Achtung Berlin
I am walking on a street called Sophienstrasse in
A gaggle of galleries near Sophienstrasse is where I am headed. My editor sent me to cover the travel fair at Berlin Messe, and since I had a couple of hours of free time I decided to go see some Richter paintings at Berlin’s Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA) gallery rather than go to the KaDeWe mall or somewhere else. So, here I am on a street all swelled up with the void. Cold as hell. With crows and dying trees. Life is beautiful.
On view at the CFA are the works of Georg Baselitz, a neo-expressionist who specializes in painting his subjects upside down. It is the artist’s way of making the viewers appreciate the painting in its totality, and not just to recognize the subject that is presented. For the artist, the act of recognition is a cage. By simply stepping out of that cage, we the viewers can take on a whole new different visual experience. And what an experience it is — what with his violent brushstrokes and dramatic postures of his figures. In his manifesto titled Painters’ Equipment, Baselitz says, “There is nothing I can say about my pictures. I paint, which is far from easy, and that’s all I can do.”
Baselitz’s “Last Bridge Ghost’s Supper” features paintings of boots and headshots (including a portrait of Edward Munch). Looking at a couple of paintings at the CFA, one gets the impression that the whole world has turned upside down and it is only Baselitz who remains upright.
I step outside for a smoke. Through the window of another apartment unit I can see what seems to be cosmic graffiti in yellow and black. Ah, unmistakably Basquiat yellow and Basquiat black. The unit turns out to be Galerie Davide Di Maggio where the current show features the legendary American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, his paintings as well as stills from the film Downtown 81.
It would take a whole book (and a Julian Schnabel movie with David Bowie, Gary Oldman and Dennis Hopper in the cast) to approximate what Basquiat’s contribution is to the world of art. The artist’s crudely drawn cartoon-like figures, his handwritten disconnected phases, and his physical graffiti are the ciphers of urban life. (When asked why he drew men crudely, Basquiat’s reply was: “Men are crude.”)
Writer Ben Okri once proclaimed, “(Basquiat’s art) is an art outside the village gate… His art is what Picasso proclaimed art should be, an instrument of war… War against the civilizing influences that mute the plangent, beautiful, howling song of the oracles into ‘manageable’ choirs… War against human stupidity and limitation.” Okri also said, “Basquiat exploded like a meteor, and died in the ashes of American fame.” The artist died at age 28 from a heroin overdose. So very rock ‘n’ roll. Like Jimi Hendrix (and Charlie Parker) before him.
To me, Basquiat’s paintings communicate first before they are understood. His primitive symbols and stick-man figures impart something innocent, ineffable and invaluable that all the clinically realistic academic art bull could never impart. No need for scholarly tomes to validate the man’s vision. The proof is in the looking. Didn’t Basquiat once say, “I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to know what art is…”?
After buying books on Richter and a Jonathan Meese shirt (artists are such rock stars in
Must be God’s own installation.
Standing By The Wall
I ride in a van with the others on an abbreviated tour of
We pass by Kurfürstendamm (known largely as “Ku’damm”), which boasts shops, hotels, art galleries, restaurants and theaters. We spot the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächniskirche, or the
We take a few photos of the Berlin Victory Column, where Bono hams it up in U2’s Stay (Faraway, So Close) video. We walked near the Brandenburg Gate, which, according to our guide was a symbol of division during the Cold War but is now an emblem of reunification. On top of the tor is Johann Gottfried Schadow’s “Quadriga,” a sculpture of the winged goddess of victory piloting a horse-drawn chariot. I read before that the sculpture was “kidnapped” by Napoleon, kept in
I am contemplating on how the Gate had been present during historic moments when I overhear a tourist getting euphoric upon spotting a Starbucks. Must be following a different itinerary.
We ride the bus toward the Berlin Wall; only there’s no more Berlin Wall to speak of. In some parts of the city there are still constructs of historic bricks I suppose. But near the infamous Checkpoint Charlie there are only billboards of the Wall commemorating the Wall. A number of the bricks, I’ve been told by a German photographer with a build like a wrestler’s, have been used to pave the roads. No time to drive over to the East Side Gallery, the stretch of wall (the longest, best-preserved and most interesting stretch) turned into a gallery by artists from around the world after the fall of communism. I spot a book at a souvenir shop chronicling Keith Haring’s graffiti work on the Wall.
I try to look for a book chronicling the fixations of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed on
Iggy’s pose on the cover of “The Idiot” was inspired by Erich Heckel’s “Roquairol” painting, which the Stooge saw at the Brücke Museum of Expressionist Art.
Lou put out an album titled “
Andy Warhol “produced” the debut record of Lou’s former band, the Velvet Underground. He also created the iconic banana album cover.
Iggy was assisted by
Eno (onetime Roxy Music member who also produced U2’s “Achtung Baby,” which was recorded in
Iggy appears in the segment titled “Somewhere in
Lou got Bob Ezrin to produce “
The man who used to call himself Ziggy Stardust once said in an interview that he likes
We leave
I take the camera out. Take a picture of something. A tableau of things that are just disappearing.
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Photos taken with the Sony Alpha 100 camera. Special thanks to Kata Digno of Sony