A punch and a touch

Sarah (art teacher from Yorkshire) and David (viennese painter) have an appointment. They meet at 11am at the entrance of the Salzburg Art Fair. I am curious so I join them. Sarah looks very fresh, David's condition is a 3 day hangover. Sarah says she plays Polo and David does not believe her so she pulls out her camera showing us a photo where she sits on a galloping horse swinging a Polo stick. David says he plays chess, a sport that implies less physical risk and he pulls out his wooden chess set. While Sarah and David flirt at the entrance cafe of the Salzburg Art Fair, a gallerist drags one painting after the other out of the art fair hall, leaning it against the wall, photographing the paintings in daylight for his costumers.

 

A good friend of ours has managed the whole set up of the art fair, the installations, the illumination, toiling overtime for days, now the illuminator gives us a free pass to see the precious fair.

 

We enter and turn left, where extreme pastose abstract paintings catch our eyeballs. The clustered paint forms a jelly-rocky relief making my mouth salivate for creamy pastry. David knows the chinese painter who produces these things, she completed her studies with him in Vienna after having studied in Paris and Berlin. David considers her work too accommodating. It is part of my nature to try and spot worth where others grumble so we have a little silly dispute over the paintings. When we pass one painting with a serrate white figure on the jelly-rocky mixed colour background I say in defense of the chinese painter:"But this one looks very similar to what you are doing, David!" David immediately gives me a punch in the shoulder and the illuminator says I am stupid. I still think that there is a certain kind of similarity between the 2 painter's styles and I feel that this similarity is painful.

 

We continue to stroll the art fair after this aggressive eruption in a slightly altered mood and admire George Grosz' "Lady Hamilton" from 1930.

 

 

 

 

(After lunch David and the illuminator check out the Rupertinum, while I check out a library that just starts relocating, meeting an antiquarian who warns of Amazon's total monopoly.)

 

In the evening there are "happy hours" at the Fotohof. I learn that the →crime that happened there is bigger than I thought. The burglars who broke into Fotohof and stole the computers also broke into the supermarket and stole stuff from the construction site the same night. The police inspecting the broken Fotohof-locks spent exactly 2 minutes there without even looking for fingerprints!

 

I meet Kamil from Moscow in the library of the Fotohof. "Don't you wanna touch it?" he asks me. "What?" - "Don't you wanna touch it?" - "Touch what?" - "The old photo book that is worth 10 thousand Euros." I touch the book from 1938 and look at the photos documenting Paris at night until my fingers are stained from the old printing ink. When I take a picture of Kamil and the photo book he suddenly touches another student from his course.