The Culture Counsellor is Jose Luis Rodriguez de Colmenares y Jascón. He was in a meeting with all of us explaining and answering questions about his profession letting us know more about his work. It was very interesting!
To be a counsellor means to sell the image of your own country abroad. Everybody thinks that is about organizing cultural events, but is not. Much rather it means helping and collaborating with institutions related with Spain and transmit information to Austria.
Our leaders (prime minister, president) can communicate with another country of the UE without problems. The degree of relation that an embassy can offer is very intense.
The embassies facilitate the relations between countries (in to the political, social, cultural area ...)
In developing countries the counsellors of culture are who organize the events. But here in Austria (an advanced country) they only collaborate with Spain. Normally it exits only in the capital, in this case Vienna, and this is too bad. The purpose is to spread the culture all over the country. Anyway, changing the image of a country also has to do with the economic level of the country. The Austrian society values that there are Spanish products of good quality like ZARA or MANGO.
Some years ago everybody had an specific image of Spain, only certain things were known: like “flamenco”, “paella”, “toros”… but nowadays there are more ways and much more information to find out new things about Spain.
The image of a country is very important, due to this tourism can increase and this has economic consequences.
Jose Luis said that he considers his job as entertaining as he is very interested in culture. He explained the different options of his career:
Privileged: countries like Austria. There you are able to stay between four and five years and usually there are really good destinations for ambassadors and people who work in the embassy.
Normal: most of the countries are in this category and there you can stay between three or four years.
Hard: there are some countries with problems like a war (Iraq) and you are able to stay there just for two or three years.
Nine years is the maximum time to return to your country and you are able to stay there for two years, then you must leave and choose a new destination. In case you really love your country and you don't want go away, you can remain there as long as eight years.
Jose Luis was talking about some personal experiences, because we asked him some questions. For example he told us that he has been moving all his life, even so when he was a child and that’s why it wasn’t a problem for him to accept the condition to travel a lot in this job. In addition he enjoys travelling and he loves to get to know new people and new places. Finally you realize that it is necessary to do it in your own skin, and you discover that is much better than reading it in the books or watching it on TV, you can only judge by your personal experience.
INTERVIEW
Before the meeting Carlos and Marta prepared some questions for the Culture Counsellor, and one of them was:
-Which activities are carried out to make people get to know Spain?
-The culture’s function is much more than this, I mean, it has a lot of repercussion in the GDP or PIB (Gross domestic product- Producto interior bruto), function that enter in direct contact with the members related to the culture. They establish a relation; singers facilitate the access to artists, painters, musicians... There are lots of cultural events, like theatre plays.
So they are a way of communication, they work like a “bridge” or like a “connection” between two sides (two countries in this case). Here an example:
at the end of June ends Spain's leadership of the UE. Important people are invited and there will be a special celebration with a Spanish Mezzo Soprano. In fact it is one of the best in the world. He is going to receive 20.000 Euros during one evening.
-Do you know which is the most famous destination of Austria?
I am sure it is Sissi’s Palace.
- Is it necessary for everybody to be Spanish at the Embassy?
That depends on the department; The diplomats must be of Spanish nationality, the civil servants too, but other employees can be Spanish, Austrian or of a third nationality.
-Which languages are indispensable for a diplomat?
English, Spanish and French are obligatory, but you can also be a diplomat with more languages of course; Russian, Arabic, Italian…
After this meeting we had the opportunity to get to know the Spanish Embassy building inside. The Culture Counselor showed us around the main rooms ,where they usually invite people.
Everything looked very elegant and staff was very professional. We saw different rooms. The last room was the most important: There was a very big table and the decoration was amazing. Actually they tried to copy the style of the building years ago because everything was burnt in the war.
At the end of the excursion Carlos de Álvaro and Marta Hernández thanked Jose Luis for receiving us and for his time.
My personal opinion is, that it was the best excursion we have had, because the topic is intriguing!
In other words, I think it was a great idea to have a meeting with someone who works at the Embassy, because he can transmit lot of personal and noteworthy information. In addition I liked that it was in Spanish and I felt "at home" and could relate to the Culture Counselor easily. But the main reason is, that I am thinking about going that way as well, one day maybe forming part of a embassy.
I am really interested in the issue, because I love languages and travelling, meeting new people, new places… So, this excursion was very positive for me and for the rest of my school mates as well. We enjoyed it a lot.
