Afterwards, after a stop to pore over some travel books at a store that carries English books, I headed to the Jewish Museum, which I surprisingly have not been to yet. As I approached the museum, I hopped onto the sidewalk, still riding my bike, in search of somewhere to park it near the museum's entrance. Two surly cops milling around outside the museum did not like this. They scowled and stood in my way while pointing vigorously at the street, with cars whizzing by at their customary death speed. I got off my bike, smiled and told them I was headed to the museum, uselessly indicating the entrance about 20 feet along the sidewalk, but the cop just glared at me and growled that that didn't matter, I should have stayed on the road instead of presuming to bike for 50 feet on the completely unoccupied sidewalk. No wonder Germans always follow the rules. If they don't, some asshole cop won't wait a moment to get all up in their grill. Don't they have better things to do then be mean to people about absurdly minor traffic violations? Sheesh.
After that encounter I was in no mood to face the huge crowd of noisy French schoolchildren totally dominating the Jewish Museum entranceway so I decided to pop around the corner to the Berlinische Galerie instead. And it was awesome!
On the way there were signposts with art-related quotes such as "Farben muß gesehen werden!" (Colors must be seen!) from Walter Benjamin and "Denken ist Form" (Thinking is form) from Joseph Beuys.
When I got there I discovered that they are between special exhibitions, but the permanent collection was more than enough to divert me!
This confronted me in the first room:
Raimund Kummer, Eyecatcher 1994.
I approached it from behind so did not at first realize it was an eye...when I spotted the placard I was delighted by the clever wordplay of the title. And it was certainly eye-catching!
The next piece that caught my attention was a sound installation by Carston Eggers in which small, unobtrusive loudspeakers had been installed down the sides of the main gallery's central staircase which intermittently played a recording of a ping pong ball falling down stairs. The little info blurb hit it bang on the nose by saying, "A double irritation is generated; we not only hear a surprising noise, we are unable to identify its source." I smiled when I realized the sound I was hearing was an art piece.
The auditorium is currently jam-packed with student work from a secondary school in Prenzlauer-Berg and every other piece was interesting. From a piece documenting a student's daily eating habits with flattened food wrappers hung in labelled ziploc bags to a coffee table made from a worn gold picture frame with strings stretched across it, I was really impressed. That was a fun room.
I was thrilled to finally see Steve Johnson's Pedestrian Island No. 5:
which I had seen in the Lange Nacht der Museen catalogue but couldn't figure out what museum to see it in.
Sarah Schönfeld's "genius loci_landscapes" series was really interesting.
"The strange landscapes are nothing more than the edges of carpets, landings, lift doors etc. The poetry of the everyday."
Upstairs with the older works, I was reminded how much I like Naum Gabo.
I also learned the German term 'Lebensbejahung' meaning 'acceptance of life' (it was the title of a piece). Another handy German compound word!
I also loved Brigitte and Martin Matschinsky's smaller metal sculptures:
And I found a new Impressionist friend in Lesser Ury:
This painting
by Wilhelm Gallhof was absolutely scrumptious in person and the reproduction in no way does it justice.
And there was more...but those are the highlights.
This evening we attended another fab Latvian performance piece. Twas wunderbar!
Bid bald,
D.
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