Hello everyone!
Last Saturday we had a Lolita meet up in Vienna - it was my first big meet up to attend and I was really excited! I planed my outfit ages before the actual date, and it was really difficult to find something nice to wear because of the heat. Currently, we're having a heat wave in Austria with up to 38°C, not a single cloud in the sky and no soothing wind or summer thunder storms. On Saturday the heat wave was more or less at its peak, and the idea of going to the city in full frills was not very appealing to me... but on the other hand, I had been looking forward to the meet up for a long time already, so I just tried... not to die, haha.
(If you're not interested in the outfit blabla skip to the group photo to read about the actual meet up & exhibition!)
Photographer: Andreas Zuckerhut
So, originally I wanted to wear an Old School Gothic Lolita look in black x white, but it was far too hot for me to wear sleeves or anything covering my neck or legs. So I wore my Baby JSK without a blouse and did a (rather sloppy....) updo with my hair. I really love this JSK because it works quite well even without a blouse. It shows quite a lot of skin of course, but the straps can even cover the shoulders if you pull them down a bit (too bad it won't last long if you move around a bit D:). I was thinking what kind of hair accessory I could wear, and couldn't decide on white or black at first. I have a small white and pink bow but nothing white only, expect for a rose, but I thought the bow would look much better with the big hair bun.
Photographer: Jou P. Ri /// Spring Raindrops ; editing by me
In retrospect I am not 100% happy with the outfit... The pear bracelets don't really stand out, neither does my necklace, so the white of the lace socks seems a bit misplaced and makes the outfit look a bit unbalanced overall :( Also, I gained some weight recently *bohoo* so I didn't feel very comfortable showing off my arms and legs. (I actually had a white bolero with me but it was far too hot to put it on) I remember when I thought about losing 3 or 4 kg until my brother's wedding back in May or so. Now it's merely a week till his wedding and I actually gained another kg since then. Bah, I'm really pissed at myself, but it's difficult to keep up a workout routine and healthy eating with all the stress and exhaustion from working on the renovation. But anyway. Let's get to the more interesting part, the meet up itself!
Photographer: Andreas Zuckerhut (I guess)
We met in front of St. Stephan's cathedral in the heart of Vienna. The cathedral was a nice background for our photos, and we had a lot of fun taking pictures. Thanks to all the busy photographers who took so many great photos despite the heat! You can check out more photos here and here!
Maybe you spotted our VIP guest on the group photo: Japanese Blogger LaCarmina made a visit to Vienna with her film crew. From what I understood, she is preparing a report on European alternative scenes, so she came to our meet up :)
After the photo session, we split up in two groups - some people went to a café and others went to Albertina to see the Helnwein exhibition - among others, I went for the museum. I didn't know anything about Helnwein before, except that somebody mentioned that he had worked with Rammstein and Marilyn Manson as a photographer before, which got me kinda hooked up. Some people said that probably not everyone will like his art as it is not suited for more "sensitive" people. Honestly, I was a bit scared his art would turn out to be something like Nitsch, which (as I once wrote about) I have a great dislike for. But it was oh so much better than that, and better than everything I could have imagined!
Helnwein is an artist who grew up in post-WWII Austria, in an era where people would keep silent about the atrocities of the war and pretend they didn't happen, while at the same time bragging about the most unnecessary and stupid little things. People would insist on a very strict social order, wouldn't allow kids to ask questions, and it sure wasn't easy growing up in a time like that. The fact that the horrors of the war were tolerated and not spoken about while the most blatant things could cause uproars of society influenced his art and early career.
His major motive are children. They are present in almost every single painting that was shown in the exhibition, but in contrast to many other artists before him he doesn't use them as a symbol of purity or innocence. Helnwein's children are victims, mutilated, bleeding, bandaged and tortured - and at the same time they are offenders, armed with weapons or symbolically wearing what looks like a military uniform.
