Church bells ring several times a day in Berlin so it always makes me think it's Sunday when it is say, a Tuesday, or a Friday like now. However the difference is that on Sundays itself, the Chapel of Reconciliation commemorating the fall of the Wall, which is not far from here, rings its bells continuously for the whole morning. Remember, remember.
It's strange but beautiful that on the first day of Spring it began to snow again. Not many signs of Spring this morning, with some red tuilips pushing up through the overall whiteness. This return to wintriness called for a different brekfast to suit the mood. I had a piece of gluten-free bread which I toasted in the frying pan, put lots of butter, walnuts and dates on top, and then ate it with such greedy pleasure along with a banana and coffee. Now that is what I call a chic früchstück. After that elegant beginning I set to work to try and sort out the colours problem. Mixing all kinds of combinations, I made a chart, labelling quantity ratios and hues. Taking to my laptop after that I made variations of the painting in case the exact colours I needed would not come right. These variations I had printed out at the Copy shop so that I could be more distanced. Of course the printed colours are as far away from my computer colours as the actual paint materials are from anything. Sometimes these aides are nothing but more complications. I am determined to work with the actual pigments now. After the day darkened, I read and finished "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann. This great book has engrossed me for more than a month. What a complete education, with such a broad encompassing of every aspect of philosophical, religious, political, physical and moral life. Monumental is an apt description.Next I am about to begin, "The Diaries of Rainer Maria Rilke", the German poet.
Working with these unfamiliar paints is a problem because the colours mix differently. Again I didn't get the yellow that I imagined I'd bought. It means that I will have to do a lot of experimentation and buy whole ranges of paint to make the colour come right. It is frustrating, but live and learn girl, I guess. Letting what I'd laid down to dry (it's wrong), I went out and visited some of the dozens of commercial galleries near here on Linienstrasse and Auguststrasse to give myself a break. Floating up above these narrow old twisty streets now given over to art and mammon is the exotic dome of the 1857 Neue Synagogue, which was attacked during Kristallnacht in1938 and then again damaged by Allied bombing in 1945.
In the evening was a dinner with the promise of a ‘typical English meal' cooked by my English/Welsh artist friend in his rambling large flat heated by ceramic tiled coal stoves in every room, that he shares with two friends. What a treat – a large roast leg of lamb, roasted potatoes, roasted parsnips, gravy, mashed carrots and boiled cabbage plus a lot of beer and red wine. What could be better? We all fell to eating as if we hadn't had proper food for ages, still continuing the lively conversations. An anthropologist, a geographer, both German, a Czech studying architecture, a Bulgarian in PR, and we two painters, had lots to say about rock and roll, architecture, clubbing, the state of the world, and how we view Berlin, as well as much reminiscing of past dinners. Perplexingly the other guests all held up the parsnips and asked what they were. He had bought them in the local market but they all said they had never eaten parsnips before.
At midnight coming out, the world was heaped in fluffy white with large snowflakes swirling. I love the quiet hush that snow makes as it insulates any sound.
The opening reception for the Drawing Exhibition at the Blütenweiss Galerie begins at seven. I get there a bit late so that it is completely packed. My work is well hung and can be seen directly one enters the gallery. The ambience is terrifically friendly, chummy. Manfred is also in the exhibition, and Tom has come as kindly support. Afterwards Tom and I go to a Russian restaurant near Kathė Kollwitz Platz to celebrate. It's called Pasternak and it is the works: cut glass chandeliers, long white table cloths, serving staff in wrap around white aprons over black, a small orchestra, wailing violins and a tenor singing his heart out. Dark brown velvet swathes to keep out the draughts from doors and windows, black and white familial photographs on the walls and interspersed in the full Russian menu with its delicious vareniekas, pirogy, blinis, shashlick, cotelettes and compotes. It had character and good food. Just right for a very cold night.
Another day of doing battle with recalcitrant pigments and paint that has seeped under the tapes, but with a confidently light heart, knowing that eventually I would make them come right and the process would be inbuilt into these paintings. I left the struggle and went out into a storm to a gallery opening before going on to the wonders of the Gemädegalerie. Leaving the opening reception, I hopped on a tram M6 to get to Rosa Luxembourg Platz where I could get the U-bahn to Potsdamer Platz. After a while looking out the window, nothing looked familiar and oh no I realised it should have been an M8. This M6 took me to the middle of nowhere, a little dark vacant back street where the tram driver has his break. Can you believe that? Knocking on his window and repeating U-Bahn several times to this kindly avuncular, non-English speaking man got me some directions that I could follow for several blocks before Lo and behold I saw another tram which did take me to the U-Bahn. Of course my troubles, this blowing, frosty, stormy evening were not yet over. Potsdamer Platz is vast with arterial wide streets, vehicle traffic but not much if any pedestrians. Looking for signs, there were none that said Gemädegalerie as one might expect, but only to the Sony Centre. I for the life of me couldn't remember which of these six roads to take nor in which direction. Would that be the way to a museum or maybe that way? It seemed hopeless. Then across the street I saw two young schoolgirls in conversation oblivious to the raging wind. Excuse me do you speak English? Drawing herself up to stiff full height, the skinny, bespectacled girl who looked like a touching, bookish Olive Oyl looked at me very severely "but of course," she sternly replied. What a relief. They consulted and told me to go past the ‘houses', (not deigning to name the crass commercial thousand or more metres high Sony Centre), to the Kultural Forum. I would certainly have gone in any other direction but that one and be still wandering today. They made a few tactical errors of prepositions and directions so that I went past rather before, down rather than up, but anyway I got a chance to visit the Mies Van der Rohe Neu Galerie again. That is also free entrance from 6 to 10 pm on Thursdays. Did I mention that was why I was so persistent in my determination to get to the Gemädegalerie this evening and not just throw up my hands saying Bother! I'll go tomorrow. No, no, dogged determined, eking out my museum entrances' money to pay for yellows and blues of incorrect tints I plodded on like a mad art lover with dripping hair to reach the sanctity of Rembrandt, Rubens, Watteau, Cranach, Velasquez, Gainsborough, the most beautiful Vermeer I've ever seen, and you know how beautiful they all are. For the Gemädegalerie that holds one of the most important collections of European art, usually closes at 6pm, but on Thursday evenings it is 10 pm closing and from 6 to 10 pm free entrance. That is a good time to go. Also that is not widely known. It was very sparsely attended, and extraordinary, like drifting through a huge private house containing unbelievable marvels. Except that it also has in a modern glass and brick extension all that the modern museum must have of café, shop, other exhibitions and so on, hence the Kultural Forum part. The collection is remarkable, the ambience tranquil asking for nothing, though I might have spoken out for a sign somewhere.
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?
