"Once In a Lifetime"

One of my all-time favorite paintings

In addition to theater and music, when I visit a city, I always check to see if there are any interesting exhibitions in local galleries or museums. Well, I hit the jackpot coming to Vienna when I did. The Kunsthistorisches Museum was hosting a major retrospective of the works of Pieter Breughel the Elder. Breughel is one of my favorite artists, and one of his paintings, Hunters in the Snow, is among my favorite works of art. Due to the popularity of the show, one had to reserve a time slot. I went one-step further and signed up for a small group tour. My tour was at 1:00. I was very excited about this.

Mariahilfe Strasse

Since I was headed in that direction, I spent an hour or so strolling along Mariahilfe Straße, Vienna’s main shopping thoroughfare. It is a long street that leads from the museum quarter to the Westbahnhof, the former main train station. For most of its length, it is a pedestrian zone. It was a fine sunny day and the street was crowded. There are a few high-end stores, but for the most part, the shops here attract a wide variety of customers. I was not really in the market for anything, but it is always fun to see what’s out there. The fact that many of the stores were already decorated for Christmas added to the festive atmosphere. Soon though, it was time to head for the KHM and my tour.

Ticket sales outside the museum

It was warm in the museum, so I checked my jacket and my bag. I then set about finding the meeting place for the tours. I found my group and was pleased to see that we were being supplied with headsets. That would make hearing in a crowd much easier. Not to be a show-off, but I signed up for a tour in German since one of my reasons for coming to Vienna was to brush up my language skills.

The exhibition was called “Once in a Lifetime.” Here’s what the museum website has to say about the show: “The Bruegel exhibition in Vienna is the setting for an amazing encounter. About half of all the extant works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder are on show. About forty paintings, sixty drawings and eighty prints can be attributed to him today. It happens as 2019 sees the 450th anniversary of the death of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30 – 1569).

This ’summit’ of masterpieces is a small miracle. Many of these international loans are so old and fragile that they hardly ever travel, and many of the works on show in the Bruegel exhibition have never before left their hometowns.”

On the tour

Our tour began with some of Breughel’s Italian drawings. Our docent did an outstanding job of using his drawings to prepare us to better understand the paintings.  I was particularly interested in seeing how Breughel transferred his experience of Italian landscapes into his depictions of everyday life in the “Low Countries”. It had never occurred to me to ask why his depictions of daily life in the Netherlands always included  mountains, when there are no mountains there. The departure from “reality” helps one to appreciate the allegorical nature of most of Breughel’s work. The tour only lasted an hour, but I was very glad that I signed up. We still had to fight the crowds, but the docent’s comments were extremely helpful. You were allowed to return to the exhibit, but, frankly, I was too saturated with impressions and information to go back. Like almost all major exhibitions these days, you exit via the shop. In this case, it was a temporary venue. I was very tempted by many things, but I resisted.

Emperor Franz Josef

 As I was leaving, I was struck again by the grandeur of the museum itself. The building, which dates from the late 1800’s, reflects the exuberance and confidence of the late Hapsburg empire.

Before leaving the museum, I paused to take a photo of a bust of the Emperor Franz Josef, during whose 68-year reign the museum was built. Seeing that image reminded me of a passage in a book about fin-de-siecle Vienna. “The emperor was ubiquitous, yet, peculiarly, never quite there. His portraits were everywhere, in every post office and bank and government building. The old face with the mutton chops and the thinning hair looked down on everyone from Alpine villages to Slovenian towns, and the vast army of bureaucrats dutifully mimicked his appearance, so that every postal carrier and sewer inspector seemed to be an imperial clone.”

Taken from the tram

I emerged from the museum into the bright sun. I walked a few blocks before hopping on the tram. Once at my stop, I picked up a bottle of wine. Then I made a quick stop at the apartment to grab my shopping bag. I needed to get up a few things at the supermarket. While I was there, I also bought a sandwich to tide me over before dinner. I got back to the apartment and took my shoes off. I had been on my feet for quite a while. I left the apartment again at 5:00 to get to Martin’s house by 6:00. He lived quite far outside the center, but getting there was a bit of a stroll down memory lane. I had to use the same subway-streetcar connection that I had used when I lived with his parents back in 1981. They lived at the very end of the streetcar line. Martin was not quite that far. We had a lovely dinner of Styrian cheese & wurst that I had brought him from Graz. He had also made a tasty pumpkin and ginger soup accompanied by some delicious bread. A cake, which Barbara had made, was a nice finishing touch. Given the hour (after 10:00), I took a cab back to the apartment. I was ready for bed! It had been a long but great day.