After the photo session, we split up in two groups - some people went to a café and others went to Albertina to see the Helnwein exhibition - among others, I went for the museum. I didn't know anything about Helnwein before, except that somebody mentioned that he had worked with Rammstein and Marilyn Manson as a photographer before, which got me kinda hooked up. Some people said that probably not everyone will like his art as it is not suited for more "sensitive" people. Honestly, I was a bit scared his art would turn out to be something like Nitsch, which (as I once wrote about) I have a great dislike for. But it was oh so much better than that, and better than everything I could have imagined!
Helnwein is an artist who grew up in post-WWII Austria, in an era where people would keep silent about the atrocities of the war and pretend they didn't happen, while at the same time bragging about the most unnecessary and stupid little things. People would insist on a very strict social order, wouldn't allow kids to ask questions, and it sure wasn't easy growing up in a time like that. The fact that the horrors of the war were tolerated and not spoken about while the most blatant things could cause uproars of society influenced his art and early career.
His major motive are children. They are present in almost every single painting that was shown in the exhibition, but in contrast to many other artists before him he doesn't use them as a symbol of purity or innocence. Helnwein's children are victims, mutilated, bleeding, bandaged and tortured - and at the same time they are offenders, armed with weapons or symbolically wearing what looks like a military uniform.
Some of you might know the album cover and related art of Marilyn Manson's The Golden Age of Grotesque. Helnwein closely collaborated with Manson in this project. The exhibition showed the two rather famous photographs of Manson as a white and black "Mickey Mouse" like character. I would have loved to take them with me in poster format (Golden Age of Grotesque is actually my favorite album from Marilyn Manson) but unfortunately they didn't have them in the museum shop :(
What impressed me most about his pictures was his extremely photorealistic way of painting. There are some artists where you would stand a few meters in front of the work of art and think "Oh wow, it sure looks like a photo!". With Helnwein, sometimes, even if you stand only inches in front of the picture you can't tell if it's a painting or a photo, unless you look at it from a slightly different angle and start to see tiny brush strokes.
Some people, I guess, wonder what's the use of depicting something in a photorealistic way if you might as well just take a photo. But the point is that Helnwein projects his messages onto those children he draws. He draws them with expressions they wouldn't have in real life, their eyes reflect horrors they haven't probably really seen - because they are the horrors of the grown up artist. I am sorry to be such a philistine but to me, an artist has to show a certain skill with his art, a proficiency with the materials he uses, that goes above randomly splattering paint (or blood) on a wall, in order to impress me. With Helnwein's art I felt a very strong connection. I looked at those images and I felt something, I felt like I could understand what the artist meant when he worked on it - even if it might not be the truth and his true intentions. With Nitsch, who - from what I've understood - has similar motives in his work, such as the breaking of taboos and violence, I don't feel anything but disgust. Nitsch's message doesn't reach me. Helnwein on the other hand not only "reached out" for me but also "touched" me and left me deeply impressed.
After the exhibition we went to an Asian restaurant nearby where we waited for the others to catch up. I hadn't planned on joining the group in the restaurant because I wanted to be home not too late but since we got there much earlier I decided to have a little to eat before I headed home. The restaurant had an interesting "All you can Eat, but à la carte" menu, where you pay a fee of about 18€ but then you can order everything from a special menu that you want, as often as you want. It's a pretty cool idea, but unfortunately all you can eat never pays off for me because I couldn't possibly eat all the money's worth. So I went with avocado maki :)
Purple rice! How cool is that?!
I had a really great time at the meet up, I enjoyed chatting with new people and those I already new, I saw fantastic art and had a great dinner ♥ My first "big" Lolita meet up was a lot of fun and I'm already looking forward to the next occasion!
Closing this entry with a crappy cell phone photo of my make up. I was deeply impressed how well DUO lash adhesive worked. My lashes stayed where they were meant to despite the heat and some sweating. The same goes for Gothmetic foundation. I didn't even have to apply powder during the day. This is really one of my favorite foundations for hot weather, I mix it with my BB cream to get the right color and it's really long lasting that way!
Sidenote: wth, already over 300 followers via GFC and almost 100 via bvloglovin' ! You're making me blush! Seriously, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy your time here on my little blog ♥
