Leopold Museum

We were fortunate enough to be a part of the return of Wally to Vienna’s Leopold Museum. Leopold, the personal owner of the Museum’s collection of art loaned Wally for exhibit in New York. While on loan, its original owner who claimed it was stolen from their family during the war came forward to fight for the painting’s return. After years of court and a rather large payout, Leopold bought the painting for a second time. for $19 million. Here is a news article about Wally's return. I also looked for a video of the news wondering if I was caught as a bystander. I was in fact there for the unveiling of Wally, the second half to Schiele's self portrait. It turns out there are a couple of ways to own so much art. One you can be like Leopold and "eat bread instead of schnitzel" or you can commandeer it like the Nazis.

The story of the life and travels of this painting are quite interesting. It is amazing how art gets tangled up in a World War, and not just any war, but with Hitler's war. It is fascinating how Hitler was denied acceptance into Vienna's art school and Vienna's architecture school and he goes on to steal art and to murder millions. Once again I am prompted to insert a film:



Looking at his art, I do not think it sucks, it is by far better than anything I can do. However I am only an amateur art critic and only do so in my spare time. It does enrage me a little bit reading the comments on the youtube post of Hitler's Art. The question, "how would the world be different if Hitler got into art school" is in fact unanswerable. Not that I have not questioned the question myself, because I have pondered it often. It is just appalling to see that so many ignorant youtube commentators blame the art critics for Hitler's Holocaust and World War success, not to mention the other anti-Semitic comments as well.



When it comes to critiquing art, Klimt knows the pain of being rejected as an artist. Gustav Klimt was commissioned to paint four panels for the University. The University however did not like the completed art and that was the end of Klimt's work on the Ringstrasse projects. While the critics rejected Klimt, no matter how eccentric of a man he was, he did not resort to mass murders.