Berlin Residency Journal

Going down to the basement to try and find a light bulb, I again was in the fantastic atmosphere of dark, burrowing, creepy, sort of dungeon-like basement filled with vivid light cells where Marcus Wittmers and his assistants are working at all hours on his large ironic fibreglass polychromatic sculptures. Superman is crouched in a corner looking ashen faced up at the sky, and outside an even larger Superman is crashing to the ground splitting his head open. Marcus is great. Because he works such late hours down there, he has always rescued me when my key or the front door lock jammed.

No bulb was to be found but one of the sculptors said she had a halogen spotlight that I could have, so we went up to the ground floor to get it. Wiebke Wachmann's large studio, every bit, was completely painted with multilayered, dazzling white, and one wall had banks of white fluorescent tubes like gym bars. The effect was of a literal fog of white, palpable whiteness filling the room. It is like a James Turrell but she has installations within this and makes photographic sculptures from it. Behind all those heavy steel doors at the Milchhof there are many surprises. Lisabetta, a painter on the first floor, has got a commission to do one hundred and thirty pictures all to strict specification of the same size, 120 x 140 cm. and technique, for an Anthroposophist Hospital that requires the Rudolph Steiner technique. This uses very thin water-based layers of the primary colours red, yellow, blue, on top of each other, making orange, green, and purple paintings. The differences in colour come about by the sequence of the applications. There are to be two paintings of the same all-over colour, in each of the sixty-five rooms, one on either side of the television, facing the bed. To me this sounds like a surrealistic fable, but I can see that it might be quite soothing.

Putting my head down, I just solidly caught up on the painting waiting to be done and got the colour relationships in place. Gulping down a late lunch of a plate of mozzarella salad, and a chunk of chocolate, I rushed off to revisit the Gemăldegalerie Museum and spent a long absorbing time looking at the Vermeers, the Titian Venus, Velasquez's Picture of a Woman, Cranach's Adam and Eve, and Dührer's Two Sisters that have been recently reunited. An illuminating satisfying three hours, being filled by wonder.

For the last month I've been reading these early 20^th century, late 19^th century, big hitting German masters: Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke and now Friedrick Nietzche's ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra. There is a lot of music in them all-music mentioned or described, but also repetitions and symmetries. The writing stylistically expressed as dance. Striking too is the occurrence of supernatural incidents. There are séances and discussions of visions. The supernatural is accepted as present. I think it was much more widespread then now with computerised virtual reality taking the attention. Even my mother, said that she had been to a séance as a student in the late 30's in Paris. She said she saw ectoplasm coming out of a woman's ear. It was waxy and whitish, going out to a large formless shape before retreating back in. This said matter-of-factly, with detached humour, by my mother who was an intelligent scoffing sort of person. Colette the writer probably summed it up when she commented, "It doesn't matter whether you believe or not." What is intriguing is whether these phenomena are self-generated, coming from within oneself, or actually present.

Come to think of it, I used to live in Holman Hunt's last studio, on Melbury Road, where he finished the painting ‘The Scapegoat', amongst others, went blind and slowly mad, as did one of his models. That had a black atmosphere about it, which was gradually dispelled by my years of occupancy. In the nights there used to be quite a lot of scuffling and whispering noises that I more or less slept through, but sometimes would go and investigate the hallway when it was particularly loud. Nothing was ever to be seen. I did a painting, abstract of course, in violet, purple grey, about this, titling it ‘Whispers In The Night', and hung it on the wall alongside others of my works. Every night then, consistently, persistently, this one painting crashed down off the wall. After about a fortnight of this, I got spooked and painted over it with burnt sienna, yellow, cerulean blue, as well as painting out the whispering title on the back. The new title became Illusion of Knowledge. Well that painting never fell off the wall again. Curious and creepy, non? So one's thoughts mull over things.

Brian Eno recently had an exhibition of ‘One Million Paintings.' He wisely leaves them as light images on a screen or printouts. Painting is difficult and can't be done with the click of a wrist. What painting does is bring into being the subject matter, which is the reality of the materials and the process. "How did you do that?" Is the first thing one painter wants to know about another's art. Weight, density, texture, variations, viscosity, application, all generate the whole. So it isn't child's play really then. Another light bulb has blown. I should say the other light bulb has now blown. Which doesn't help the murkiness of lack of sunlight.

