Berlin Residency Journal

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?

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?

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

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

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.