a thematic account of my trip to vienna
amarah on an art museum, a musical, a book, and a movie
Bohmee and Tess,
I’ve been thinking a lot about beautiful things lately, ever since my trip to Vienna over reading week. A combination of wanting to take advantage of cheap Europe flights and missing my Artsci friends led me there. Sydney, if you’re reading this, thank you again!! I had the best time.
The city is full of churches, museums, and other impressive old buildings. Getting off the plane from Dublin felt more like disembarking from a time machine, stepping into a period of castles and cobblestone streets.
I want to recount some moments from my trip that got me thinking about beauty. I don’t have a thesis about beauty and how to define it; the thesis of this post is that I went to Vienna. And still, by writing around beauty, by recounting all the ways I brushed up against it over the last couple days, maybe I’ll discover what I discovered:
Upper Belvedere Palace was my first proper destination, and it was one of the more beautiful places I went. A massive palace that now doubles as an art gallery, the ceilings were as impressive as the paintings on the walls. I don’t think I realized how awed I was by the beauty of every room until I walked into the gift shop on my way out and, naturally, did not experience that feeling of awe.
Museum gift shops are strange places. Museums contain original works of art that you could easily find images of online, but the existence of museums suggests that the originals are important – worth travelling and paying to see. And after spending a large chunk of time with the originals, the last room you enter is the gift shop, a room full of recreations. The Upper Belvedere Palace gift shop had Klimt pencils, Klimt erasers, Klimt notebooks, even Klimt temporary tattoos. These, of course, are not for admiring, unlike the originals; they are for buying and keeping. But (in my opinion, anyway) they aren’t beautiful! What’s the point of purchasing a great work of art as an eraser, if the fact of it being an eraser makes it ugly? Is it because the eraser contains the memory of something beautiful, meaning you can look at it and recall the experience of standing in front of “The Kiss”? Or is the eraser more for the benefit of others, so that they will see it and ask you where it came from? Or am I being unfair in comparing the beauty of the eraser to the painting it was modelled after? Perhaps it is meaningful to come into possession of an eraser that is simply more beautiful than other erasers.
I am not, by the way, against Klimt erasers on principle, or museum gift shops more broadly. I actually think gift shops are really fun – especially when a piece of art stands out organically to you in the museum, and then you discover in the gift shop that someone’s made it into a water bottle or an enamel pin. It always feels weirdly affirming to me when a piece I like is deemed beautiful enough to get turned into a commercial product.
But the fun of the gift shop is so wildly different from the fun of the museum, and, to me at least, the feelings they elicit are exact opposites. The Oxford English Dictionary describes awe as “reverential respect, mixed with wonder or fear.”1 Awe, then, is a humbling feeling. When I look at massive 200-year-old paintings, I am reminded of how far humanity extends beyond my own subjectivity, and it feels beautiful (if a little terrifying). When I look at Klimt erasers, I feel the exact opposite. Here’s a work of great art, world renowned and over a hundred years old, except I can buy it for five euro, keep it in my pocket, and slowly let its image wear and fade as I use it to remove pencil marks. Instead of human experience feeling massive and unknowable, it feels small and contained, something that I can possess. Is that why it’s not beautiful anymore? Do beautiful things have to be on some level unknowable? Or is the eraser just an ugly medium, for uncomplicated and unphilosophical reasons?
That night, Sydney and I got rush tickets to see Das Phantom Der Oper; that’s The Phantom of the Opera in German (with English subtitles, luckily for me). At this production, we were absolutely surrounded by beauty – from the costumes, to the sets, to the vocal performances.
I saw The Phantom of the Opera live once before, several years ago in Toronto. I remember that the actress who played Carlotta was notably older than Christine, that too much makeup was caked onto her face in every scene, and that her vocals were technically excellent but very over-performed. We, the audience, were meant to see Christine’s rise to prominence as youth and beauty prevailing. Not beauty in the sense of conventional attractiveness, but beauty in the sense of pure aesthetic value, sans any bells and whistles. No colourful eyeshadow, no excessive vibrato, and an appearance of relatively untrained innocence (which is, obviously, just an appearance – singing Phantom songs is insanely difficult).
It was interesting, then, to see Carlotta in this version of Phantom. Sure, Carlotta’s character tended towards a slightly redder lip and a more dramatic eye, but the difference was far less noticeable. Vocally, the same was true; Carlotta enjoyed a vocal flourish, yes, but her high notes were rarely (if ever?) overextended for comedic effect. Her performances and her stage presence really were just as beautiful as Christine’s.
