GOLDEN CHAIN, 2012

Pen and ink, wash, white gouache.

16.5 x 11.7 inches. 

Even the avowed Wagnerian Thomas Mann described Wagner's contradictory personality as a "pump genius“. A formula whose double meaning comes pretty close to the truth: Does "pump genius" mean a gifted artist who involuntarily always lived on credit? Or one whose genius was preferably expressed in debt? In fact, in Wagner's case, both are true. 

Wagner's economy ranged from abject poverty to a life of luxury in velvet and silk in a feudal social environment. In Paris he starved with his first wife Minna, later he resided with Cosima in Venetian palazzi with a host of servants. But the means were never sufficient – no matter whether he had little or much at his disposal. [...] 

Liszt was often confronted with Wagner's lightning-like ideas, and his tone became increasingly informal and spontaneous, as in the letter from Mornex of July 22, 1856, which again reveals an attempt by Wagner to play above the lines:

You, Franz! I have a divine idea!!! – You must get me an Erard grand piano!!! – Write to the widow – you visit me three times every year (!) and you must have a better piano than the old limping one. Make her believe a hundred thousand nonsense, tell her that it is a point of honor for her that there is an Erard in my house. – In short – don't think, but act outrageously ingenious! I must have an Erard. If they don't want to give it to me, let them pump it to me – on the longest possible dates! "

(From: "The small Wagnerian", Enrik Lauer and Regine Müller, C.H. Beck Verlag)