Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Berlinische Gallery

It was a beautiful morning for a visit to Berlin's Berlinische Galerie.
It is just around the corner from the Jewish Museum in Mitte.
Ardent recorders of our travels we bought photo-permission badges -- 3 euros at the ticket desk.
Your Tomatoes in action
When John and I entered the museum we walked past Michael Sailstorfer's Forest, 2012 - mature trees sliding slowly along the long entrance gallery leaving traces of their movements.
Let's start on the second floor with their Art in Berlin, 1880-1980 collection.
John couldn't help being impressed by the "personal servings" of beer in Philipp Frank's After the Ceremony Gravediggers drinking Weissbeir, 1902.
 He really is not ignoring Ernst Lubbert's, Lady with Greyhound, 1920/12.
We both loved Kandinsky's Sounds, 1913. 
Here are 3 of the 11 Lovis Corinth wall panels for the estate of a German industrialist painted on an Odyssey theme in 1913/14.
Hannah Hoch's Roma, 1925 - an oil based on one of her collages
An Untitled painting by Alexander Rodtschenko, 1923.
 
Three De Stijl designs from 1923. Last one by El Lissitzky.
Naum Gabo, Head in a Corner, 1917.
I enjoyed these constructivist works -- Tatlin's Counterrelief, 1917 and Gabo's Model for "Constructed Torso", 1917/18.
Artists of the 70's and 80's were still dealing with recent German history as in  Friend of the Children, 1976
   In their Pandemonic Manifesto, artists Eugen Schönebeck and Georg Baselitz demanded that ugliness, obscenity and blasphemy should be the new subjects of figurative art.
John liked these two works by Werner Heldt - a poster
and  Still Life of Houses (Cityscape - Folding Picture), 1979.
Karl Horst Hödicke's Ministry of War, 1977
 and details of the painting.
 Rues et Visages de Berlin,1930, is a portfolio about the city by French playwright, Jean Giradoux and illustrated by Chas-Laborde. It gave the name to a special show of the drawings and watercolours of Berlin lifestyle between the wars by artists like Otto Dix, Max Beckman, George Grosz and others from the museum's collection.
 In this wonderful show we discovered the fabulous work of Jeanne Mammen.
Jeanne Mammen, The Redheaded Woman, 1928, and In the Cloakroom, 1927.
 Jeanne Mammen, Couple under the Umbrella, 1933.
Gertrude Sandmann, Blond Girl in Black, 1919.
We were not familiar with the work of Boris Mikhailhov. Mr Mikhailhov is Ukranian and his raw photographs cover the period from the 1970's to the present -- that is from the Cold War Communism to glasnost.
 By the Ground - At dusk featured images of the people living outside the norm in post-Communist Ukraine.
This photo is so like a 'descent from the cross'.
Seaside series in sepia. Ukranians at play amongst industrial clutter.
Hand-coloured photos of the series Sots Art (1975-1986) and Luriki (1971-1985).
Once again we must pass the dancing trees as we bid the Berlinische farewell.
A quick stop at the museum cafe,
a scan of the other visitors
and we found ourselves back in the courtyard of the museum.
Visit -- it's a special place. We loved the conceptual street signage as we headed home.

5 comments:

  1. You were much on our minds -- especially with the Jeanne Mammens -- and the fabulous Gertrude Sandmann.

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  2. Bill and John everything is so beautiful.
    The photo 'descent from the cross' + the lady with the child in her arms you just made another piece of art.

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  3. Thanks so much Mariana. Glad you enjoyed the post - it's a great museum. The photo of "descent" and the mother & child is one of my fave captures from Berlin.
    Bill

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