Berlin

Berlin is a big city, and the buildings are monumental. The architecture there is very 'modern' (as opposed to post-modern); buildings are boxy and brightly coloured. It is a very cosmopolitan city, and I can see why so many artists are moving there.

I visited the Gemaldegalerie that had a wonderful collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings including some impressive works by Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Fra. Angelico, Holbein, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Caravaggio, Baglioni, de la Tour, Boticelli...
Next door, at the MoMA, there was a Joerg Immendorf show that transformed the gallery space into a little red village filled with Immendorffs large paintings and sculptures. Downstairs there was a Picasso exhibition of his favourite works. I don't really like Picasso, but I love that he had a pet goat named Esmerelda.

At the Martin-Gropius-Bau there was a moving Bernhard Heisig exhibition. He was a he was a state artist of the GDR. His paintings are large scale impastoed images of war. By looking at his paintings it would seem that he was working with a historical narrative, but he acutally painted many of his pieces before events they depicted happened (such as the fall of the Berlin wall).

The Berlinische Gallery also had a great show on while I was there featuring artists such as Hannah Hoch, Otto Dix, Naum Gabo, Rebecca Horn, and Kurschner.

I also visited the Museum of Travel and Technology there and the Bauhaus Archive.

Of course I saw the rest of Berlin.. Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin wall, Brandenberg gate, Potsdamer and Alexanderplatz. The history is moving and there is still very much a divide between the east and west. It is a city that everyone should see at least once. It was different to anywhere I have ever been in ways that words fail me in describing the experience.

Shown: works by Hannah Hoch, Bernhard Heisig, Caravaggio, the Berlin wall, and one of the five remaining watch towers in the city.