Achtung Goldilocks

Having seen enough Renaissance art to stuff a turkey in Italy and Hungary, I decided to set my sights on the twentieth century in Vienna. I worried that I was losing my appetite for Modernism. Something in the gold leaf might have addled my brain: chubby bewinged putti kept fluttering into my dreams and drawing haloes around you all as I slept. St Sebastien featured not infrequently as did the heads of Holofernes and John the Baptist. Hmm. I was considering turfing all my notes on twentieth century avant-gardes, buying some brown shoes and finding a neglected Renaissance artist to rehabilitate via ‘an adventurous, highly creative’ biography. Thankfully, this will not come to pass: the stinky, smoggy century has been redeemed. I’ve gorged myself on Dada and Expressionism and Bauhaus and Fluxus and PopArt and the Secession and, lord Almighty, die Unheimlich; the uncanny lurks under every café table in Vienna. Hurrah ! I was completely enlivened by an exhibition called Traum und Trauma, replete with broken dolls, evil children, creepy mutated butterflies, an awful chamber full of old prams tied together with fire-hoses and the obligatory installation with strobe lights and low pitch white noise. Ah, repression, depravity, inner landscapes, perversions of innocence, alles in Ordnung. I was disturbed, I was comforted. I had a Cindy Sherman moment and took a photo of myself against a sickly yellow background.I call it Untitled #77 (Wir haben kein platz für eine Tischtennisplatte).

Next stop, the Freud Museum.