Fortunately for me the Landscape Architect and his friend the jazz singer are coming to the studio this evening and we will go out to dinner. That is what I need, exactly: intelligent witty company. At the Thai restaurant near here, my crispy duck with rice noodles was so delicious that I was afraid there might be wheat in it, but nope, not a single side effect, the noodles were rice not wheat, as they said. But it was the conversation that was so enjoyable. When I asked whether Jeff Koons ‘Puppy Dog,' that sculpture covered with greenery and pot plants, would have been done with a landscape architect or a horticulturist, the name Jeff Koons didn't ring a bell, but then the penny dropped, to use two idiomatic clichés one after the other, oh yes, he was the artist who proposed that for the Frankfurt City Square his sculpture of two giant dildos suspended from cranes should be used. What I still would like to know is how Koons in that early soccer ball piece, got the ball to be suspended in the glass show-case with no visible support. That is a great iconic work. But how was it done?

From there we sort of naturally slid into relationships and how little things can cause such irritation. Like one partner liking the heat down as low as possible at zero, and the other only happy when the heat is turned up to five, which is the highest. So is it war or one person being contented, the other miserable, or what about a compromise where neither has it where they would be naturally content? Tough call and I'm sure we've all had fights like this.

It is captivating to hear of all the intricacies of break-ups, and triangular relationships that happen in families. The drama of every life is incredible when one hears about it. Affairs, lies, secrets, uncontrollable passions, it is not only the British Royal Family who has them. We also talked about the differences between Germany and the UK, especially in manners. This was centred on a book by an Ethiopian writer who has written A History Of Manners, comparing the European manners structure in the respective societies. Did you know for example that the custom of greeting people by kissing originated from the Hapsburg Court which was such a small closed circle that one had to be born into; they were all related and so naturally kissed their family members

All that cerebral stimulation and affability zoomed up my energy level so that I worked in the studio until after four am when I got back.

Taking a break from the studio, I wandered along Danziger Strasse, at the U-Bahn station where it looks rough and run down with graffiti everywhere, glorious freedom after the wall came down, until I came across Dunckerstrasse with little shops of originality. The shop that sold nothing but chocolate probably was my favourite. Called ‘int't veld schokolade,' the owner who obviously loved chocolate, very thin he was too, took me around the shelves delicately pointing out the rarest of the rare, explaining and describing the various categories, eruditely like a botanist. I browsed, enthused and bought blocks of trinka chocolate on sticks to stir into hot milk, also white chocolate flavoured with liquorice, and chocolate with salt. Now that we avoid salt in everything else for healthy living, it has become a desired thrilling vice, like absinthe almost.

Not far away was a toyshop filled to overflowing with second-hand children's sleds, toys and books. Having been his toy shop when it was Eastern Berlin, the slight, dark haired, intense, again thin, proprietor, another huge enthusiast took me around and showed me how it was in those days. In the back was a narrow space, his living/ bed/ kitchen, now his tiny office, and next to this the little shop he had then with the old East Berlin toys set out, not for sale but as a museum of that time. The rest was a bursting labyrinth of library shelves of ‘almost new' books, toys and dolls all in good, clean condition and an enchanted atmosphere. Like a fairy tale, one could imagine the toys coming to life at night and telling their stories of where they have been. Curiously, with the exception of the handsome wooden sleds, a few velvety dark red foxes, and eccentric little wood figures, mostly these Eastern Berlin toys were badly made cheap plastic. But then things don't have to be beautiful to be imbued with sentimental emotion. In fact too beautiful rather precludes that. Like the scruffy, teddy bears, we all had, the things we were allowed to play with, not the special ones. I still remember how upsetting it was the day my mother decided mine simply could not continue in that filthy state, so she laundered it vigorously and that finished poor teddy off.

A bit further along Chlorinerstrasse, there was another extraordinary shop, this one of heimat goods. Heimat is one of those untranslatable German words; it means something like ‘where the heart feels at home', ‘where one is safe'. There were hand-stitched dresses with pockets, table runners with cut out and sewn decorations, aprons and head kerchiefs. Actually two woman were sitting right there sewing up these delightful, homey items. To me this was amazing as it was all within a very few streets of the main ex-squats and communes of Kastanienallee, the hippest part of Berlin.