Old Masters (5 page)

I walked
from happiness (of grandparents) into unhappiness (of the state) and back again, from nature into un-nature and back again, my whole childhood was nothing but this toing and froing. Amidst this childhood toing and froing I grew up. But the victor in this diabolical game was not nature but
un
-nature, the school and the state, not my grandparents' home. The state forced me, like everyone else, into itself and made me compliant towards it, the state, and turned me into a state person, regulated and registered and trained and finished and perverted and dejected, like everyone else. When we see people we only see state people, the state
servants
, as we quite rightly say, who serve the state all their lives and thus serve un-nature all their lives. When we see people we only see state people as unnatural people succumbed to state dull-wittedness. When we see people we only see people surrendered to the state and serving the state, people who have fallen victim to the state. The people we see are state victims and the humanity we see is nothing other than state fodder with which the ever more gluttonous state is being fed. Humanity is now only state humanity and has lost its identity for centuries, in fact ever since there has been a state, I reflect. Humanity today is only an inhumanity which is the state, I reflect. Man today is only a state man, and in consequence he is today only a destroyed man and a state man as the only humanly possible man, it seems to me. Natural man is no longer even possible, it seems to me. When we see the crowded millions of state people in the big cities we feel sick, because we also feel sick when we see the state. Every morning, as we wake up, we feel sick at this state of ours, and when we step out into the street we feel sick at the state people who populate this state. Humanity is a gigantic state which, if we are honest, makes us sick each time we wake up. Like everybody, I live in a state which makes me sick when I wake up. The teachers we have teach the state to young people, teaching them all the dreadfulness and horrors of the state, all the mendacity of the state, but they do not teach them that the state
is
all this dreadfulness and these horrors and this mendacity. For centuries the teachers have taken their pupils into the state's pincers, torturing them for years and for decades and crushing them. And here these teachers walk through the museum with their pupils, on the instruction of the state, and by their dull-wittedness ruin their taste for art. But what else is this art hanging on these walls but
state art,
it seems to me. Reger talks only of
state art
when he talks about art,
and when he talks about the so-called old masters he always only talks about the state old masters.
Because the art hanging on these walls is nothing but state art, at least that hanging here in the picture gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. All the paintings hanging on these walls are nothing but paintings by state artists.
Pleasing Catholic state art, nothing else.
Always only a visage, as Reger says, never a face. Always only lineaments, never features. All in all always only the aspect without the reverse, always only lies and mendacity without reality or truth. All these painters were nothing but utterly mendacious state artists pampering to the vanity of their clients, not even Rembrandt is an exception, Reger says. Just look at Velazquez, nothing but state art, or Lotto, or Giotto, always only state art, just as that dreadful proto-Nazi and pre-Nazi Dürer, who put nature on his canvas and killed it,
this horrible
Dürer,
as Reger very often says because he really hates Durer from the depth of his soul,
this Nuremberg engraver.
State-commissioned art is what Reger calls the paintings hanging on these walls,
including even the
White-Bearded
Man.
The so-called old masters only ever served the state or the Church, which comes to the same thing, as Reger says time and again, they served an emperor or a Pope, a duke or an archbishop. Just as so-called free man is a utopia, so the so-called free artist has always been a utopia, Reger often says. Artists, the so-called great artists, I believe, are moreover, says Reger, the most unscrupulous of all people, they are a lot more unscrupulous even than politicians. Artists are the worst liars, even worse than the politicians, which means that the art artists are even worse liars than the state artists, I can hear Reger say again. This art invariably turns towards the allpowerful and the powerful, and away from the world, Reger often says, therein lies its baseness. This art is pitiful, no less, I can now hear Reger saying yesterday, while watching him from the Sebastiano Room today. Why do painters paint at all, when there is such a thing as nature? Reger asked himself yesterday, not for the first time. Even the most extraordinary work of art is only a pitiful, totally senseless and pointless effort to imitate nature, indeed to ape it, he said. What is Rembrandt's painted face of his mother compared with the actual face of mine? he asked again. What are the Danube meadows through which I can
walk
while I can
see
them compared to the
painted ones?
he said.
