ARTISTS TALKING

# 36 [23 March 2007]

Church bells ring several times a day in Berlin so it always makes me think it's Sunday when it is say, a Tuesday, or a Friday like now.  However the difference is that   on Sundays itself, the Chapel of Reconciliation commemorating the fall of the Wall, which is not far from here, rings its bells continuously for the whole morning.  Remember, remember.

It's strange but beautiful that on the first day of Spring it began to snow again.  Not many signs of Spring this morning, with some red tuilips pushing up through the overall whiteness.  This return to wintriness called for a different brekfast to suit the mood.  I had a piece of gluten-free bread which I toasted in the frying pan, put lots of butter, walnuts and dates on top, and then ate it with such greedy pleasure along with a banana and coffee.  Now that is what I call a chic früchstück.  After that elegant beginning I set to work to try and sort out the colours problem.  Mixing all kinds of combinations, I made a chart, labelling quantity ratios and hues.  Taking to my laptop after that I made variations of the painting in case the exact colours I needed would not come right.  These variations I had printed out at the Copy shop so that I could be more distanced.  Of course the printed colours are as far away from my computer colours as the actual paint materials are from anything.  Sometimes these aides are nothing but more complications.  I am determined to work with the actual pigments now.  After the day darkened, I read and finished "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann.  This great book has engrossed me for more than a month.  What a complete education, with such a broad encompassing of every aspect of philosophical, religious, political, physical and moral life.  Monumental is an apt description.Next I am about to begin, "The Diaries of Rainer Maria Rilke", the German poet.

# 35 [21 March 2007]

Working with these unfamiliar paints is a problem because the colours mix differently.  Again I didn't get the yellow that I imagined I'd bought.  It means that I will have to do a lot of experimentation and buy whole ranges of paint to make the colour come right.  It is frustrating, but live and learn girl, I guess.  Letting what I'd laid down to dry (it's wrong), I went out and visited some of the dozens of commercial galleries near here on Linienstrasse and Auguststrasse to give myself a break.  Floating up above these narrow old twisty streets now given over to art and mammon is the exotic dome of the 1857 Neue Synagogue, which was attacked during Kristallnacht in1938 and then again damaged by Allied bombing in 1945.

In the evening was a dinner with the promise of a ‘typical English meal' cooked by my English/Welsh artist friend in his rambling large flat heated by ceramic tiled coal stoves in every room, that he shares with two friends.  What a treat - a large roast leg of lamb, roasted potatoes, roasted parsnips, gravy, mashed carrots and boiled cabbage plus a lot of beer and red wine.  What could be better?  We all fell to eating as if we hadn't had proper food for ages, still continuing the lively conversations.  An anthropologist, a geographer, both German, a Czech studying architecture, a Bulgarian in PR, and we two painters, had lots to say about rock and roll, architecture, clubbing, the state of the world, and how we view Berlin, as well as much reminiscing of past dinners. Perplexingly the other guests all held up the parsnips and asked what they were.  He had bought them in the local market but they all said they had never eaten parsnips before.

At midnight coming out, the world was heaped in fluffy white with large snowflakes swirling.  I love the quiet hush that snow makes as it insulates any sound.

# 34 [20 March 2007]

The opening reception for the Drawing Exhibition at the Blütenweiss Galerie begins at seven.  I get there a bit late so that it is completely packed.  My work is well hung and can be seen directly one enters the gallery. The ambience is terrifically friendly, chummy.  Manfred is also in the exhibition, and Tom has come as kindly support.  Afterwards Tom and I go to a Russian restaurant near Kathė Kollwitz Platz to celebrate.  It's called Pasternak and it is the works: cut glass chandeliers, long white table cloths, serving staff in wrap around white aprons over black, a small orchestra, wailing violins and a tenor singing his heart out.  Dark brown velvet swathes to keep out the draughts from doors and windows, black and white familial photographs on the walls and interspersed in the full Russian menu with its delicious vareniekas, pirogy, blinis, shashlick, cotelettes and compotes.  It had character and good food.  Just right for a very cold night.

