Vienna Gets Bullish Over Teddy Bears

“Center and Periphery” was the official theme of the International Assn. of Art Critics’ recent meeting here. Attuned to the ongoing breakup of political blocs and realignment of national borders in Europe, the topic could not have been more timely. As newspapers related the latest atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Czechoslovakia’s impending split, conference delegates pondered the consequences of global politics on the world of art.

The program was presented in four languages to about 160 delegates, but that was only part of what could be heard at Vienna’s Palais Auersperg. While delegates from Los Angeles to Istanbul aired their views on the art world’s hierarchies and seats of power, an unofficial buzz provided a network of information on the Austrian art scene for eager visitors.

If you took off your earphones and tuned out the translators, you heard something like this: “Have you seen the Bruegels at the Art History Museum? Have you seen the Vienna Secession building? Have you seen Marina Abramovic’s show at Galerie Krinzinger? Have you seen the teddy bear show at the Natural History Museum?”

The teddy bear show?

I’m not making this up. Even aesthetic purists who refused to see “Barenlese. Zum Wesen des Teddys” (through Oct. 28) will attest that the exhibition exists, in a big way. The first clue is Charlemagne Palestine’s enormous “Godbear” sculpture sitting in front of the domed, 19th-Century building that houses the Natural History Museum on Maria-Theresien-Platz.

The sculpture, made of three giant bear-shapes joined at the back, isn’t a thing of beauty. It isn’t even cute. Like a triplicate blow-up of a tattered, moth-eaten toy, “Godbear” is ludicrously inappropriate to Vienna’s grandiose central museum complex. But that makes the monumental sculpture a perfect marker for an exhibition that sabotages the myth of teddy bears as lovable toys--as well as the tradition of museums as treasure houses. Art meets childhood innocence and adult power trips in this show, which includes everything from hundreds of antique toys to teddy bears in advertising, fashion and fine art.

The ambitious study of the uses and abuses of teddy bears, curated by Ulrich Borsdorf of the Ruhrlandmuseum in Essen, is so multifaceted that it can mean just about anything. And that may be why the show was a hot item for visiting art critics.

Deconstructivists loved the long line of dismantled bears suspended on a wire above the grand staircase leading up to the show. Those attuned to psychological aspects of art took note of eight big black paper cutouts proclaiming that a teddy bear is a fetish, talisman, symbol, friend, comforter, object, mirror and beast.

Historians appreciated the long view of bear lore--including ethnic artifacts and the fact that teddy bears got their name from Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt--presented by the show and its accompanying catalogue. (The term came into use in 1902 after a Washington Post cartoon by C. K. Berryman pictured Roosevelt as a mighty hunter with a perplexed-looking underling holding a reluctant cub on a leash.)

Critics who thrive on irony approved of Sandro Chia’s and Peter Angermann’s paintings of bears as art dealers, happy campers and domestic rowdies, as well as Tremezza von Brentano’s stark portrayal of Margarete Steiff, creator of the famed Steiff stuffed bears, observing a lone teddy under searing light. While critics of art-as-commodity checked out bears-as-sales-tools for foodstuffs, clothing and gadgetry (in videos and displays of teddy bear products), pacifists shook their heads over antique soldier bears that make war look like a warm, fuzzy activity.

The message of all these anthropomorphic bears was the viewer’s choice, but anyone who studied the jam-packed exhibition was likely to become saturated with bear images. Real stuffed apes in an adjacent gallery at the museum began to look suspiciously like teddy bears. Even the museum’s most famous artifact, a tiny prehistoric limestone fertility figure known as the Venus of Willendorf, appeared oddly bearlike.

Upon leaving the museum, gaining a bit of perspective and seeing that everything in the world is not a bear, the exhibition settled into memory as a metaphor for Austria’s struggle between tradition and change--particularly as it affects the visual arts. While the show grapples with the conflict between the tradition of a beloved toy and the ways it has been co-opted by art and life, Austria’s contemporary art scene seems to be torn between maintaining a comfortable status quo and seeking a more vibrant future.

Vienna, the nation’s historic art center and site of artistic ferment around the turn of the century, is a lovely city generously blessed with parks, museums and masterpieces. But it is far better known for music than visual art, and it is definitely on the periphery of the contemporary art scene.

Encouraging signs of life include an international mix of gallery exhibitions and performances, the opening of a new Kunsthalle (a nonprofit exhibition space) in the nearby town of Krems and--after a lengthy battle--the installation of sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka’s “Memorial to the Victims of Nazism” at Albertinaplatz, a central square in Vienna. (Opponents of the five-part monument--which includes writhing nude figures embedded in stone boulders, a panel of engraved text and an altar--argued that Hrdlicka’s grim reminder of Austria’s treatment of its Jews during World War II should be installed in a less prominent spot, if not scrapped.)

However, two major moves to put Austria on the international contemporary art map are mired in politics. One is an ambitious plan to build a multidisciplinary arts complex in Vienna’s old Imperial Stables, across the street from the Art History Museum and the Natural History Museum. Plans call for destroying part of the rather undistinguished stables and constructing modern steel and glass high-rises. Proponents argue that contemporary art needs a prominent place in Vienna and that the central museum complex is an ideal location. Opponents counter that the project would destroy the integrity of a historic architectural complex.

The second controversial plan regards a proposed branch of New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Salzburg, a picturesque town known as Mozart’s birthplace and the site of a music festival. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Hans Hollein of Vienna has long since won a competition to design the art museum for the vigorously preserved city.

Although his building has much to recommend it, Hollein apparently got the nod because his museum would be nearly invisible from the town center. He came up with an inventive plan for a structure built into a rock cliff behind Salzburg. Visitors would enter the museum through a hole in the rock. Inside, some galleries would be artificially lit boxes embedded in rock, while others would have skylights.

But now it appears that some of the authorities who must approve the project are dead set against it. According to the architect, part of the problem is a resistance to modern art in a town that equates classical music with culture. Some citizens also fear attracting additional crowds to Salzburg, while others voice ecological concerns, he said.

While Austrian dealers and critics frankly question the notion of the Guggenheim’s cultural imperialism and wonder why Salzburg should foot the $80-million bill for an American-run museum, many see the project as a much-needed way to raise the profile of contemporary and modern art in Austria. But these same art world insiders throw up their hands at Salzburg’s conservatism and declare categorically that the museum will never be built.

Hollein is more sanguine. “You never know about these things,” he said in his Vienna studio. “It took 9 1/2 years to build my museum in Frankfurt. The one in Salzburg has only been in process for three years. Any building with a prominent public image has a long discussion period before getting started.”