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Lunchtime Photo

Here are two pictures of Karlskirche in Vienna. The top image is the usual panoramic view from ground level. But you're allowed to walk up and see the organ, and from there you get a different perspective, shown in the bottom photo. You can also see the illuminated glass installation hanging from the ceiling. I don't know if it's permanent or temporary.

May 17, 2024 — Vienna, Austria

13 thoughts on “Lunchtime Photo

  1. Josef

    Not a fan of the glass work. It looks like someone took a white marker with a fine point and scribbled on your picture. It's really out of place.

  2. emjayay

    From visitingvienna.com:

    "The nave sometimes has a huge art installation, designed to form a bridge or dialogue between contemporary art and the Baroque surrounds. The Karlskirche Contemporary Arts programme that organises, curates and finances the installation began with Tomás Saraceno’s quite spectacular Aerocene back in 2019-2020. The second installation (by renowned British artist Cerith Wyn Evans) went up at the end of January 2024."

    The last time I was there there was a scaffolding tower under the dome for working on the ceiling frescoes. You could walk up to the top of it and get a closeup view. Here's a photo of that and the Aerocene:

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155837257016899&id=155510576898&set=a.10150893812736899

    The Catholic church/European empires/royalty may have been extracting wealth from the people of their countries and the rest of the world at absurd levels for centuries but they sure left some amazing buildings and art.

  3. sonofthereturnofaptidude

    I dunno. If someone told me that this was a room in Trump's mansion, I'd think it was gauche and way overdone.

  4. dilbert dogbert

    I know why there is a lot of "shit" (ugly) art.
    Painters today know they can't do better at classical art so they do "shit".
    Same with music, poetry, photography, writing and sculpture. Sad
    If you try to exceed the classical, everything you do is derivative.

    1. shapeofsociety

      True. The great painters of the Renaissance were trying to prove that they could exceed those who had gone before; once the Ninja Turtles produced stuff that was un-exceedable people immediately turned around and started doing stuff that was worse (starting with Mannerism) just so that it would be *different* and hence memorable.

      The second factor was economic: the advent of photography killed demand for realistic-looking paintings. Used to be, artists had an *economic incentive* to learn to paint stuff that looked realistic because that's what people wanted to buy, and lots of painters made a good living just painting portraits. Now, anyone who wants a realistic image can take or buy a photo, so painters no longer even try for realistic.

    1. dilbert dogbert

      Looks worse than Frank Lloyd Wrong's art museum turban in NYC. Boston City Hall is from a theme on Berlin's flak towers. There is a building on the UC Biserkely campus that I expected to see machine guns sticking out of the window.

      1. MikeTheMathGuy

        I don't know if this is the building at Berkeley that you are referring to:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Hall_(UC_Berkeley)
        but I spent 6 years there, and it was every bit as horrible inside as it looks outside. Apparently it is now slated for demolition.

        (Yes, we're way off topic now. KD posts a beautiful photo of a Viennese church, and I'm talking about the ugliest building I have ever seen.)

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