The Sound of Schleimen

The Wiener Staatsoper has just unveiled David Hockney’s new safety curtain, created using an iPad. Traditionally these annual commissions give members of the public much to grumble about and this piece will likely prove no exception despite the textual sop to collective cultural narcissism (the smile and raised eyebrow is certainly Dominique Meyer’s conspiratorial face). Die Presse, which sponsors the curtain, bemoans a perceived lack of effort and suggests that a piss-take doodle would have shown more creativity.

Ioan Holender’s choices irritated the Viennese just as much but his Intendanz ended on the strong note of a Twombly classic:

Last year’s curtain, a pretentious statement on drama’s transportive power which read as intelligibly as Derrida run repeatedly forwards and backwards through Google Translate, was widely derided:

Meyer with artist Cerith Wyn Evans

The Hockney again, without Dominique: