This is a stage mountain, exquisitely artificial, like a decorative, gold-leafed peak or pinnacle wrested from the depths of Jugendstil, an object you'd find in painter Gustav Klimt or in the architecture of Peter Behrens (1869-1940). There is something oddly Wagnerian about it too--a dusty, offstage emblem of Das Rheingold. The great John Ruskin once wrote (in 1841) a severely moralizing fairy tale called The King of the Golden River. He wrote it for his tiny prepubescent inamorata, Effie Gray, who, when she grew up a bit, he then married. I love Ruskin's writings, but I couldn't read this story. I tried three times. I wish he'd written a King of he Golden Mountain instead
