you are completely and totally at the mercy of this sinister world and if someone tries to tell you otherwise then he is trying to tell you a lie, today's lie which is ceaselessly drummed into your ears, the lie on which the politicians and the political twaddlers have specialized, Reger said. The world is one big sinister place where no one can find shelter any more, no one, Reger said at the Ambassador. Reger was looking at the White-Bearded Man and said, the death of my wife has not only been my greatest misfortune, it has also set me free. With the death of my wife I have become free, he said, and when I say free I mean entirely free, wholly free, completely free, if you know, or if at least you surmise, what I mean. I am no longer waiting for death, it will come by itself, it will come without my thinking of it, it does not matter to me when. The death of a beloved person is also an enormous liberation of our whole system, Reger now said. I have lived for some time now with the feeling of being totally free. I can now let anything approach me, really anything, without having to resist, I no longer resist anything, that is it, Reger now said. Looking at the White-Bearded Man he said, I have always really loved the White-Bearded Man. I never loved Tintoretto, but I have loved Tintoretto's White-Bearded Man. I have looked at this painting for over thirty years and I still find it possible to look at it, there is no other painting I could have looked at for over thirty years. The old masters tire quickly if we study them scrupulously and they always disappoint us if we subject them to closer scrutiny, if, as it were, we make them the ruthless object of our critical intellect. Not one of these so-called old masters will stand up to such a truly critical scrutiny, Reger now said. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, all this dissolves in our eyes with incredible rapidity and ultimately reveals itself as paltry survival art, no matter how inspired, as a paltry attempt at survival. Now Goya is a tougher nut, Reger said, but even Goya ultimately is no use to us and means nothing to us. Everything here at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which incidentally does not even possess a Goya, Reger now said, ultimately means nothing to us, I mean at the crucial point in our existence, nothing at all. In all these pictures, if we study them intensively, we sooner or later discover an awkwardness, or indeed, even in the very greatest and the most important creations, a flaw, if we are uncompromising a serious flaw which gradually makes us dislike these pictures, probably because we pitched our expectations too high, Reger said. Art altogether is nothing but a survival skill, we should never lose sight of this fact, it is, time and again, just an attempt — an attempt that seems touching even to our intellect — to cope with this world and its revolting aspects, which, as we know, is invariably possible only by resorting to lies and falsehoods, to hypocrisy and selfdeception, Reger said. These pictures are full of lies and falsehoods and full of hypocrisy and self-deception, there is nothing else in them if we disregard their often inspired artistry. All these pictures, moreover, are an expression of man's absolute helplessness in coping with himself and with what surrounds him all his life. That is what all these pictures express, this helplessness which, on the one hand, embarrasses the intellect and, on the other, bewilders the same intellect and moves it to tears, Reger said. The White-Bearded Man has stood up to my intellect and to my feelings for over thirty years, Reger said, to me it is therefore the most precious item on show here at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. As though I had realized this over thirty years ago, I sat down on this settee here for the first time over thirty years ago, directly facing the White-Bearded Man. All these so-called old masters are really failures, without exception they were all doomed to failure, and the viewer can establish this failure in every detail of their works, in every brush-stroke, Reger said, in the smallest and very smallest detail. Quite apart from the fact that of all these so-called old masters each one invariably only painted some detail of his pictures with real genius, not one of them painted a one-hundred-per-cent picture of genius, not one of those socalled old masters ever succeeded in doing that; either they failed with the chin or with the knee or with the eyelids, Reger said. Most of them failed with the hands, there is not a single painting to be seen in the Kunsthistorisches Museum on which there is a hand painted with genius, or even painted with extraordinary competence, always only those tragicomically unsuccessful hands, Reger said, that is what you see here in all these portraits, even the most celebrated ones. Nor did any of these so-called old masters succeed in painting even an exceptional chin or a truly successful knee. El Greco never managed to paint even a single hand, El Greco's hands all look like dirty wet face flannels, Reger now said, but then there is not a single El Greco in the Kunsthistorisches Museum anyway. And Goya, who is likewise not represented in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, carefully avoided painting even a single hand clearly, where Goya's hands are concerned even Goya got stuck in dilettantism, this terrifying monstrous Goya, whom I place above all painters who ever painted, Reger said. Besides, it is downright depressing, here in this Kunsthistorisches Museum, only ever to see an art which should be labelled state art, an anti-spiritual Habsburg-Catholic state art. It has been the same for decades, I come to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and think that the Kunsthistorisches Museum does not even have a Goya! That it does not have an El Greco is not, as far as I and my view of art are concerned, a tragedy, but that the Kunsthistorisches Museum should not have a Goya is truly a tragedy, Reger said. If we apply an international yardstick, Reger said, then we must admit that the Kunsthistorisches Museum, contrary to its reputation, is not really a first-class museum because it does not even have the great all-outclassing Goya. On top of this is the fact that the Kunsthistorisches Museum is entirely in line with the artistic taste of the Habsburgs, who, at least where painting is concerned, had a revolting, totally brainless Catholic artistic taste. The Catholic Habsburgs never cared much more for painting than they did for literature, because painting and literature always seemed to them dangerous arts, unlike music, which could never become dangerous to them and which the Catholic Habsburgs, just because they were so brainless, allowed to unfold to full flower, as I once read in a so-called art book. Habsburg falseness, Habsburg feeble-mindedness, Habsburg perversity in matters of faith, these are what you see hanging on all these walls, that is the truth, Reger said. And in all these pictures, even in the landscapes, that perverse Catholic infantilism in matters of faith. Vulgar ecclesiastical hypocrisy even in the paintings with the highest, the very highest, claim to pictorial perfection, that is what is so repulsive. Everything exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum wears a Catholic halo, not even excepting Giotto, Reger said. These repulsive Venetians who, with every paw they ever painted, cling to the Catholic pre-Alp heaven, he now said. You cannot find