30 November 2011

My Life!

Day 4 - 29 November 2011 - Berlin, Tiergarten













Yesterday, we walked from the KPM site to the Gropius site by way of the Tiergarten.  Today we're taking the S Bahn to Potsdamer Platz.  The goal is to see the cultural institutions in the Tiergarten that we have somehow avoided in past visits.  We're off to the Neue Nationalgalerie which is ensconsed in a wonderful building by Mies Van der Rohe.  There are two exhibitions that we want to see.  The first is called Der geteilte Himmel (A divided Heaven) a look at the painting of East and West Germany immediately following the war, and the decades following.  The second is "A Living Man Declared Dead and other Chapters" by Taryn Simon.

We start with the first, because we're not so certain that we want to see the second.  What a disturbing exhibition this is!


The eastern group seems to offer a dim vision, as Wilhelm Lachnit's Gleiderpuppe well shows.  People seem to be operating as automata as they relate to the things (the good things) of ordinary life.  A more direct view, and one that condemns is Werner Tübke's Lebenserinnerungen des Dr. jur. Schulze (III) (The Life Memories of Judge Schulze).




Here the artist places blame and demands answers from those in the position to have done better under the Third Reich.  In contrast, the material from the West is like a dream - a dream of denial.  There is no angst and there are no questions.  Everything seems to be pastel and promising.  From this point on, however, it was I who was in a bit of denial.  It came round to me with this painting by Victor Vasarely.




Did I like this at one time?   Did I think that Josef Alber's would grow into this, or that Chuck Close would benefit from it?  There were several artists represented who I really liked, Francis Bacon, Adolf Gottlieb, and others.  There was however, a lot of stuff that seemed vapid now.  One room was dominated by a screening of The Yellow Submarine by the Beatles.  I realized as I looked at all this stuff that this was my life.  This represented the decades of my living and breathing - and it didn't feel good.


A wonderful Loozy Kirsche Nektar cooled me down.


Upstairs, at Taryn Simon's photo essay, "A Living Man..." things were different.  Here were several chapters, each about an individual, pictured with his or her bloodline (I'm not counting the one about the rabbits), which document oddities, realities, and tragedies that surround all of us who live.  It really brought me back to earth.  Pictures, text, and further notes submerse the viewer into another life.  It is a view that serves as contrast to one's own, and gives a sense of balance (thank you Moholy-Nagy) in living.  


We then wandered over to the Gemäldegalerie right next door, sort of.  Here was everything that I sort of revel in, especially stuff like Jean Fouquet's "Estienne Chevalier with Saint Stephen".  














Ever since it graced the cover of a new translation of Jan Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle AgesI have admired this picture, and here it was.  The remainder, however, left me behind.  I was still in the funk of a "Divided Heaven".  I had to sit and think about it a bit.  Part of me was disappointed because I thought this gallery had a collection of Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Georg Groß, and the like.  Not so.





Life comes rushing in as we make our way back to Sony Center.  And as if to top it with whipped cream with a cherry on top we go to KaDeWe where I buy a T Shirt, and we have dinner.  Back to reality.

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