sparse, but it had a wonderful collection of paintings. Although it had most of the big name, the specific paintings I was most familiar with were Bruegel's "The Tower of Babel" (which has always been one of my favourite biblical paintings) and the other half of the Arcimboldo collections "Seasons" and "Elements" that weren't in the Louvre.
Next I headed over to the Leopold Museum. It is billed as a modern art gallery, which makes me nervous, but most of its collection is pieces by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, both of whom I like a lot. Apparently today marks Klimt's 150th birthday and there was a special exhibit going on for him in addition to the normal collection. Unfortunately the Klimt collection didn't allow any photos, but the other stuff did - and honestly, I probably like Schiele's stuff more. Hard to believe he died at my age.
After that I just explored around some more, checking out a few of the big shopping streets, some churches, and wandering by the parliament and other big buildings. I have a few more museums I'm interested in, so I might do some more tomorrow, or do a few outdoorsy things depending on the weather. I don't mind the rain much as long as it keeps it nice and cool like it has.
Vienna has a *lot* of museums and galleries. Since the weather wasn't the best, I figured it would be a good day to check out a few. During my down time yesterday I had done a bit of research and narrowed the places I was interested in down to a handful of 3 or 4. They are nice enough to group a lot of them together in one block, called "The Museum Quarter", with many others nearby in the same area, so it's quite easy to go to a lot of them. The first one I visited is the Kunsthistorisches Museum which is another of the top galleries in Europe. It's sculpture stuff was pretty sparse, but it had a wonderful collection of paintings. Although it had most of the big name, the specific paintings I was most familiar with were Bruegel's "The Tower of Babel" (which has always been one of my favourite biblical paintings) and the other half of the Arcimboldo collections "Seasons" and "Elements" that weren't in the Louvre.
Next I headed over to the Leopold Museum. It is billed as a modern art gallery, which makes me nervous, but most of its collection is pieces by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, both of whom I like a lot. Apparently today marks Klimt's 150th birthday and there was a special exhibit going on for him in addition to the normal collection. Unfortunately the Klimt collection didn't allow any photos, but the other stuff did - and honestly, I probably like Schiele's stuff more. Hard to believe he died at my age.
After that I just explored around some more, checking out a few of the big shopping streets, some churches, and wandering by the parliament and other big buildings. I have a few more museums I'm interested in, so I might do some more tomorrow, or do a few outdoorsy things depending on the weather. I don't mind the rain much as long as it keeps it nice and cool like it has.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Day 110: Another Day With No Pictures
I followed through with my decision to leave off the three extra countries and went straight to Vienna. I'm toying with the idea of heading over to Poland for a few days as partial compensation, but I haven't really planned that far ahead yet.
As much as I enjoyed aspects of eastern Europe, it is nice to have some amenities again (reliable, air conditioned trains, for example). Because I couldn't make up my mind on where to go I left booking a hostel really late. This hasn't been a problem to do in the last few countries, but Austria is a busy tourist place, and I'm coming in on a Friday, so things were a bit picked over. In the end my choice was either to pay a lot more to be in the city center or to stay out on the fringe of the city. It's not too bad, since it's right near the metro, so it should only be a 20 minute subway ride in, but still an extra expense.
By the time I got in and found my hostel it was already around 3:30pm and pouring rain (the first rain I've had, I believe, since one of the first days in Rome) and I didn't really feel like taking the subway all the way to the city center just to walk in the rain when things are mostly closing. Instead I hung around the hostel until the rain slowed and went on a walk just around the hostel, but there wasn't anything terribly interesting. It gave me a chance to do some research at least so I should be able to get to the stuff I want tomorrow and cover a lot.
As much as I enjoyed aspects of eastern Europe, it is nice to have some amenities again (reliable, air conditioned trains, for example). Because I couldn't make up my mind on where to go I left booking a hostel really late. This hasn't been a problem to do in the last few countries, but Austria is a busy tourist place, and I'm coming in on a Friday, so things were a bit picked over. In the end my choice was either to pay a lot more to be in the city center or to stay out on the fringe of the city. It's not too bad, since it's right near the metro, so it should only be a 20 minute subway ride in, but still an extra expense.
By the time I got in and found my hostel it was already around 3:30pm and pouring rain (the first rain I've had, I believe, since one of the first days in Rome) and I didn't really feel like taking the subway all the way to the city center just to walk in the rain when things are mostly closing. Instead I hung around the hostel until the rain slowed and went on a walk just around the hostel, but there wasn't anything terribly interesting. It gave me a chance to do some research at least so I should be able to get to the stuff I want tomorrow and cover a lot.
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