# 33 [18 March 2007]

Another day of doing battle with recalcitrant pigments and paint that has seeped under the tapes, but with a confidently light heart, knowing that eventually I would make them come right and the process would be inbuilt into these paintings.  I left the struggle and went out into a storm to a gallery opening before going on to the wonders of the Gemädegalerie.  Leaving the opening reception, I hopped on a tram M6 to get to Rosa Luxembourg Platz where I could get the U-bahn to Potsdamer Platz.  After a while looking out the window, nothing looked familiar and oh no I realised it should have been an M8.  This M6 took me to the middle of nowhere, a little dark vacant back street where the tram driver has his break.  Can you believe that?  Knocking on his window and repeating U-Bahn several times to this kindly avuncular, non-English speaking man got me some directions that I could follow for several blocks before Lo and behold I saw another tram which did take me to the U-Bahn.  Of course my troubles, this blowing, frosty, stormy evening were not yet over.   Potsdamer Platz is vast with arterial wide streets, vehicle traffic but not much if any pedestrians.  Looking for signs, there were none that said Gemädegalerie as one might expect, but only to the Sony Centre. I for the life of me couldn't remember which of these six roads to take nor in which direction.  Would that be the way to a museum or maybe that way?  It seemed hopeless.  Then across the street I saw two young schoolgirls in conversation oblivious to the raging wind.  Excuse me do you speak English?  Drawing herself up to stiff full height, the skinny, bespectacled girl who looked like a touching, bookish Olive Oyl looked at me very severely "but of course," she sternly replied.  What a relief.  They consulted and told me to go past the ‘houses', (not deigning to name the crass commercial thousand or more metres high Sony Centre), to the Kultural Forum.  I would certainly have gone in any other direction but that one and be still wandering today.  They made a few tactical errors of prepositions and directions so that I went past rather before, down rather than up, but anyway I got a chance to visit the Mies Van der Rohe Neu Galerie again.  That is also free entrance from 6 to 10 pm on Thursdays.  Did I mention that was why I was so persistent in my determination to get to the Gemädegalerie this evening and not just throw up my hands saying Bother! I'll go tomorrow.  No, no, dogged determined, eking out my museum entrances' money to pay for yellows and blues of incorrect tints I plodded on like a mad art lover with dripping hair to reach the sanctity of Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, Cranach, Velasquez, Gainsborough, the most beautiful Vermeer I've ever seen, and you know how beautiful they all are.   For the Gemädegalerie that holds one of the most important collections of European art, usually closes at 6pm, but on Thursday evenings it is 10 pm closing and from 6 to 10 pm free entrance.  That is a good time to go.  Also that is not widely known.  It was very sparsely attended, and extraordinary, like drifting through a huge private house containing unbelievable marvels.  Except that it also has in a modern glass and brick extension all that the modern museum must have of café, shop, other exhibitions and so on, hence the Kultural Forum part.   The collection is remarkable, the ambience tranquil asking for nothing, though I might have spoken out for a sign somewhere.

# 32 [15 March 2007]

Starting to mix up the paint for the first coat of the colour layer on the painting, I realised to my dismay that I had bought the wrong colour.  There had been a German word underneath Kobaltblau that I ignored.  It turns out that the word meant Cerulean.  So another sixty euros misplaced.  Having to go to Boesner the art shop that is like an Aladdin's cave for artists, I bought a whole load of materials, this time getting the right things and colours.  All the same it is interesting to note that I have spent four weeks returning to the flea market to look at a white bowl that I am reluctant to purchase for thirty euros, however much I admire the bowl, and yet just now I've spent five hundred and eighty euros without hesitation on paint.  Because it's art innit?

# 31 [14 March 2007]

Because of so much destruction, as much destruction in Berlin by the Soviet Occupation destroying churches and other buildings to put up the Wall, as happened during the war it is said, there is a massive amount of new building.  Since the Wall was a concrete construction, concrete tends to be avoided with glass, steel, enamelled or treated metal, predominating, and with wood, and alternative-building methods used experimentally to great effect.  There are architectural marvels aplenty as I found out today when the winsome landscape architect with his mercurial smile offered to take me on a city tour.  And what an insightful, comprehensive tour it was.  Not only was I shown the main places of interest but also places that he had connections to as a child of Western Germany visiting Berlin and being confronted by the regime of the East, as well as great architecture, and the landscaping in which he had been involved.  So I was shown all: the impressive new Government Buildings; the simplicity and expressive clarity of the Chapel of Reconciliation, built of louvered Douglas Fir around a core of loam-clay-rammed earth with pieces from the destroyed church embedded; the restaurant where Clinton ate in Prenzlauer Berg; a glorious red and green Fire Station by Sauerbruch & Hutton; as well as a creepy tunnel that had linked the Western Wedding district to the Eastern Mitte that he had once gone through just to peep at the other side.  If caught then it might have had frightening consequences, now it is used as a film location. 

