sculpture | Fotoeins Fotografie

My Vienna: Othmar Schimkowitz, 5 sculptural examples

Above/featured: Musenhaus (Muse House), Linke Wienzeile in Vienna – 18 May 2018.

Early 20th-century European artist Othmar Schimkowitz was one of many key figures in Vienna Modernism, an art movement which celebrated its centennial in 2018 in the Austrian capital city. Schimkowitz was born in Hungary and became well-known in Vienna for his architectural sculptures. In 1898, he joined the (Vienna) Secession, a group of artists which included Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Max Kurzweil, Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, and Joseph Maria Olbrich.

Sculptures by Schimkowitz are often seen in a variety of architectural creations by Otto Wagner. Here below are four Schimkowitz examples in Vienna; all are accessible with public transit from Wiener Linien (WL) transport authority.

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Seattle: living black history in the C.D.

Oh Seattle: how is your black history defined?

With the city’s proximity to Vancouver, my time in or any understanding of Seattle was incomplete without an examination of the city’s non-white communities. I had questions about the black community and in particular why the city remains racially segregated. People of color, including black people, were once forbidden from buying houses in specific neighbourhoods because of their skin colour. The Central District (CD) thrived as a black community in the 2nd-half of the 20th-century, but now, citizens struggle with gentrification, displacement, and economic racism. There’s much more I need to ask and learn, but for now, I describe below a selection of landmarks highlighting contributions by and the historical impact of the black community to city and nation.

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Vienna: Holocaust Memorial by Rachel Whiteread

Where: Judenplatz, in Vienna’s Altstadt.
What: Holocaust Memorial, by Rachel Whiteread (2000).

How do you commemorate or memorialize the absent or missing? How should the void be acknowledged, recognized, and remembered? Does the act of constructing a physical monument “draw a line”, creating a physical manifestation of marking an end that gathers and wipes away all subsequent future responsibility for remembering?

In Vienna’s Old Town, what was unjustly and violently removed from the city’s long historical memory and cultural identity comes into shape at Judenplatz. Under the public square are ruins of the medieval synagogue destroyed in the pogrom of 1421 with hundreds of Jews driven out, hundreds killed by burning, and the community erased. Directly above these ruins is the Holocaust Memorial which attempts to generate experiences and memories to address the void left behind after the systematic murder of 65-thousand people.

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Salzburg Walk of Modern Art (2018)

Above: “Sphaera” by Stephan Balkenhol: Salzburg Kapitelplatz – 22 May 2018.

Salzburg is a well-known historical city in north-central Austria next to the border with Germany. For a different way of examining the city that goes beyond the history of the Habsburgs and the music of Mozart, the Walk of Modern Art allows visitors and residents to walk through parts of the city for a mix of historical and contemporary perspectives at street-level and from the cliffs above. The art pieces are placed throughout the city’s Old Town to coincide with key landmarks and sights. The city of Salzburg also provides information about the walk. UNESCO inscribed Salzburg’s Old Town as World Heritage Site in 1996.

Thankfully, there’s more to Salzburg than “The Sound of Music” (♫).

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My Prague: David Černý, skillful s**t disturber

Considered “enfant terrible” in the European and Czech art scene, David Černý frequently has courted both controversy and amusement from the beginning in 1991 with the Pink (Soviet) Tank. Is he infuriating and crude or enlightened and hilarious? Is he misunderstood social commentator or attention-seeking hooligan? He continues to make art at home in Prague, and provoke strong reactions.

Černý’s creations can be found throughout the Czech capital city. You can decide for yourself if his artwork is inspiring or dull.

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