Saturdaz, June 3rd, part 2

I think I finally fixed the problem with blogger.com; I think I was saving my posts in draft as opposed to posting them.

I went to the Freud museum. The only original part is the entry hall; the rest is in London where he was forced to flee in 1938 after the Nazis took Austria. There was a nice little exhibit on the couch and its significance in contemporary art, as well as some interesting home movies of the Freuds.

Afterwards, I went to a cafe for a tea with milk and something called a nougatrolle, which tasted like it was filled with haselnut cream. Very tasty. I took the time to start outlining an article on the problems of teaching the Holocaust.

Then I decided to skip the KunstHausWien as it only had an exhibit on Giger (the artist most famous for designing the alien in Alien), and instead take advantage of the break in the rain to go to the Ferris Wheel (featured prominently in the film, The Third Man). Nice views of the city. As the tram back to the center stopped just a few blocks from the KunstHaus, I thought I would take the opportunity to see the building designed by Hundertwasser. Turns out that the museum houses a large collection of his work, but it was closing in 15 minutes, so there was no time to tour it.

Just three blocks away is an apartment complex designed by Hundertwasser so I walked over. Lots of people brought their small children to play around the house and I could see why. I've never seen an architect who more appeals to one's inner child and sense of play. It's a great place to take children to introduce them to art and architecture. That's why it's so strange that they would be exhibiting Giger. Giger is all about violently blending flesh and machine; Hundertwasser is about rejecting machine-oriented building (the floors are deliberately not flat) in favor of a human-oriented approach.