Recording,
people say,
documenting,
but, as we know, it is only the mendacious, the untrue, only falsehoods and lies that are recorded and documented, posterity has only falsehoods and lies hanging on its walls, there are only falsehoods and lies in the books which the so-called great writers have left us, only falsehoods and lies in the paintings which hang on these walls. The man hanging on the wall here is never the one the painter painted, Reger said yesterday. The man hanging on the wall is not the one who lived, he said. Of course, he said, you will say that it is
the view of the artist
who painted the picture, that is true, even though it is a mendacious view, it is, at least as far as the paintings in this museum are concerned, always only
the Catholic state view of the artist in question,
because nothing that hangs here is anything other than Catholic state art and in consequence, as I am bound to say, a base art, it can be as magnificent as it likes, it is only base Catholic state art. The so-called old masters, especially if one regards several of them alongside each other, I mean if one regards their works alongside each other, are all enthusiasts for lies, who have curried favour with Catholic state taste and sold themselves to it, Reger said. To that extent we are dealing only with a thoroughly depressing Catholic history of art, with a thoroughly depressing Catholic history of painting, which invariably found and had its subject in heaven or in hell but never on earth, he said. The painters did not paint what they ought to have painted but only what they were commissioned to paint or what earned them and brought them money or fame, he said. The painters, all these old masters, who most of the time nauseate me more than anything else and of whom I have always had a horror, he said, always only served one master and never themselves and hence humanity. They always painted a fake world, faked by them from within themselves, which they hoped would bring them money and fame; they all of them painted only in this manner, out of greed for money and out of greed for fame, not because they wanted to be painters but because they wanted fame or money, or both fame and money. In Europe they have only ever painted into the hands of a Catholic God or to his face, he said, a Catholic God and his Catholic gods. Every brush-stroke, however inspired, by these so-called old masters is a lie, he said. World decorators is what he yesterday called those he truly and profoundly hated and by whom, at the same time, he had always, throughout his miserable life, been fascinated. Religiously mendacious assistant decorators of the European Catholic rulers, that is what these old masters are, nothing else, you can see that in every dab of colour which these artists shamelessly pressed on their canvases, my dear Atzbacher, he said. Of course you are bound to say that this is the art of painting at its peak, he said yesterday, but do not forget to mention, or at least to think, at least to think for yourself, that it is also an infamous art of painting, the infamous about this art is at the same time the religious, that is what is so repulsive about it. If you post yourself, as I did the day before yesterday, in front of the Mantegna for an hour, you suddenly feel like tearing this Mantegna off the wall, because quite suddenly you perceive it as a great painted infamy. Or if you spent some time standing in front of the Biliverti or in front of the Campagnola. These people, after all, only painted in order to survive and for money and in order to end up in heaven and not in hell, which all their lives they feared above everything else, even though they were very clever but at the same time also very weak characters. The painters altogether did not have a good character, in fact they always had a very bad character and therefore, basically, also always had very bad taste, Reger said yesterday, you will not find a single so-called great painter, or let us say a so-called old master, who had a good character
and
good taste, and by a good character I mean quite simply an incorruptible character. All these artists as old masters were corruptible and that makes their art so repulsive to me. Everything they have painted and which is hanging here is repulsive to me, I often think, he said yesterday, and yet for decades I have been unable to avoid studying it. That is the most terrible thing, he said yesterday, that I find these old masters most profoundly repulsive and again and again I continue to study them. But they are repellent, that is perfectly clear, he said yesterday. The old masters, as they have now been called for centuries, only stand up to superficial viewing;
if we view them thoroughly
