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Head Clausnitzer’s Paris Berlin Journal

Berlin, Part Einz (1)

As I made my speedy way to Berlin by car I passed through the central German hill country dotted with wind farms, eventually passing through Kassel, the home of the Documenta. As I mentioned earlier in this journal Kassel is perhaps the most supportive municipality in the world (or in the EU, at least) for public sculpture and outdoor installations.

At Kassel I was tempted to drop south for a visit to Erfurt the capital of the German Land (state, or province) of Thuringia. In the east just barely, and smack dab, as we used to say, in the middle of the country, Erfurt has transformed itself from a depressed and bombed out city into a very busy locus for farm commerce, forestry, and tourismus. Some vital tourist spots were saved – like the Dom on the hill above the town where the acolytes of Martin Luther fomented revolution. Other places were saved as well, such as Buchenwald in the hills nearby.

I mention Erfurt because it is the home of Galerie Rothamel, pronounced –Rot-hamel (as in camel), one of the more prosperous galleries in Germany, now with a branch in Frankfurt am Main. My work was included in one of Dr. Jörk Rothamel’s thematic group shows back in 2002. As per my last entry, in the Köln section, I was invited to show with him partly because I put myself there in his gallery one day, cold call.

Showing in Germany is a wholly different experience from that in the U.S. For one thing their approach to show “openings” or, as they call them “vernissages,” is completely different in feel and procedure than anything we experience in the U.S. For instance, the German vernissage is highly intellectualized through the ritual of making time for formal speakers. Usually the gallerist writes an essay(s) that includes something personal about the artist(s) showing, and about their work and its importance and position in history (yes, they go out on that limb). Often an art historian is invited to speak, as well.

The Germans eat this stuff up, respectfully. However, once the ceremonies are over the usual noise and crush ensues. And, did I mention, that the usual kick off time for a vernissage is 9 pm and can go on into the wee hours? This is usual for even the most well heeled galleries.

As I drove east I remembered my trips by train in Germany. Passing through the hill country of central Germany as I passed by the hill towns (Erfurt and Kassel are a couple of these) I thought of the time I waited for a local train in Weimar. Out on one of the local platforms on a warm but gray day and looking off to the west I noticed coming down a far hill a veritable Silver Streak of a train, four hours from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main, the ICE, the inter-city, the fast train to everywhere, what a railroad! As I watched the train seemed to approach slowly and ever so quietly. As it got nearer I realized it was going at an intensely rapid rate of speed. Later I found out it averaged 190 KM per! As the silver snake finally approached I heard a metallic ching-ka- chi-ching, as it geared down and slowed to something like sixty Kmh and smoothly slid through the station not intending to stop. As it did each car registered a facsimile of the German word for five as it passed my position, pfunf, pfunf, pfunf and so on until it passed out of the station and geared back up and whizzed out of sight toward Leipzig (pronounced Lipe-zish).

Later, as I crossed the Elbe River, a little over half way through Germany to Berlin, I remembered that the river was the main demarcation line between the west and the east. This was the place where the Americans and the Russians met during the last days of WWII and the line where, on the eastern side of it, freedom ended for over a third of the German people. The road I had been traveling on had been one of 3 or 4 official corridors that allowed western access to West Berlin.

Outside of Berlin there is a large ring road. I took this around the southern end of the city to come in on the east side and into Friedrichshain, the up and coming arts section of city. Off the ring road, as I entered the city I moved through small towns eventually progressing along one of the grandiose, if a bit dowdy, grand boulevards of the GDR, the German Democratic Republic – East Berlin – this time on the Frankfurter Allee which becomes the Karl Marx Allee. All along the way there were slightly oriental looking Stalin era buildings that to my mind look distinctly non-German. Built on a huge, blocky scale they are still festooned with proletarian sculpture and friezes. You know the type, men with big arms and hammers and women equally well muscled brandishing scythes and maybe hugging more than an armful of freshly mown wheat.

As with most of Berlin (and many other German cities) all of this had been built on the leveled land that was Berlin after the allied bombing raids and the Russian conquest of 1945. The new German rulers in the east and their overlords had a clean palette and they made what many think of as their banal best of the opportunity to think large, in some places at least, while neglecting other areas.

