What a disaster in the studio today. Probably because I had changed the colour so many times, there were so many layers that I no longer could be exactly sure where the tape ended and the paint began. At one point a whole piece of the actual painting got ripped off in the most shocking way.
After practically having hysterics I realised I had to work through this. Thus began the great rescue operation. Gritting my teeth I went back to basics doing it over. Once I got to the stage that I had to let it dry, I went to Rosenthaler Platz to buy my weekly English newspaper, the Week-end Guardian 3.80 euros.
Tom rang while I was there and since he was at Rosa Luxemburg Platz he cycled over and we had borsht at the Gorky Park Café. Later we met up on Zimmerstrasse near Checkpoint Charlie for the Opening of the Thomas Struth exhibition of his large photographs of people in museums looking at works of art. This show was all in the Prado, Madrid, with a lot in the Velasquez rooms. Finally I was able to do what I've wanted to do for a long time, and that is to photograph someone in front of one of these works so then the person would look as if they were there too. In this case Tom at the Prado while being in Berlin. Then he took a photo of me in front of a work, but unfortunately he'd had so little sleep from being out so much, he couldn't keep the camera very stable. These tiny digital cameras with their delayed action are really a problem to keep steady enough to be in focus. What I need is one with anti-camera shake. But not bad all the same.
After that we went on to a later opening on Tor Strasse at a gallery called Milles d'Air, run by an affable tall French man who shows upcoming young artists. In this case the show was very much in the Martin Creed mode with witty one-liner works. There were young art students including two from Chelsea doing their Erasmus in Berlin. One of them, Gareth, with a ginger beard was wearing a shrunken wrinkled bright yellow shirt over a white t-shirt- I couldn't believe it- just what I'd just read Vogue magazine had stated was the hot fashion just now!