To sum up I have to say that Jose Luis was so nice with all of us and he knew how to make us feel comfortable with a special deal.
by Marta
Belvedere or “The beautiful view”
On the 14th of April, Wednesday, we went to Belvedere after visiting the Spanish embassy. While the teachers got the tickets, I and some others of the group went for a walk in the gardens, but it was raining cats and dogs and we couldn’t enjoy the walk. For this reason, we missed the beautiful summer views that you can see in the photo.
These are some interesting facts about the place:
History:
The Belvedere Palace was built in 1721-22, when Prince Eugene of Savoy asked Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt to construct a Summer palace for him; but he never lived here. He was born in Paris and he wanted to become a French soldier, but he couldn’t do it because he wasn't tall enough and Louis XVI told him that he wasn’t fit enough to do it either. So he went to the Austrian army to fight against the Turkish.
When Prince Eugene died without any heirs, princess Victoria who was Austrian was in charge of the palace. Then it was sold to Maria Theresia, who named it Belvedere.
Joseph II, Maria Theresia’s son and the father of Sissy tried to find a special purpose for the palace and so it became a picture gallery. Later, it was used again as an imperial residence. When the monarchy ended, it became a palace again and now it’s the National Museum of Austrian Art.
Architecture:
The museum consists of two main buildings, two palaces: a lower one and a upper one. It has beautiful gardens, which are asymmetrical. The buildings are made of marble (the majority its false, because it was really expensive.)
The decoration is very symbolic, even allegorical; in the reception room, for example, there is a fresco painting showing a mystic theme and an ostrich, which refers to the fact that Prince Eugene was the first person to have a zoo in Vienna.
Paintings:
Nowadays inside the Palace there’s the Austrian Gallery with 19th and 20th centuries Austrian and International pieces. Among others there are works of Amerling, Hausner, Hundertwasser, Klimt, Kokoscha, Romako, Schiele, Waldmüller, and some French impressionists, too. The most important collection is on impressionism and it’s of the decade of 1900.
The most important painting of Gustav Klimt is “The Kiss” (1907- 1908). It is the last picture for which he used gold.
Egon Schiele:
The family (1918) it is the opposite of beauty, one of his last paintings.
All in all, we had a very interesting day in Vienna, although the weather was beginning to get on our nerves!
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele is renowned alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka as one of the leading usual artists of the Viennese modern movement.
He was born in 1890 into a simple family background in Tulln on the Danube.
In 1906 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After the great Klimt-era Egon Schiele is the painter that strongly influenced the artistic scene of Vienna in the early 20th century. He soon developed his own inimitable language of forms while still a student at Vienna Academy of fine arts.
In 1908 Schiele had his first exhibition, and was very successfully. Together with his friends and fellow artists, he founded the “Neukunstgruppe” (New Art group) and developed a drawing style that intentionally conjured up the impression of fragility and tension. In an anti-academic and radically subjective manner, Schiele chose perspectives and views in a way that figures, which are only rarely shown head-on or in full length in the picture, appear twisted and deformed by their compositional arrangement. The main motives of these decadently coloured representations are self-portraits and portraits, but also nudes that are distinguished by strongly erotic features. These pictures irritated the conventional perception and therefore became early examples of Viennese expressionism.
He combined ornamental structuring fractured line and an expressive use of colour.
Schiele portraits, figural paintings and landscapes often orbit within the charged polarities of love and solitude, life and death; the motif of coming into being and dying away is a constantly recurring theme in his works, expressed in the sunflowers, vigorous flowers and petals as juxtaposed to dark, symbolising the cycle of life. In his paintings, colour becomes an independent value, being particularly effective in its many watercolours and deluded in their design voltage.
Schiele moved to Neulengbach, where he embarked on a very productive period. At that time, he was erroneously charged with kidnapping and sexual abuse.
Schiele separated from his longstanding life companion Wally Neuziel to marry Edith Harms.
The First World War started and Egon Schiele was not sent to fight because he was considered to belong to an intellectual elite.
Some view Schiele's work as being grotesque, erotic, pornographic, or disturbing, focusing on sex, death, and discovery. He focused on portraits of others as well as himself. In his later years, while he still worked often with nudes, they were done in a more realist fashion. He also painted tributes to Van Gogh's Sunflowers as well as landscapes and still lives.
Like other Austrian painters of the time as Alfred Kubin and Oskar Kokoschka, the space becomes a kind of vacuum that represents the tragic existential dimension of man, in continual conflict between life and death and especially the uncertainty.
