Pausing for thought
This is my first visit to Berlin and I guess new cities are always difficult to negotiate. The following blog explains a bit about my own approach to this and is both a reflection and a recommendation centred around the Berlin wall “East Side Gallery” and the wall’s “Memorial Museum”.
“In from the cold”:
Oil, felt pen and spray paint on canvas
60″ x 60″: Claytor 1990
1. Think about the power of Art.
Go to the East Side Gallery and walk along looking at the different bits of grafitti art. Ask yourself what was the purpose of those paintings on THIS wall. Wasn’t the job done anyway, before the paintings were completed? Make sure that you look at the other side of the wall also while you think about this.
2. Remember your own art
Think back over any of your own drawings, paintings, film, ceramics, printmaking, photography.
Ask yourself if anything you see is like anything you have done? If so why and if not why not. The paintings on the wall are for the most part, not that attractive, but they are situated entirely in the right context. They are political in a way that most art is unable to be. Picasso achieved it with “Geurnica”, but that is pretty much the exception that proves the rule.
Social media affords some wider political context for our work as artists. Is this good enough? I ask myself how important is it to have an audience who can stand in front of my work as an artist. To be more than just a “meme artist”, do I have to literally reach my audience? Do they need to be able to touch my paintings.
3. Look really closely and close up
Study the details of the paintings on the concrete wall surfaces. Not because you will appreciate the grafitti art on the wall sections better, but because it will help you in just BEING THERE.
4. Make your own piece of art out of what you see.
This landscape is not dead. Its story continues and you have an obligation to tell it.
5. Move on to the wall museum
Look out over at the last example of the watch tower and the Berlin wall
“Its forbidden to deface or damage the wall”
Famous Gorbachov kissing picture
Crowds taking their photos
View from platform: Berlin Wall Memorial and Visitor Centre: July 2016
Concreted stained glass work: Berlin wall memorial and visitor centre
Berlin wall memorial and visitor centre
Berlin wall memorial and visitor centre. View of last double section of wall including watch tower.
In conclusion, all the walking around and climbing stairs and viewing platforms combined with museum exhibition stuff, makes for a very exciting and thought provoking day.
“In from the cold”:
Oil, felt pen and spray paint on canvas
60″ x 60″: Claytor 1990
My own thoughts turned to this painting that I started in 1989 around the time the wall came down. In the first instance it had been a response to reading “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” by John le Carre. Then watching the film of the same name staring Richard Burton. It eventually became interwoven and tied in with the events unfolding in Berlin.
It is perhaps one of my own favourite paintings and so it has been splendid over the last few days to see my original “statement of ego” (for that is what most art is) taken a little bit further after all these years. I was struck by the similarity of the close up texture and tonal work between some areas at the beginning of the gallery wall and my own “In from the Cold” piece.
The painting itself was finished many years ago, but I feel that I have only just finished it properly in my own head now, after this first visit to Berlin and the unrelenting mosaic of social, political and historical detail I have taken on board.