This was interesting to me because it really changed the way I engaged with the story! Obviously the phantom is always this kind of sinister force (especially when – spoiler – he starts with the murders), but his earlier shenanigans revolve a lot around getting Christine into major roles and sidelining Carlotta. In the Toronto production that I saw, I think the audience was meant to feel that, well, he’s just a little right. His methods are unethical, yeah, but he is acting in service of the beauty of the art. In the Vienna production, I don’t think that was the case. Not only is he violating moral standards, but he’s also not really doing it in order to adhere to aesthetic standards.
What’s the takeaway? Something about beauty and goodness in art, probably.
I spent much of my second day in Vienna wandering, while Sydney was in class. In the late afternoon, I went to a cafe and read Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be.
The book is quite concerned with beauty and its opposite. At the opening of the book, we encounter two painters – Margaux and Sholem – who agree to partake in an ugly painting contest. The contest is not adjudicated until the end of the novel, but we hear about it at various points throughout. Sholem completes his ugly painting straightaway and feels that his its hideousness is a stain on his artistic talent. He hates the very idea of the contest and regrets agreeing to it. Margaux, on the other hand, spends much of the book unconcerned with the contest, and she doesn’t actually complete her painting until near the end. The result of the contest, if you’ll permit me this “spoiler,” is that Margaux is judged to have created the more beautiful painting and Sholem the uglier one. It is not clear from this, however, which of them “wins.”
Sholem, an eternally self-deprecating character, feels quite certain that Margaux has won the contest, that her inability to produce true ugliness is a sign of an impressive artist’s touch. But I think I disagree. To me, it seems that a technical and emotional understanding of ugliness suggests, on some level, a strong grasp of its inverse. To be able to paint something with no beauty at all feels impossibly difficult (I am certain that even the paintings we produce as toddlers contain some element of beauty), and it seems, to me, to require the ability to identify and snuff out even the smallest fragments of beauty, hidden in a painting’s farthest corners.
But then I start to confuse myself, because I wonder if true ugliness is actually beautiful and if non-beautiful ugliness is just uninspired. I mean, all my favourite necklaces are hideous. In fact, it’s their total nonconformity to my mental image of a nice necklace that makes them exciting and, yes, beautiful to me. Perhaps Margaux’s painting wasn’t less ugly; perhaps it was both just as ugly as Sholem’s and also more beautiful. If this were the case, I think I would have to retract my previous statement and agree that Margaux should be the winner. Maybe. I’m not really sure anymore.
The characters ultimately decide to settle the ugly painting competition with a game of squash. It’s an entirely nonsensical decision, and one that I find beautiful in its nonsense. I will not spoil the outcome of the squash game; you’ll have to read for yourselves.
My final Vienna activity was watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread with Sydney.
The movie depicts a heterosexual couple in the 1950s – he’s a dressmaker, she becomes a model for his dresses. They love each other in twisted, complicated ways, while beautiful piano music plays in the background. The male gaze is employed, questioned, subverted. I have no qualms admitting that this movie is, I think, thematically interesting and technically excellent (an opinion that everybody on letterboxd seems to share). And yet, I struggled to connect with it in the way I wanted to.
For me, the strengths of this movie came from its beauty – the costumes, for one, and the aforementioned soundtrack. And yet, beauty was also the missing piece. Specifically, I struggled to locate beauty in Reynolds and Alma’s relationship.
Here, I want to pause and be very explicit about what I mean, because I am not of the opinion that relationships need to be healthy or good to be worth depicting in art. And, for what it’s worth, Reynolds and Alma’s relationship certainly doesn’t feel healthy or good to me. The patriarchal power dynamics are suffocating, and the sites of power that Alma claims in the relationship are… Unorthodox and a little frightening. But I’m not trying to make the claim that a “problematic” relationship ruins a movie. Rather, I struggled with their relationship because I think “problematic” things are far more compelling when they are also beautiful. And, to me, their relationship wasn’t.
I want to be able to substantiate this with examples from the film, but it’s hard to substantiate the emotional sensation of lack. And I know that many people watched the movie and felt exactly how I hoped I would – conflicted and compelled by a relationship comprised of equal parts beauty and horror. But, for some reason, I just couldn’t locate the beauty, and I wasn’t moved by the horror alone.
So, yeah, those are some beautiful things I encountered in Vienna!2 Upon returning to Dublin, I immediately watched The Substance in theatres,3 which is a fascinating thing but really not a beautiful one. A perfect end to my trip and my reading week.
Thank you again Sydney for letting me visit you – it was amazing! Sydney is the best, guys.
Important to mention – both movies referenced in this post were really only on my radar because of Jen. Thank you always for the movie recs Jen!!!! I think of you every time I log something on letterboxd <3
oh to be with syd and amarah in Vienna! I dream of it everyday