Thursday, December 31, 2009

Thursday, December 31, 2009  [Link to this | Blog home]

Joined a lot of other Berliners for another couple of museum visits. First the Carl Gustav Carus exhibit at the Alte Nationalgalerie. A contemporary of Caspar David Friedrich, Carus painted a very similar brand of romanticism - though often verging into kitsch, and only occasionally approaching the existential depths of Friedrich. Still, impressive work for a man who also dabbled in various sciences and not only worked as a doctor, but practically defined gynecology as we know it today. The exhibit also showed an enlightened selection of contemporaries, allowing you to explore similarities in themes and techniques, as well as the subtle differences in approach.
And as if to comfort an old Friedrich fan like myself, his "Der Mönch am Meer" was back up in the permanent exhibit - one of my personal contenders for the greatest painting in Western art. Just saying.
Afterwards, I made my first ever visit to Deutsches Historisches Museum for the Kunst und Kalter Krieg exhibit - a rather unique look at at the development of German art on either side of the Iron Curtain. Ordered chronologically, the works showed the rigidity of early GDR art, the underground rebellion against this, and the escape of some East German artists to the West. Those who stayed but remained critical to the regime - like the highly original surrealist Werner Tübke - hid their protest behind enigmatic symbolism. Though, strangely, near the end of the Cold War, the state allowed a much wider range of artistic expression - resulting in grotesquely satirical performance art, virtually signalling the impending end of the GDR.
The exhibit also gave an insight into the friendships and exchanges between the artists of the East and West, as expressed in a the symbolic handshake between GDR's A.R. Penck and Jörg Immendorf in a painting from the latter's "Cafe Deutschland" series.
Apart from the historical interest, any exhibit that shows the work of Baselitz, Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer is bound to be impressive. But being less familiar with the art of Werner Tübke, I was particularly fascinated by his very personal style: The impenetrable symbolism (was he criticizing the inhumanities of Capitalism or Communism - or both?) conveyed in a dense surrealist images, often in a Renaissance style reminiscent of that other great original, Hieronymus Bosch.
So - a presentation of a piece of history, surely. But mainly focusing on the best and most fascinating art from the era.