they gradually become diminished, and when we have studied them really and truly, and that means as thoroughly as possible for as long as possible, they dissolve, they crumble for us, leaving only a flat taste, in fact most of the time a very bad taste, in our mouths. The greatest and most significant work of art ultimately weighs heavily on our heads, as a huge lump of baseness and lies, rather as an excessively large lump of meat might weigh on our stomachs. We are fascinated by a work of art and ultimately it is ridiculous. If you take the trouble, for once, to read Goethe more intently than usual, you will ultimately find that what you read is ridiculous, no matter what it is, you only have to read it more often than usual, it will inevitably become ridiculous and even the cleverest thing is ultimately a nonsense. Alas, once you read more intently you ruin everything for yourself, everything you read. It makes no difference what you read, in the end it will become ridiculous and in the end it will be worthless. Beware of penetrating into a work of art, he said, you will ruin each and every one for yourself, even those you love most. Do not look at a picture for too long, do not read a book too intently, do not listen to a piece of music with the greatest intensity. You will ruin everything for yourself, and thus the most beautiful and the most useful things in the world. Read what you love but do not penetrate totally, listen to what you love but do not listen to it totally, look at what you love but do not look at it totally. Because I have always looked at everything totally, always listened to everything totally, always read everything totally, or at least always tried to listen to everything totally and to read and view everything totally, I ended up by ultimately making everything abhorrent to me, in this way I made all art and all music and all literature abhorrent to me, he said yesterday. As I have, by the same method, made the whole world abhorrent to me, simply everything. For years I simply made everything abhorrent to me and, what I regret most deeply, made it abhorrent to my wife too. For years, he said, I have only managed to exist by and as a result of this method of making things abhorrent. Now I know that I must not read totally or listen totally or view and contemplate totally if I want to go on living. There is an art in not reading totally and not listening totally and not viewing totally or looking totally, he said. I have not quite mastered that art yet, he said, because my natural inclination is to approach everything totally and to persevere totally and bring it to a conclusion totally, that is, you should know, my real misfortune, he said. For decades I have wanted to do everything totally, that was my misfortune, he said. This highly personal disintegrating mechanism always focused on the total, he said. But then the old masters did not paint for people like me, nor did the great old composers or the great old writers produce their works for people like me, naturally not for people like me, never would any of them have painted or written or composed music for a person like me, he said. The arts are not made for total viewing or for total listening or for total reading, he said. This art is made for the pitiful portion of humanity, for the everyday, for the normal, for, I am bound to say it, the gullible portion, none other. A great piece of architecture, he said, how quickly it is diminished under the scrutiny of an eye such as mine, no matter how famous it may be, and especially if it is famous it sooner or later shrinks to a ridiculous piece of architecture. I have travelled, he said, in order to see great architecture, naturally first to Italy and to Greece and to Spain, but the cathedrals always soon shrank under my eyes to nothing but helpless, and indeed ridiculous, attempts to juxtapose to heaven something like a
second
heaven, from one cathedral to the next always an even more magnificent
second
heaven, from one temple to the next always something even more magnificent, he said, yet the result has always been something bungled. Naturally I visited the greatest museums, and not only in Europe, and studied what they contained, with the greatest intensity, believe me, and it soon seemed to me as if these museums contained nothing but painted helplessness, painted incompetence, painted failure, the bungled part of the world, everything in these museums is failure and bungling, he said yesterday, no matter what museum you enter and get down to viewing and studying, you study nothing but failure and bungling. Very well, the Prado, he said, surely the most important museum in the world as far as the old masters are concerned, but each time I sit at the Ritz across the street, drinking my tea, I reflect that even the Prado contains only imperfect, unsuccessful, ultimately only ridiculous and dilettantish things. Some artists, he said, at certain times, when they are in vogue, are quite simply inflated to world-rousing monstrosity; then abruptly some incorruptible mind pricks that world-rousing monstrosity and the worldrousing monstrosity bursts and is nothing, just as abruptly, he said. Velazquez, Rembrandt, Giorgione, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Goethe, he said, just as Pascal, Voltaire, all of them such inflated monstrosities.