Arik Brauer at Dom Museum

The current exhibit at the Dom Museum is of the Biblically inspired works of Arik Brauer. If you aren't aquainted with the „Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus", I can only recommend that you get to know their work, and Brauer is a good place to start. I find them fun to look at, and there is always more to get out of them. You could just look at pictures on the web, or in books, but that would be a shame. The real paintings are so much more!

Most of the pictures are readily recognizable by anyone with basic Biblical knowledge My friend and I checked the catalog for a few works that we hadn't recognized, and the quotes for those were all from the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon). There are only German titles, but if you bear that in mind, and that 'Job' is written 'Hiob' in German, you should be fine.

No question - the most impressive work in the show is 'Moses and the Burning Bush'. The fire glows so intensely that you begin to think that there is a light behind it. Luckily the picture is so positioned that you can see it through the doorways from a distance while walking back out of the exhibit.

While many of the pictures seem to just depict the Biblical scene, others speak to our times. 'Worship of the Golden Image' shows how we idolize technology (and the almighty CAR in particular). There is also a moving crucifixion scene: Hakenkreuzigung. 'Hakenkreuz' means swastika, and 'Kreuzigung' crucifixion.

I particularly enjoyed seeing how Brauer has used some of the Bruegel works in the KHM as basis for his interpretations. I wonder if you will see the ones I did. Brauer's works are in no sense copies of Breugel, but the very basis of their styles is related, and he obviously knows Bruegel well enough that he can incorporate elements of Bruegel's painting into his own without losing his own individuality.

Don't miss Brauer's personal collection of posters of his exhibits in the room at the top of the stairwell. There is a Seder depiction there that I covet.

I've got to go back. I have got to see it all again.