To see the documentation centre of the Wall with its' tall Richard Serra-like rusted steel architectural memorial, was a real experience, leading to the wire fence, then second wall with slits left to see where the guards, machine guns and dogs, had patrolled, then the main wall and observation tower; as was also the Topography of Terror where torture took place under the Nazis.  What terrible times from the Burning of the Books onwards, that is still an inescapable palpable presence in Berlin.

Each magnificent embassy was more splendid than the other in the Diplomatic area.  Then on Karl Marx Allee, which I had imagined would look like the grey concrete block tenement buildings, very rough and oppressive as I had seen them in the Soviet Union, but instead of course, the Russians built miles of Palaces for the people showing off how wonderfully Communism was providing for the masses.

During this wide-ranging perceptive exploration he maintained his knack of introducing me again to secret Berlin, revealing the most unusual and hidden place within a seemingly closed-up empty building next to I. M. Pei's elegant new addition: the Taghjikistan teahouse.  Unbeliveable.  What astounding pleasure and delicious.  How could anyone even know it was there in all its carpeted lounging magnificence?

# 30 [13 March 2007]

Finally accepting that I had to wage war on these recalcitrant linen canvases, the day was spent sandpapering them down then re-applying another coat of primer, which in twenty-four hours I'll sandpaper down again.  Even though it was pouring with rain, in the evening I did a circuit of gallery Openings.  In Berlin they want people to come to the openings, they aren't invitation only, celebrity A-list, and guards on the doors, affairs.  There are gallery guides printed for each month, the Berliner Kunstkalender that lists all the galleries with their exhibitions dates and times and as well the dates and times of the Opening Receptions.  Isn't that such a friendly, democratically great way to run an art scene?  People actually are nice here.  So around I went, looking like a drowned rat, hair plastered down, coat dripping and managed to meet friends and see four galleries before squelching back home to my cosy Milchhof studio.

12/02/2007           This evening I met and had dinner with a landscape architect and a jazz singer.  Not at all an uptight stiff German as I imagined he might be, when he drove up in his Audi, meanwhile saying how Mercedes Benz are terrible cars that should be banned, he is all gaily laughing, youthful fluidity, the opposite of my suppositions.  She is a blonde with darker roots, a languid smoothness, lovely in a slower sense, with a liquid layer of sadness underneath which must feed into her singing.  He has a new project, the grounds of a new school, she sings in jazz clubs, letting a room in her flat for short stays, and teaching English as a language to make ends meet.  We went to the Volkspark am Weinberg near the Milchhof, but the other side of it to where I usually walk.  Up a path a pink concrete shed with coloured lights seemed to be our destination. Going round the side, a large, modern Swiss restaurant on the peak of the hill appeared, all glass looking out over what now was revealed to be a picturesque wooded hill sloping down to a small lake.  Amusingly, there are rows of reclining deck chairs set out and a chalet holding piles of folded thick blankets.  People come when the winter sun is bright and lie out wrapped in blankets sunning themselves just as if they were in the sanatorium of The Magic Mountain.   Truly surprising. 

What was East Berlin, which deceptively appears at first as bleak, decrepit, even brutally forbidding, especially during the dark winter, has in fact myriads of hidden delights.  Walking the streets one finds capacious courtyards leading to other interlocking courtyards with a formal magnificence, not at all visible from plain, rather dull streets.  Then there are these delightful little parks scattered everywhere.  Unlike the English squares, these are Volksparks, that is to say for the people, all folk.  No fences, no locking out, they are open.  Day and night people walk through and especially in the spring, enjoy Nature there.  Slowly my impressions expand of this delightful, liveable city.

After dinner in a lively small Italian restaurant, with much spirited conversation, we go to a jamming session at a jazz club where the ambience and music is wonderfully enjoyable, but my how these people smoke.  Everything, my hair, clothes, eyes, lungs are permeated with cigarette smoke. Everything that can be has to be washed out before I can get into bed.  In the morning I wake with a sore throat and the feeling of a nicotine hangover.  And she bravely sings in that night after night

# 29 [7 March 2007]

Dark and empty the narrow streets of Berlin Mitte gallery area may be, but they are stuffed, even cluttered with art galleries, one next to the other.  To visit them all would take more time than any sane person could contemplate.  However I am with stout heart, boots on, going to give it a try.  Meanwhile Manfred came to see how I was getting on.  Looking at the canvases he declared that they must have sold me ‘Russian' linen because it is so loose and rough.  ‘Russian' being a disparaging adjective here now that East Berlin has rejoined the West.  I am inclined to agree but am working with it.  The roughness of the canvas as equivalent to the smashed then concrete patched together feel of the area, in spite of the buzz of youth hip-ness and cafes.

