“Listening to Beethoven” by Lionello Balestrieri 1900

“I love this painting. The men seem in such despair. Is listening to Beethoven so bad? Did the artist not like Beethoven? Is the violin player so bad? The men look like they have just been ruined. They have just had a huge night out of debauchery and now return home very late at night having lost all their money, all their life savings, at the roulette wheel or poker table or in some brothel. They are ruined. And then, in the midst of it all, as if lit by spotlight, is that glowing face of the beautiful woman. It is like she is thinking ‘I told you so!’. ‘You should have listened to me!’ And maybe thinking it was time she left these losers, and found a new life on her own. I saw it in the Stadel in Frankfurt and it was the one picture I really could not tear myself away from and that woman’s face.” “Sometimes in a strip pub some women customers come in and are shocked when they realise there are naked women on the stage, but stay for one drink, and they are often so much more beautiful and sexy than anything on the stage and you cannot take your eyes off of them. Like last night, black and white woolly Santa hat with booble [Freudian Slip: I mean bobble] on end, brunette, dark jacket over black shorts and black stockings, DMs, standing by toilet holding two pints of beer while her friend was inside. I said with typical wit ‘You look like an alcoholic with your two pints of beer!’ She grinned back ‘Yes, I am!’. It was the highlight of the night.”

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