In October, 1918 the six-month pregnant Edith Schiele fell ill with the Spanish flu and died on 28th October. Schiele himself also contracted the Spanish flu and died the 31 of October, 1918.
Adri & Klemens
These are some interesting facts about the place:
History:
The Belvedere Palace was built in 1721-22, when Prince Eugene of Savoy asked Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt to construct a Summer palace for him; but he never lived here. He was born in Paris and he wanted to become a French soldier, but he couldn’t do it because he wasn't tall enough and Louis XVI told him that he wasn’t fit enough to do it either. So he went to the Austrian army to fight against the Turkish.
When Prince Eugene died without any heirs, princess Victoria who was Austrian was in charge of the palace. Then it was sold to Maria Theresia, who named it Belvedere.
Joseph II, Maria Theresia’s son and the father of Sissy tried to find a special purpose for the palace and so it became a picture gallery. Later, it was used again as an imperial residence. When the monarchy ended, it became a palace again and now it’s the National Museum of Austrian Art.
Architecture:
The museum consists of two main buildings, two palaces: a lower one and a upper one. It has beautiful gardens, which are asymmetrical. The buildings are made of marble (the majority its false, because it was really expensive.)
The decoration is very symbolic, even allegorical; in the reception room, for example, there is a fresco painting showing a mystic theme and an ostrich, which refers to the fact that Prince Eugene was the first person to have a zoo in Vienna.
Paintings:
Nowadays inside the Palace there’s the Austrian Gallery with 19th and 20th centuries Austrian and International pieces. Among others there are works of Amerling, Hausner, Hundertwasser, Klimt, Kokoscha, Romako, Schiele, Waldmüller, and some French impressionists, too. The most important collection is on impressionism and it’s of the decade of 1900.
The most important painting of Gustav Klimt is “The Kiss” (1907- 1908). It is the last picture for which he used gold.
Egon Schiele:
The family (1918) it is the opposite of beauty, one of his last paintings.
All in all, we had a very interesting day in Vienna, although the weather was beginning to get on our nerves!
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele is renowned alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka as one of the leading usual artists of the Viennese modern movement.
He was born in 1890 into a simple family background in Tulln on the Danube.
In 1906 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. After the great Klimt-era Egon Schiele is the painter that strongly influenced the artistic scene of Vienna in the early 20th century. He soon developed his own inimitable language of forms while still a student at Vienna Academy of fine arts.
In 1908 Schiele had his first exhibition, and was very successfully. Together with his friends and fellow artists, he founded the “Neukunstgruppe” (New Art group) and developed a drawing style that intentionally conjured up the impression of fragility and tension. In an anti-academic and radically subjective manner, Schiele chose perspectives and views in a way that figures, which are only rarely shown head-on or in full length in the picture, appear twisted and deformed by their compositional arrangement. The main motives of these decadently coloured representations are self-portraits and portraits, but also nudes that are distinguished by strongly erotic features. These pictures irritated the conventional perception and therefore became early examples of Viennese expressionism.
He combined ornamental structuring fractured line and an expressive use of colour.
Schiele portraits, figural paintings and landscapes often orbit within the charged polarities of love and solitude, life and death; the motif of coming into being and dying away is a constantly recurring theme in his works, expressed in the sunflowers, vigorous flowers and petals as juxtaposed to dark, symbolising the cycle of life. In his paintings, colour becomes an independent value, being particularly effective in its many watercolours and deluded in their design voltage.
Schiele moved to Neulengbach, where he embarked on a very productive period. At that time, he was erroneously charged with kidnapping and sexual abuse.
Schiele separated from his longstanding life companion Wally Neuziel to marry Edith Harms.
The First World War started and Egon Schiele was not sent to fight because he was considered to belong to an intellectual elite.
Some view Schiele's work as being grotesque, erotic, pornographic, or disturbing, focusing on sex, death, and discovery. He focused on portraits of others as well as himself. In his later years, while he still worked often with nudes, they were done in a more realist fashion. He also painted tributes to Van Gogh's Sunflowers as well as landscapes and still lives.
Like other Austrian painters of the time as Alfred Kubin and Oskar Kokoschka, the space becomes a kind of vacuum that represents the tragic existential dimension of man, in continual conflict between life and death and especially the uncertainty.
In October, 1918 the six-month pregnant Edith Schiele fell ill with the Spanish flu and died on 28th October. Schiele himself also contracted the Spanish flu and died the 31 of October, 1918.
Adri & Klemens
