A Klimt Kind of Day

Today I went on a search for some of Klimt's most famous paintings.  Well a mix of his most famous and my favorites.  Although I do love The Kiss, it is not a favorite painting of mine.  There are a couple of others I personally like more and those are here in Vienna as well.

I got up late again.  Big surprise.  I cannot sleep with this breathing thing!  Anyway, got up, posted the Strudel thing, showered and had some of my lovely organic bread with butter for breakfast.  Coffee too...of course.  Despite plans to the contrary, I haven't had breakfast in a coffee house.  I plan to change that Friday (on my birthday).

So, I headed out to the Vienna Museum (Wien Museum)http://www.wienmuseum.at/index.php?id=122 which, while not an art museum does have examples of art important to the history of
Vienna. Of course, Klimt is one of the most important modern painters to come out of Vienna.  The personal favorite painting of mine that is there is the Portrait of Emilie Flöge.I just love his use of blue in that painting.  It was powerful to see it in person (as I found seeing most of his work), but I was disappointed by how *dark* it was. I think that when we see photos of it, the image is lightened to make it more blue.  Although there is a lot of silver in the painting as well (as opposed to the gold that we are used to seeing in most of his works) it doesn't seem to brighten it any.

Hanging right next to it is Klimt's Pallas Athena.  Despite the fact that this painting is even darker (and it does use a lot of gold) I was arrested by her eyes.  Light green and piercing, they really drew me in and made me want to buy a poster...which, unfortunately, did not exist in their gift shop.

There were lots of other very interesting things in the Wien Museum.  Mostly a historical museum, it was very cool to see Medieval statuary, normally high up in a cathedral, right in front of you at eye level.  Quite a few pieces of St. Stevens ended up in this museum when the cathedral was restored.

Gotta say, not impressed with the museum gift shop.  Not a Klimt poster to be seen and no tacky souvenirs to be found at all.  You know it's a strange day when Donna buys nothing in a museum gift shop.

Before go on to more Klimt, I was distracted by St. Charles Church (Karlskirche)   http://www.karlskirche.at/index.html right next door to the museum.

There is a nifty park area in front of the church and, as it was a nice day, there were people sunning themselves, children playing...

and an accordion player serenading us.  Tell me the truth, this is exactly what you thought my trip to Vienna would include, didn't you?

Anyway, I spent a few minutes wandering around the outside of the church taking pictures...

I decided to go in as I've never been inside a Baroque Church...plenty of Medieval cathedrals, but I've never been subjected to the splendor of a Baroque church.

And very splendiferous it was, with all of its gold Baroque-ness.  Of course, renovations were going on and I did my best to shoot around the scaffolding.  I opted not to take the elevator up to view the ceiling paintings close up.  I know, someday I may regret it, but the height on scaffolding I was not happy with.  Besides, I have a zoom lens on the camera.

See, lovely ceiling painting, no scaffolding required.  It was lovely inside, and smelled of candles burning (yeah, I lit a couple myself) and I got time to shoot several lovely photos. 

Of course, this is all after I climbed up an unending spiral staircase to a "museum" that consisted of the traveling clothes for some crazy 18th century bishop. Not worth the climb..no no no.

Still, church was very pretty and shiny...so I wasn't too upset.

After wandering around the area of the church a bit, taking a few more photos of some interesting buildings

It was off to the UBahn for the Belvidere and more Klimt.  I need a break now, but I'll do a separate post for that in a few minutes...stay tuned!