Yesterday, Saturday, after getting some much needed sleep until about noon, I turn to roommate Lauren and announce that we need to get out of our pajamas and go a museum I've been wanting to see since I got here, the Albertina. This museum is just behind the Hofburg palace in the 1st district, only a few blocks from the IES center. It was once the guest apartments of the royal family--I decided as we walked through the state rooms on the second floor that I would be okay with staying there. The Albertina has an absolutely enormous collection of 
graphics and paintings, which are pretty much in constant rotation, so for the next few months, there is a "Monet bis Picasso" exhibition, which is based off of a collection from a family that was very into the expressionist style and all things similar. I was particularly excited about this because with my art class all I've been seeing lately is ancient Roman ruins and early Christian paintings, which all get a little boring to me after awhile. Plus, I've always loved Monet...who doesn't really?
I really enjoyed the exhibit, even though it only ended up having about three Monet paintings, but lots of Picasso I'd never seen before and many artists my art-illiterate self had never heard of, but liked. Lauren is an art history major, so however much I don't like studying it, I like having her in a museum with me, full of lots of interesting information that I can only appreciate as the art is here in front of me.
So while we went there for the expressionist exhibit, we were of course also going to see the other exhibition going on, of an artist I did not know by name, but recognized some of his
work when I actually saw it, Gerhard Richter. At the beginning of the exhibit, there was an
explanation of his artwork (though I realized, that it really cannot be explained), and it quoted him saying something like, he never went into his art with any intentions, and he didn't want it to have to be anything. That's not the best explanation of what I read, but walking through this exhibition, it is clear that this man had absolutely no boundaries, or perhaps even direction. There was just so much variety of art, from all gray paintings to HUGE canvas' coated in bright, clashing colors. There were dozens of watercolors and even more graphite drawings--everything. But what I was most impressed by was the paintings that looked like pictures from a camera--just so absolutely perfect that you could only really tell it was an oil painting by
getting up close and seeing the brush strokes. Wandering through this exhibit, seeing over 40 years of this artist's work hung up on the walls, was wonderful. I really enjoyed myself. I would
definitely be willing to pay the 7 euro again, just to go back and see it. Lauren and I were sitting in front of one of the last paintings in the exhibit--an extremely realistic oil painting of a lit candle--and she leans to me and says, "You know, I've always thought of a great artist as someone who can make the sun shine through the clouds, or make the water glisten, or make a candle flicker." Gerhard Richter did all three of those things, and we had just seen all of them.
:)
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