Manfred came with his ladder to change the anteroom light bulb that blew a week ago. Now they have all been changed nothing more should need doing. The problem here is the twenty-foot ceiling so that I can't do it myself because I don't have such a high ladder, or any ladder. The bombshell for me, or since that is rather dramatic, the disappointment for me, is that Manfred won't be here for my exhibition. He's going to be working in Köln at the Art Fair. Since the majority of artists in the Milchhof are German speakers, amusing Manfred has been a main link between the whole Milchhof and me. He speaks a lot of English and is a very sociable person knowing everyone, making jokes making things easy. And now he won't be here, that is upsetting for me, but can't be helped. It is strange, now that I am in the fourth month, although with four weeks to go and all the paintings to finish still, I have that home stretch feeling of ‘what needs to be done before I go?' Which is weird. Some people come to Berlin for a weekend and here I am again worrying about "only four weeks and time is running out". Psychology give it a boot!
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Nicole Monteran is a French artist who I met through Joseph and Mary when we went on the Fat Tire Bike Tour of Berlin. She has lived in Berlin for over thirty years, yet remains very French in her comme il faut elegance. Her apartment in Charlottenburg is full of space, light, everything white, and objets d'art placed just so. The white painted floors set off the pieces of decorated furniture and collected paintings. Her own work is figurative and very assured of Berliners interacting, done in that almost caricature way like a combination of Chagall, Matisse and Georges Groz. Another strand of Berlin life revealed. Back I went to much more messy Bohemian Mitte and again spent many hours agonising over colour values. How to achieve exactly what I envisage remains elusive. I am going to have to achieve the effect I want by not using the colour I wish I could get but using another with the final effect being still what I wanted. Or at least try.
At the Milchhof Sculpture Space two English sculptors both Goldsmith graduates are opening their exhibition from 4 pm up to 9pm. So from light afternoon until pitch-black night with the range of lighting becoming a feature, especially with Charlotte McGowan-Griffin's light installation. She now lives in Berlin but it turned out that when she used to teach at Exeter, Tom was doing his first degree and she was his tutor. Dean Kenning who uses electrified kinetics is only in Berlin for the opening. He teaches at University College Canterbury. It was all very friendly and I kept going in and out and took photographs.
Thinking ahead to when these paintings will actually be finished with the colour relationships worked out, masonry nails have to be bought at OBI, (standing for German DIY) which is a bit of a walk away, but passes a second-hand shop which is always a plus. Once out it is irresistible not to have lunch in the café at Rosenthaler Platz and sit around reading the weekend Guardian newspaper that comes out on Saturdays. This is a treat for me lasting for a few days if rationed properly. Back at the studio the sturdy big nails refuse to penetrate the thick stone outer walls. Instead the solution is to use the thinner masonry nails but more of them. Finally, the elements of the hanging are marked out and put into place. There is an air of anticipation in the studio with the new arrangement of tables and sequence of paintings lined up.
Dresden is only two hours from Berlin by train, and I was looking forward to seeing the famed Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister painting museum, as well as the newly rebuilt Frauenkirche faithful copy of the original destroyed in the war. Getting out of the train nothing but hideousness could be seen. During the occupation the DDR didn't do much re-building preferring to leave the destruction as accusation of guilt against the Allies. Some of what they did do, of anonymous concrete Soviet styled buildings is being knocked down. If anything could make the horribleness of war, and revenge sink in, this should do it. Completely flattened by Bomber Harris's firestorm raids as response to the bombing and destruction of Coventry the two cities are twinned not only by their destruction but also in their rebuilt, unappealing mediocrity. Tower blocks and shopping mall banality is all that can be seen, nothing remotely like the word Dresden conjures up, of an established historical city. Staggering past all that, one wonders how people can stand it and why wars go on. Then of a sudden the Cathedral looms, and a cluster of immensely beautiful Baroque buildings. How did this magnificence survive is then the question, and gratefulness that it did. It is an uneasy mix of revulsion at the devastation of war and awe at what remains that I feel. The replica Frauenkirche glows and its soft pastel colours enchant but however lovely, it looks too new, lacking the accretion of feeling that it will acquire over the next hundred years, if it is still there. What is not at all a mystery is why the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister is so famed. Again it is overwhelming to see so many and such great works hung on the walls, packed in tightly. Rembrandts and Titians are so numerous that some you will see hung very high up. And without crowds pressing in. I can't believe my eyes there are two such important masterpieces as The Bride and The Letter by Vermeer in an empty gallery. Room after room of Cranachs many of which I have never even seen reproduced before are completely mesmerizing. Let alone that strange painting with the two angels at the bottom that all the greeting cards love so much, Raphael's Sistine Madonna. A glimpse of greatness in spite of all.
