Art, Art and MORE ART!

So everywhere we went in Berlin was covered in graffiti and street art. Whole buildings – abandoned and otherwise – had murals down the sides, and there were tags in the strangest places. Even on the back of a sign five meters high in the middle of the river! Some was clever, some political satire, some obnoxious, some pretty and some plain strange, but all so interesting! Berlin has CHARACTER.

   

Across the river close to our hostel was the East Side Art Gallery. This is a part of the Berlin Wall covered in paintings by artists from around the world.

    

Running for 1.3kms there are over 100 painted sections. It had recently been renovated so the colours were bright and free from the tagging that the rest of Berlin’s human height walls have been subject to. The bottom middle picture above is of one section that didn’t get renovated and shows the faded colours and the plaster falling off.

We also went to Hamburger Bahnhof an awesome modern art gallery that was a huge surprise and went on forever!

I’ve always been a fan of Andy Warhol (especially the flowers below) but had never been that into his Chairman Mao works. TOTALLY CHANGED MY MIND! This was HUGE. And with all the carefree painterly colours under the screen print I have been converted.
 

And there was a whole heap of Anselm Kiefer works – another surprise! I did a study on Kiefer in high school and he influenced my 6th form and 7th form works. His paintings are so tactile and yet despairing. His work is based on the horror of WWII and the Holocaust.

 

This was in the main hall. The back circle is made from mud from the River Avon and was shipped over for the artist (Richard Long) to paint on the wall. It took all my strength not to touch it – I really can’t help myself sometimes. (I couldn’t help myself from touching the stone circle on the ground and got told off by a guard anyway.) Circles are awesome. Especially circles made up of linear objects!

 

There were lots of little rooms off the corridors with videos and interactive exhibits. I loved this one by Ger van Elk of someone shaving a cactus. And the one on the left was a new exhibition by Cory Arcangel about new media and our interactions. This was a montage of youtube videos turned to make ‘Canon in D.’ You could also play guitar hero, watch Jimi Hendrix play Star Spangled banner, and get your daily internet cat fix.

I was looking out one of the fire doors as I was leaving and noticed a guy across the concrete spray painting on what looked like yet another section of the Berlin Wall. There had been pieces of it all over the city, very distinct in style. He was just hanging out bare-chested doing his thang.


Anyway, it was an extremely cool gallery – highly recommended, and even the exit signs were trés chic! I missed one wing of it without noticing so will definitely have to return to Berlin for more of the art scene. Who wants to go with me?! x