Page 68 - Studio International - July/August 1967

capital, and Frankfurt is where the money and
BERLIN shares gather and change hands. The scene in and paints in his villa in Zehlendrof. The col-
lagists Hannah Hoech and John Heartfield are
commentary by painting and sculpture is brightest and best in a here too, although Heartfield lives on the Fried-
few larger and smaller towns on the Rhine. Berlin, richstrasse in the East and is relatively inaccessible,
Frank Whitford
with its heart beyond the Brandenburg Gate and even if he can occasionally come out to help
the Marx-Engels-Platz, is, in spite of its shrill organize exhibitions of his own work, as at JULE
protestations to the contrary, less of a Weltstadt HAMMER'S THEATRE AND GALLERY in the Europa
than it was before 1871, a city of subsidized Centre earlier this year.
industry, of dogs and of old-age pensioners who The fact remains that in spite of the activities of
make up a population no bigger than that of Kiel, the official organizations who stage exhibitions in
the largest city in Schleswig-Holstein. the GALERIE DES ZWANZIGSTEN JAHRHUNDERTS or
The local demands that Berlin should still be the AKADEMIE DER KUNSTE or elsewhere, the real
regarded as a great city on a European scale measure of what is going on is only given by the
`Goodbye to the great grey city' — reach almost neurotic proportions. Letters to the work of younger artists here, and by the way the
how Berlin maintains the appearance Editor, articles in the newspapers, conversations private galleries represent them. True that, at the
of a cultural centre in the bars all pose the same question : Berlin, moment, a major Calder exhibition can be seen
Weltstadt, or the forgotten left-over of the cold war ? in the city, but there is nothing of any importance
The attempts of the city's own Senate, and of its in the private galleries. 'What we need', said an
Once upon a time Einstein used to play regularly interested relatives in Bonn, to stimulate cultural artist here recently, 'is a new Herwarth Walden,
with the model railway in Professor Kirchberger's activity, are as ingenious as they are expensive. with a programme as definite as Walden's', and
villa overlooking the Nikolassee in the south-west More money is poured into official programmes certainly like Walden's Sturm Gallery, his magazine
of Berlin. On any day in the 'twenties you could than anywhere else in Europe; for freedom, if it is and his policy of organizing not only local but
see the movie directors Lubitsch and Wilder, the not only to be but also to be seen to be, is character- touring exhibitions would transform the scene
painters Slevogt, Pechstein, Dix and Bert Brecht ized by a high level of cultural activity. Here the here overnight. But Walden, for all his organizing
and Kurt Weill drinking in the Romanisches existence of an avant-garde would be regarded as genius, also had artists like Kokoschka under his
Cafe. The Cafe is now rebuilt and refuses to admit proof that democracy works. It must however be wing and could roam the length and breadth of
anyone who isn't wearing a tie. In spite of the admitted that the official programme is superb. Europe in search of talent.
night-clubs and bars which cater for those with The Film Festival has bigger claim to serious All gallery owners here, whether or not they agree
specialized tastes, in spite of the fact that bars can consideration than Cannes and the Festwochen, an about the lack of the city's status as a cultural
stay open as long as they want and that male annual high-pressure month of orchestras, theatre centre, admit that it is extremely difficult to run at
dancing is officially allowed, the great days of and art exhibitions, has no equal this side of the a profit. There are very few collectors and the number
Berlin are over. The great grey city is now not Atlantic. of sales scarcely makes the operation worthwhile.
what it was; George Grosz would neither re- But how real, how thorough-going is the cultural There is in this little of the gallery owner's usual
cognize it today, nor would he live here with atmosphere in this Magic Mountain of a city, reticence to talk about profits. The number of
pleasure. where a few minutes away from the cake- and galleries which deal more or less exclusively in
Berlin was in any case never a capital like Paris cream-eating women in the Cafe Kranzler, lies contemporary art is very small and those which do
or London. It was synthetically created as the the Potsdamer Platz, once the noisiest and good business are those which specialize in Expres-
capital not only of Prussia but of the German busiest point East of Paris but now silent, fright- sionist masters, or those which deal in books and
Reich and then rebuilt in the grand manner in ening and unreal behind yards of barbed wire, antiques as well and then sell by auction.
