15 July 2010

A revelation from abroad

Okay, so at the moment I'm in Vienna, where I spent the entire day tromping around a couple of large art museums.  Cuz, y'know, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, etc etc.  One of the museums, the Albertina, has a section which develops more or less chronologically from the Impressionists to the early 21st century.  Now, it's important to realize that the entire time I've been in Europe, it's been in a heat wave, with temperatures reaching 39°C/102°F, and there's no air conditioning in my Vienna hotel (last night they did finally give me a fan).  On top of that I've got a cold.  And on top of that, after six or seven hours standing and walking, my feet were in agony, to the point that by the time I reached the Russian Futurists, Picasso, and Max Ernst, I was practically rushing past.  (Well, I paused for Ernst.)  In this addled state I got to the end, and stopped short.  I looked around, confused.  Where was the immersive art?  Where were the self-transforming pieces?  Where were the reactive works?  I'm not making this up, for a moment I really expected to find some.  As though my brain had walked into an SL gallery.  Whence my revelation:

SL artists, you've seriously messed with my head.