Yesterday the final priming coat was applied to the canvases, and today a lot of preliminary measuring, taping and colour decisions took up the whole day. I am going to have to return to Boesner and buy other colours as I've changed my mind on some after doing samples, certainly I will have to get the (expensive) Cadmium yellow, as it is the best one.  At least I'll get out and get some fresh air and daylight.  I have been working through the days lately.

 11/02/2007   Having ‘done' not much more than a block of galleries yesterday, today I did part of Auguststrasse and bits of Linienstrasse and Gartenstrasse.  Exhausting but absorbing.  Inevitably the galleries are completely empty except for their own staff, but friendly and lots of varied art to peruse.  The Neo Rauch, Liepzig school style of painting is the trend, although the gallerists seem to rather disparage that, maybe because they personally haven't got their hands on any of the original bunch.  They talk the same old story: that there is a lack of collectors; galleries only make money at international art fairs where the buyers are American or Japanese, not in their galleries. Probably the number worldwide of collectors spending vast sums is actually quite small, and all the dealers chase them with also a relatively small handful of ‘big name' artists.  The kudos and hullabaloo about Berlin as the new Art centre is apparently about enthusiasm, numbers and focus of participants, rather than as art market, so far at this moment.   But a beguiling place to be an artist in spite of or because of, that.  The buzz is that top New York Galleries will open offshoots here soon

# 28 [12 March 2007]

07/03/2007           Through a London friend's introduction, I had dinner with two German filmmakers.  Although both do their own documentary art works, one is also an established film editor and is at present working on a film for Wim Wenders, shot in the Congo, and her partner works in production of blockbuster Hollywood films like ‘Gladiator'. Going back and forth pays the way for their own work.  They rent a marvellous glass and wood attic conversion on top of a solidly heavy De Stijl building. Eighty percent or more of Berliners rent, it is the norm unless they are part of a cooperative that buys a shared building.   Six flights up with no lift gave me time to admire the elaborately carved doors on each landing and must keep them very fit.  It was breathtaking once I reached the spacious flat both in the sense of the view and my lungs' intake.  But terrific.  They are in their thirties and intensely intelligent.  She is small featured, with dark shorthair, slender like a fine spring, winding and unwinding concepts as they come into the conversation.  He is fairer, calmer, speaks with a quiet assurance.  Both sophisticated food and a wide assortment of drinks flowed, as we discussed semantics, classic films, subject matter and form in art, backgrounds, children-parent neuroses, and other subjects.  I felt as if I were breathing pure oxygen on Thomas Mann's mountain.

# 27 [6 March 2007]

In a windy pelting snowstorm I delivered the three works on paper to the Blütenweisse gallery.  ‘The art must get through', I thought.  It is such an attractive spacious gallery.  The rents are very low, comparatively, in Berlin so the galleries are huge.  

A crowded private view reception at the Hamburger Hof Museum of 21st Century Art, seemed very much like an opening in London, interesting looking people, champagne, and an Athens-Berlin-New York video on show.  No glasses to be taken into the darkened viewing space so there were about the same number not watching as watching the video, and going back and forth.  Since the literature given was in German I perhaps had a little less grasp of the plot than usual, but it was based on the Jacques-Louis David painting ‘Rape of the Sabine Women' and takes place in the Pergamon Museum, the Tempelhof Airport and the Athens Meat Market, both in B&W 1940's Berlin, and contemporary Athens in colour, without words but local market sounds and a swirling specially composed score. Eve Sussman, The Rufus Corporation, The Rape Of The Sabine Women.

Another private view this time in a commercial gallery near Check Point Charlie.  A vast space with harsh fluorescent tube lighting, the paintings hung sparsely with a lot of bare walls. This had a feeling of a New York opening rather than a London one.  The amount of space gives it a cutting edge feel.  Glasses of white wine, or water were passed around on trays.  There were Russians, and some Americans, as well as Germans but not such a huge dressy crowd as at the Hamburger Hof.  The amount of space was the impressive factor and I liked the alternative relaxed feel.