Still, I kind of like looking at it all, as do some of my German friends. Now at night, down the Frankfurter Allee, in the brightly lit distance, there sticks up in the zentrum the TV tower, the Fernsehturm, perhaps one of Berlin’s most famous landmarks. However just in front of that (sort of) like the ‘Coal Sack’ that obscures the center of our galaxy stands the old church near the head of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse where Checkpoint Charlie stood. It is all exhilarating and horrorific, as well. Now the Zimmerstrasse is an art gallery street.

The skyline of Berlin is still lined with cranes now ten years out from the velvet revolution. However, even more ubiquitous are the dumpsters seen everywhere in the eastern section, including in the old zentrum called Mitte (or, the middle). Soon after reunification Mitte began to be reclaimed and part of the troops doing the reclamation, of course, were artists and low to the ground galleries. Now many of those original galleries are on top. These galleries have a certain cache as originals. Some of these names are Galerie Kamm, Griedervonputtkammer, Barbara Thumm, and Galerie Wohnmaschine (perhaps my favorite).

Along side the originals there are the galleries that began to move to Berlin after the city became the capital once again. These galleries bare the names of the venerable movers and shakers of the west such as Eva Poll and from elsewhere, such as Leo Coppi from Dresden.

In the western section of the city, or West Berlin, in the section called Charlottenburg. Many of the old guns that compete on a world level with the likes of Pace here in New York are in Charlottenburg. Also, there are a number of galleries of similar caliber that have come to Berlin from the west. A few of these names are Max Hetzler, Rafe Vostell, and Franck + Schutte.

Aside from these areas, and I have not even scratched the surface of the areas I have named, there are many other locales in the city with significant art gallery scenes. A few of these, besides Friedrichshain where I would be showing, are Prenzlaurberg (especially along the Kastanien Allee from Danzigerstrasse, and the Schoenhauser Allee down to Rosa Luxembourg Platz), Kreuzberg around Bergmannstrasse and the foot of Victoria Park, Hackesche Hofe and Markt along the river Spree (where the Drawing Room resides that is in association with Pierogi in Brooklyn), and in all directions radiating out of Mitte say along Veteranenstrasse to the top of the hill at Zionskirk Platz or over to the Chasse Allee. Almost any of these galleries are good, clean, well-lit places with buzz, some attitude (but never unfriendly), and attracting a clientele.

Berlin is a touchstone for Germany and a symbol being keenly brought back to life. It is a cultural magnet of the first order from the ground up, from the club scene to the well-healed halls of gallery and museum. The street level creativity is especially exciting. Berlin is after all where the former impresario of the old Mud Club in New York went to try to get it back. I wonder really how he’s doing in a place with a lot (a preponderance, even) of the best and highest caliber graffiti and guerrilla signage anywhere in the world but little garbage and rats and dead pretty boys in doorways. Oh well, can’t have it all!

But the scene is that good. However, it is under funded somehow. The city is a large, even cavernous vacuum sucking up all things cultural from across Germany and the world. During one very early layover in Paris waiting for the plane to Berlin-Tegel airport I met a number of Americans going ‘home’ to Berlin. One couple were with the permanent installation of the Berlin Cirque du’Soleil, one was a graphic artist completely taken with the guerrilla poster scene, and another (just arriving on sabbatical for a few months stint) was a professor of architectural antiquities from the University of Virginia going to Berlin to study something of what was left standing after the bombing. I wondered what he would find, as I have not found much, and I love looking at all that stuff.

And so, back to under funding. Much of the money transfer to the city has come in the form of rebuilding, renovating, face lifting. It seems to many that the true transfer of wealth will only come after Germany finally, and once and for all, gets over its feeling of schizophrenia. As it stands now, while Berlin is THE capital of Germany, Bonn, the old capital of the west, is still the administrative center. The west is still the rich uncle.

In terms of the galleries however, the collectors from Germany and America increasingly come to Berlin as the place to be seen and to collect. There is nothing like a warm night in autumn on a ründgang, a gallery hop, through the intersecting alleys and cut-through courtyards lined with galleries down the Sophienstrasse in Mitte. The furs float and the diamond bracelets jingle with soft glitter and jackboots march and spikes glint and spiked up hair glows red and green and ethereal blue. The windows are all alight in the old Sophienstrasse, still standing after all come to think of it. I imagine old, quaint Berlin. One knows, those in the know know, too, that out on Weintraubstrasse and Oranienburgerstrasse there will fun, fun, fun of altogether a different sort.

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