the hope that it might rival anything the French where the only movement comes from the border- Those galleries which do exist for the promotion
had to offer. It did, however, become a capital guards in watchtowers, from rabbits and from the of contemporary art usually organize other activi-
eventually, did in fact attract talent, ideas and rats which infest the burned-out ruins on both ties on the premises. Here, as elsewhere on the
money, even though the stubbornly regional sides of the steel and concrete wall ? continent, no opening is complete without a jazz-
centres which had always characterized the True, that, according to Kenneth Tynan, the band, pop-group or poetry reading, but Jule
patchwork-quilt of states within the empire continent's best theatre is here in Berlin, but it is Hammer also organizes avant-garde intimate theatre,
continued to refuse to offer up all their inde- in the East on the Schiffbauerdamm. True, that discussions and film shows which enliven his pro-
pendence to a single city. Between 1900 and 1930 two of Germany's best writers, Günter Grass and gramme and give artists a chance to come
more went on here in all fields than almost any- Uwe Johnson, packed their bags and moved here, together and talk. There is a bar in his gallery
where else in Europe. In science Planck, and but in Grass's case at least, Berlin was the ideal where you can also eat and the atmosphere is
Einstein fomulated their revolutionary theories; location for him to sharpen his political sensibili- informal, a strong contrast with the rest of the
in film, the camera was given its first real mobility ties. And according to one critic at least what he is Europa Centre which, with its impressively
and movies became a seriously regarded art form creating in the city 'is no new literary centre but a modern, opulent, soulless atmosphere, makes it a
for the first time. In painting, Expressionism, new Worpswede'. In any case writers, unlike rich-man's version of London's Elephant and Castle
Dada, the 'New Objectivity', followed one another painters, have less trouble communicating their Shopping Centre. Hammer's exhibitions of local
in quick succession, and the Bauhaus, having been ideas and bringing their work to the notice of the artists are less than spectacular, but when he takes
hounded out of Weimar and then Dessau, found public. Putting a manuscript in an envelope and on something more ambitious, most often with
its last brief home here. It was also in Berlin that posting it is a good deal easier than loading up a official help, he can put on shows of lasting impor-
Max Reinhardt created the modern theatre. The van with paintings and then ferrying it through tance, like the Heartfield exhibition or an impres-
brief interlude at Weimar did nothing to shift control-points and queues to some city in West sive group of Moholy-Nagy's photographs.
the cultural emphasis from Berlin: it remained Germany anything up to ten hours' drive away. Ben Wargin, who at the moment is acting the
the only city in Germany where artists, writers In spite of generous subsidies for artists few feel role of Berlin's Burgerschreck with an exhibition of
and actors could come if they wished absolutely to inclined to take them up. The poetess, Ingeborg phalluses and other explicitly sexual objects and
demonstrate their genius to the world at large. Bachmann, who came here subsidized by the Ford paintings, sat in the small garden in front of his
Now the political situation has forced on Berlin a Foundation, described it as 'subsidized agony' and bullet-scarred GALLERYS, surrounded by his tortoi-
role more provincial than that of any of its proudly none of those who come on short term grants feel in- ses and sculpture, and outlined exactly why in his
particularist neighbours across the air-corridor and clined to stay. A few of the old generation still live view Berlin's artistic history since the war makes
autobahn in the Federal Republic. Bonn is now here, however. Schmidt-Rottluff, the member of such dismal reading. He blames it on unenlightened
the political centre, Hamburg the Press and TV the Brücke, which came to Berlin in 1911, lives officials, an older generation grown senile, a
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