Beyond The Kiss: Vienna’s unrivalled art scene
The capital of Austria is home to more than 60 galleries and museums including Gustav Klimt’s most famous work.
If Paris is the Mona Lisa and Florence is nothing but David, then Vienna must be The Kiss. In this city with a reverence bordering on obsession for Gustav Klimt, a dip into Vienna’s Leopold Museum however gives us pause to consider another significant work from one of the enfants terrible of the Vienna Secession movement.
Death and Life is Klimt’s Art Nouveau Grim Reaper allegory that received first prize at the International Exhibition of Art in Rome in 1911, only for the artist to fundamentally revise it several years later.
“It’s as important as The Kiss,” says guide Marco at the Leopold, and this in a gallery displaying thousands of other treasures from Viennese ophthalmologist Rudolf Leopold’s vast collection of Austrian art from the 1850s and into 20th century modernism.
So it helps to have the eyes picked out of the pieces, an approach that can apply just as much to the context of the Leopold itself, one of 60 arts venues in what Vienna calls the Museums Quarter.
That’s a number to daunt even the most aspirational of art tourists, so let’s slice up the quarter a bit more. A good swag of MQ’s 60 are studios and ateliers for young creatives, secreted within a 9ha enclave just outside Vienna’s famed Ring boulevard. Into the mix are also woven six short Baroque passageways connecting MQ with Vienna outside. They serve as mini exhibition spaces, each arched ceiling highlighting a different discipline of contemporary art, from writers to comic artists and graphic novel creators.
That leaves a handful of standalone museums, many of which are centres for study in their respective disciplines as well as exhibition venues. So which to choose? One could start at the ZOOM Kindermuseum, but there’s no admittance to this all-action playroom without a child. And Tanzquartier Wien, Austria’s first centre for contemporary dance, is most easily experienced on one of its performance dates.
Architekturzentrum Wien, which is all things architecture and design, seems geared towards those with a specialised interest, as it’s mainly rather dry models and sketches.
That said, on my visit it’s hosting an inspiring tribute to Yasmeen Lari, the first female architect in Pakistan.
A state-owned modern art museum, mumok, has a collection focused on “classical modernism, pop art, Fluxus, minimal art, and concept art, as well as Vienna Actionism and contemporary art”. I look but can’t say I actually see. Surely I will have more clarity with the ophthalmologist’s collection, MQ’s anchor tenant.
The Leopold honours the collection gathered by Rudolf and his wife Elisabeth over many decades from the 1950s. It holds about 8000 artworks, 5200 of which the Leopolds sold to the Austrian state for a bargain €160m in 1994. They kept quite a few back, still in the private collection of 98-year-old Elisabeth. Rudolf died in 2010.
Vienna’s classic Belvedere gallery has the most Klimts, including The Kiss, a painting that so mesmerised Vienna when it was displayed at an exhibition to mark Emperor Franz Joseph’s diamond jubilee in 1908 that the government snapped it up, even though it was unfinished. Yet the Leopold believes Death and Life, which took the artist more than five years to master, is his standout work.
We see the Grim Reaper on the left, holding a club and grinning, in anticipation perhaps, at the scene opposite, where figures of all ages lie, in embrace, on beds of flowers, oblivious to being observed. Dissatisfied with it even after its big prize win, Klimt altered the composition and changed the background from gold to grey in 1915. Who knows what he may have done to it subsequently had death not caught up with him in 1918, aged just 55, a victim of the influenza pandemic.
He was a contemporary of many other forceful artists. Egon Schiele, the creator of equally intense and sensually raw works, has 220 pieces in the Leopold collection, plus there are important paintings from Richard Gerstl, Alfred Kubin and Oskar Kokoschka.
Marco says Rudolf didn’t like Kokoschka because he kept repeating himself, but the museum still exhibits him prominently, as it does the geometrics of graphic art genius Koloman Moser.
On our tour, I can’t help but notice occasional works, mainly landscapes, hanging several degrees off square. It’s deliberate by the Leopold, in its Few Degrees More statement on the climate crisis. As Marco says, it’s a strong message without being aggressive.
MQ runs weekly tours on Saturday afternoons (including in English) of the entire precinct, and they start with an appreciation of the dominant building, the 18th-century former Riding Hall, now an exhibition space and temporary home for a local opera company. They’re pretty impressive digs for nags because, as guide Maria explains, horses were status objects in the Baroque era and ridiculously pampered. Some were swapped for expensive paintings, including one by Rubens in a noticeable trade.
MQ’s main venues are wrapped around a large courtyard where those Viennese not sipping gruner veltliner at outdoor cafes are lounging on huge geometric benches called Enzis, which each summer appear in a different colour as voted by locals. It’s a vibe well removed from Vienna’s oft-overcrowded historic town centre, and a perfect neighbour to one of the oldest and most eclectic districts, Neubau, with its wonderful mix of cafes, restaurants and retailers.
Try the traditional Witwe Bolte for Austrian cuisine or go vegetarian at Tian Bistro am Spittelberg.
There’s true beer garden atmosphere at a pair of authentic biesls, or pubs, Amerling and Glacis, while the conservatory-style cafe Adlerhof serves a Sacher torte superior to that of the original.
Cutting-edge shopping is everywhere, literally at Lorenzi, which has everything from knives to axes and samurai swords. Inspect a wonderful array of hats, gloves, walking sticks and umbrellas at Gabriele Budweiser, or dip into the range of clothing, accessories and homewares at Kitsch Bitch, which is more refined than its name. Keeping a straighter face is Herr und Frau Klein, purveyor of gorgeous baby and children’s wear.
Meanwhile my exposure levels to great art remain elevated at the remarkable Hotel Altstadt, only a few minutes from MQ, where each room and suite in this grand old house has been adorned by the modern art collected by its entrepreneurial owner, Otto Wiesenthal. Each space has a theme, and should another apartment in this classic old Vienna building become available, the Wiesenthals mostly likely would snap it up and commission an artist to do their magic. Treat it as a satellite venue to MQ and you’ll be right at home.
In the know
Leopold Museum is open daily except Tuesdays, 10am-6pm, and seven days a week June-August; adults €17 ($28).
Hotel Altstadt is at Kirchengasse 41; rooms from
€204 a night, twin-share.
Jeremy Bourke was a guest of the Austrian National Tourist Office.
