DAY SEVENTEEN - BERLIN CRAM SESSION

Leaving for Berlin tomorrow morning, so very little work can get done, as clearly I need to spend as much time as possible on the internet looking at artists somehow associated with Germany so I can launch an intelligent argument about why officemate should accompany me to art museums.

So many fascinating artists coming out of Germany, and of course Berlin!  Everyone may have already known, but sometimes I'm a bit slow, and learning more details is good.

First up in George Grosz...associated with the Dada and New Objectivity movements in Berlin (who can say no to that?)...fumbling around I found quite a few I really liked, including these portraits of author/poet Max Herrmann-Neisse (1925 and 1927):

   

And then there's Otto Dix, Grosz's pal in New Objectivism...which really makes me want to be a part of something politically alternative and artistic, but alas here I am, instead writing from the trenches of economic development. But Dix...the office's security software seems to think he is a pornographer. Do you think that Sonic Wall just doesn't know art when they see it?  Or are they concerned about the latent potential of the long-passed Dadaist movement to rise once again and destroy everything upon which Sonic Wall has built its empire?!

      

Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926) and Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berman (1925).


Dörte Clara Wolff, a young Jewish woman, decided to try her hand at art and design at age 16, calling herself "Dodo." She eventually produced drawings and paintings, working for a satirical publication titled ULK. In her complicated personal life, she ditched a lawyer for a Jungian, and upon seeking out the expertise of Jung's mistress regarding her tumultuous second marriage, she followed her advice to try out a therapeutic ménage à trois. She emigrated to London in 1936, and her work has only been recently "re-discovered," as they say, with an exhibit currently running at the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin to honor her life and work. HT to the officemate: Dodo has no English language wikipedia page!

       

DAY SIXTEEN

Today I unveil a new segment:


Things I'm embarrassed to admit I first learned about in the New York Times


1. This story about DJ Venus X makes me, among other things, want to live in New York.

Within a year, GHE20GOTH1K was widely recognized as reanimating New York’s underground night life. It was one of the few parties where a wide cross section of the city — gay and straight, black and white, goths, punks, hip-hop heads, artists, music snobs, fashion designers like Mr. Ervell and even the occasional celebrity like Diplo — came to dance under one roof. Ms. Soto said she views D.J.-ing for such a diverse audience as a defiantly political act, and frequently peppers sound clips from the Al Jazeera news network, audio from the riots in Egypt and sound pings from submarines into her sets.
“I’m going to play Al Jazeera in the club, and you’re going to like it,” she said. “And it’s going to be cool, but not weird cool. It’s going to be like Kanye West and Jay-Z cool.”

"It's going to be cool, but not weird cool."

2. Kutluğ Ataman (go to Turkish artist for the NYT?) is using the concept of silsel to piece together a quilt of tiny "letters to Turkey" written on colorful shapes of fabric that will be sewn together during a performance as part of the Istanbul Theatre Festival. The story behind the idea is quite beautiful, although I haven't been able to confirm with a google image search. While Ataman was recently on his way to work on a project in Syria, violence in the area kept him in the Turkish city of Mardin, where he met a woman with an unconventional ceiling.

Once inside the traditional house of a woman known as Nasira Hanim, Mr. Ataman was intrigued by its ceiling.
“It was painted bright turquoise in a zigzag pattern,” he said recently by telephone. “It was very graphic, very contemporary-looking in design.”
“She told me that in the past the Syriani were scared of going outside, fearing for their lives — they were being attacked and killed by others. It doesn’t matter who, but I think she meant in ethnic clashes,” he said. “But because they were trapped inside, they painted a symbolic sky on their ceilings to alleviate their yearning for the real thing.”
That motif was called silsel, a word he did not recognize as being either Turkish or Arabic.
“I researched further and discovered it was Aramaic, the original language of the Bible and what was spoken at the time in that region,” he said. “It seems to have had a double meaning, either the fluttering of wings, or the sky.”

A single word sharing both the sense of "fluttering wings" and "the sky"...a painting on the ceiling to quench one's dangerous desire for freedom.  For anyone in the area, I believe the exhibition opens May 12th at noon in the Galata Rum Primary School (Kemeralti Cad No 25). But don't count on me for anything.

DAY FIFTEEN - MORE COOL CZECHS

I was going to save this post for tomorrow but I'm just too excited not to immediately overshare with my imaginary readers.

Following my re-discovery of Bohumil Hrabal this morning (one of this blog's loyal readers first suggested him a few years ago), I've become one of those annoying people that becomes momentarily obsessed with the art and literature of a country on nothing more (or less!) than a whim.

Look at these paintings by František Kupka and tell me they are not amazing! (You can use the comments to do so)

And have you ever met such a sexy surrealist as Toyen? (Perhaps NSFW)

And omg Antonín Slavíček (this too) and Josef Čapek.

Now how else to expand from Kafka and Kundera? Starting with The Good Soldier Švejk seems a good option.


Perhaps after Berlin I need to go to Prague?