Daaaay one in the Berlin Amstel House!

Hello Everyone!!

I am in a very jolly mood today... I had the BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE in Berlin last week and I just can't stop telling people about it... so here I am to tell YOU about it too! (Although... I'm going to separate it into different posts to you wont get bored of me blathering on about things you're not interested in).

I guess I should begin at the beginning then. One of the first things I noticed when we arrived in Berlin was the grand scale of everthing: buildings, roads, lamposts ... (even some of the people where pretty darn tall) It was just incredible! The architecture of the city is so immensly detailed and luxurious and its as though the city as a whole is trying to be the most elite.... Ok, I've not seen every city in the world. but it must come close!

Another thing which really impressed me were the countless works of graffiti on almost every wall. They're not like the graffiti art I'm used to, where someone quickly scrawls their initials on a bus stop, they're so well thought out. Some pieces were advertisments, some were political messages and some had no real purpose other than to just brighten up certain areas, but they were all so artistic and well thought out.

The work at the artists quarters in Oranienburger Tor had some incredible graffifti. Here are some pieces around the city which really impressed me.

The Hamburger Banhof Gallery

• Richard Long
• Anselm Kiefer
• Joseph Beuys

Our first meeting with the tutors in Berlin was at the Hanburger Bahnof Gallery, where we saw the work by land artist Richard Long. I've heard much about his work in the past but have never been lucky enough to come across it in person. It was a real treat. Long's work is a recording of his travels and a collection of materials from these locations. The circles of life are his trademark, and alothough with something like this there is a real danger of being kitch, he excecuted it in a manner which made it more about the spiritual attatchment to places he has travelled to rather than just recreating the ideallistic qualities of the location.

I found it intruigiung to hear that the mud used for the wall painting (which was so presicely defined that I and a few others initially thought it was straw) was actually aquired form the river Avon (near his birthplace). For me this information strengthened the work as there is a physical attachment between the artist and his choice of medium.

In the next room on I fell in love with a collection of paintings by Anselm Kiefer. IN LOVE!! His paintings were so powerful, maybe it was the size, or it could have been the content, or the he texture and hues of his paintings . I was really intruiged by his use of bark and  a metal ship in one particular painting. To see this kind of mixed media effect gave the work a more mecanical feel. Perhaps the metal was a metaphor for the subject of war? and the bark was in cantrast to this. I dont know yet... but I certainly intent to do some research to find out!

Another thing which stayed in my mind was the concept behind Joseph Beuys' fat sculptures. The sculptures where produced by making a cast of a newly built pedesrtrian tunnel back in the 70's. The cast was made from animal fat. Fat is something Beuys uses often in his art, as he believed it to be a metaphor for warmth and life. In this case it was used to revive the dead space scar left in the land by the pedestrian crossing. I thought it was a very poetic artwork.

After a lovely evening exploring the delights of German cuisine and ... err beverages, we prepared for our visit to the Guggenhiem in the morning.