wandering the National Gallery, Melbourne
1.
Here, in this museum
There is a chair.
It sits in a quiet corner
Unruffled
No one has sat in it for years
Yet preserved in the lining
Is the thread of a story
That connects Europe with Terra Australis.
Through the blush of modernity
Echt Deutsch, Aber Viennese
Artistic secession defined tasteful wealth
Through clean lines and flashes of deep colour
Muscular with the material lightness of mass production
Where educated classes sat
Jewish, with the pulse of regular culture
And dreamt of an ordered progression
Of well meaning tolerance
And artistic temples
Not unlike the dreams of federated Australia.
God and gold blessed this world
With those vivid lines
Where bodies floated
On Kirsch and Kugeln.
2.
Did the rumble of anti-Semitism
Ever shake the floor
And tremble those laminated bodies?
Did the integrated room
With its bureau and sideboards
Ever feel the schism
Of a slashing knife
Rent through those Jugendstil walls?
Then – a distant sound
Almost impossible to hear
Above the laughter, the gossip, the bursting ideas
Where the smell of coffee and the stringy waltz
Skating on the radio diffusion
Were hung together
In fatal reflection
Via the lottery of survival.
How postmodern
That these suites of desirable elegance
Of Hoffmann and Loos
Should survive
Intact
The holocaust
And the harsh weather
Of so many Australian summers.
A whole apartment
Transported by the wings of seraphim
From that hot bed of racial hatred
To the unknowing paradise
Of early modern Sydney town.
What whispers are embedded in this fabric?
What echoes bind the wooden legs
With the crack of lamentation?
3.
The heavens might be praised
But shipping and artful logistics
And wealth no doubt
Secured the survival of this Viennese furniture
Now resting in the long corridor
Of a cool gallery
Where the fragments of a vanished world
Artfully indicate
The simplicity, the desire, the clarity
Shared between Federation and Bauhaus.
Here sits the remains of a vastly vanquished culture -
Of people brutally murdered
And those who survived
With their gift to the nation
Mirroring its new world striving
Prayerful for the craft of inspired living.
These artefacts of modernity
Invite both respect and regret
So chic and so knowing
Tasteful, even when hard against the boundaries:
These treasures now safe in civic Melbourne town
Create a Whitlamesque reminder that art might really matter.
Starkly beautiful
With museful intent
There is a chair
That sits in a quiet corner.
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/?s=gallia+apartment&type=collection
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/vienna/decorative-arts/hoffmann-gala-apartment.html
Gar Jones – May 2014
1.
Here, in this museum
There is a chair.
It sits in a quiet corner
Unruffled
No one has sat in it for years
Yet preserved in the lining
Is the thread of a story
That connects Europe with Terra Australis.
Through the blush of modernity
Echt Deutsch, Aber Viennese
Artistic secession defined tasteful wealth
Through clean lines and flashes of deep colour
Muscular with the material lightness of mass production
Where educated classes sat
Jewish, with the pulse of regular culture
And dreamt of an ordered progression
Of well meaning tolerance
And artistic temples
Not unlike the dreams of federated Australia.
God and gold blessed this world
With those vivid lines
Where bodies floated
On Kirsch and Kugeln.
2.
Did the rumble of anti-Semitism
Ever shake the floor
And tremble those laminated bodies?
Did the integrated room
With its bureau and sideboards
Ever feel the schism
Of a slashing knife
Rent through those Jugendstil walls?
Then – a distant sound
Almost impossible to hear
Above the laughter, the gossip, the bursting ideas
Where the smell of coffee and the stringy waltz
Skating on the radio diffusion
Were hung together
In fatal reflection
Via the lottery of survival.
How postmodern
That these suites of desirable elegance
Of Hoffmann and Loos
Should survive
Intact
The holocaust
And the harsh weather
Of so many Australian summers.
A whole apartment
Transported by the wings of seraphim
From that hot bed of racial hatred
To the unknowing paradise
Of early modern Sydney town.
What whispers are embedded in this fabric?
What echoes bind the wooden legs
With the crack of lamentation?
3.
The heavens might be praised
But shipping and artful logistics
And wealth no doubt
Secured the survival of this Viennese furniture
Now resting in the long corridor
Of a cool gallery
Where the fragments of a vanished world
Artfully indicate
The simplicity, the desire, the clarity
Shared between Federation and Bauhaus.
Here sits the remains of a vastly vanquished culture -
Of people brutally murdered
And those who survived
With their gift to the nation
Mirroring its new world striving
Prayerful for the craft of inspired living.
These artefacts of modernity
Invite both respect and regret
So chic and so knowing
Tasteful, even when hard against the boundaries:
These treasures now safe in civic Melbourne town
Create a Whitlamesque reminder that art might really matter.
Starkly beautiful
With museful intent
There is a chair
That sits in a quiet corner.
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/?s=gallia+apartment&type=collection
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/vienna/decorative-arts/hoffmann-gala-apartment.html
Gar Jones – May 2014
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