Travel Log | Berlin Day 5 - Beautiful images of the Berlin Zoo

Couldn't believe how close he came. I didn't know this but apparently orangutans are the most intelligent of the great apes. After humans, that is.

She looks like she's smiling, doesn't she?

Real life unicorn ;)

Travel Log | Berlin Day 4 - Highlights of the Deutsche Kinemathek (Film Museum)

 I have written about how my serendipitous discovery of the Berlin film museum. On my fourth day of exploration I finally made it there, after a couple of hours at an enormous bookshop, and it turned out to be my number one favorite spot of all the places I've visited in the city. I spent a good three hours there, and it still wasn't enough.

 

The tour started on the third floor, in a room that looked like something out of a science fiction movie, followed by an exhibition about early German cinema. There, I saw old cameras, posters of early movies and even the tiny sequential photographs that constituted a recording of a wrestling match. There was an emphasis on the importance of some of the actresses in those first films, such as Asta Nielsen and Fern Andra. 

The first Oscar ever award to an actor. It was awarded to Emil Jannings, a German actor. In the early days of cinemas, actors of many different nationalities worked in films, because the language of silent movies was an international one.

 

Then I moved on to a room dedicated to the The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, and pretty soon, some familiar names made appearances, for instanc Ernst Lubitsch and Fritz Lang. Posters or the movies, photographs of the crew, letters and documents related to the production accompanied clips of the movies and props, such as the porter's uniform from Porter's Uniform for Emil Jannings and the clay models of death and the seven deadly sins from Metropolis. 

 

A model of the set for Fritz Lang's sound film M. There were many models such as this in the museum, one of the coolest things there. I particularly liked the model for the film Asphalt, which featured a street scene, designed so the cars could go round and round on a loop around the set, giving the impression of busy city traffic.

From Metropolis

Metropolis

There was much to learn about Cinema in the Weimar Republicand how cinema was used as a tool by the Nazis, but I didn't have enough time to explore those  sessions of the museum. The same can be said about all there was to see about more modern expressions of German cinema. Although I did see the wings used by Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire. That was pretty cool. 

The wings from Wings of Desire.

My favourite part of the museum though was the Marlene Dietrich session. The Deutsche Kinemathek owns her estate, which includes all of her outfits, and several of those were on display there, protected by glass, right next to screen showing clips of the movies in which she was wearing those exact clothes. It was amazing. There were photos of her friends in old Holywood (more familiar faces), letters, journal pages and even her make up chest, with the mirror she used back in the day

Couldn't resist using Marlene Dietrich's mirror for a little bit :)

A letter, written to her by Eric Maria Remarque

The Deutsche Kinemathek came to be the best hidden gem in Berlin. There were people there, but very few, making my visit particularly relaxing and enjoyable. I learned a lot, added a ton of movies to my TBW list, got some nice pictures and stopped by the bookshop on the groundfloor on my way out. I had the best time. And by the way, the app with the audio guide of the tour is free to download, can be used anywhere and has a lot of cool info about the different exhibitions

Travel Log | Berlin Day 3 - Caspar David Friedrich: Imortal Landscapes at the Nationalgalerie (National Gallery)

 I left the national gallery to the end, primarily because it was a full day and this was the only museum that was open late (until 20:00h) that day. However, as it turns out, only certain parts of the museum (about two-thirds) were open past 18:00, so I couldn't explore it as fully as I would have wished. Additionally, the place was packed because of the special Caspar David Friedrich: Infinite landscapes exhibit, so I had to wait in line before going in despite having the museum pass in advance. All things considered, it could have gone better. Still, I really enjoyed my visit.

Portrait of the Artist Caspar David Friedrich, by Caroline Bardua.

The entire top floor of the museum was devoted to this temporary exhibition, and there was much to enjoy about it. For starters. Caspar Friedrich is perhaps the most important German painter of his time, and I always appreciate seeing the best there is to see of the art from the place where I am. In other words, seeing the paintings of a renowned German painter in Berlin is special, and I appreciated that. The New yorker once called him "the man who could paint loneliness", and this alone says something about why his art speaks to me.

That being said, there were two major downsides to this exhibition. First, it was way too crowded, to the point of being uncomfortable. Not at all an environment conducive to admiring fine art. Second, his most well known painting - and the one I wanted to see the most, Wanderer above the sea of fog - was not on display (apparently it lives in Hamburg and they were doing their own Caspar Friedrich thing)

Oak tree in snow, Caspar David Friedrich. The first time I visited the museum of art of Sao Paulo was before they restore the transparent stands (2008, I think, on a school trip), and the museum looked more like this: paintings hanging on a solid colour background, lit by focused light. I wouldn't wish the MASP to go back, because it's aspect is so unique, but I do love this classic style.

Cabin in the snow, Caspar David Friedrich. Despite all the hours of Europe I have been logging on lately, I am yet to see snow like this. I would like to take a brief holiday in a place like Iceland to see this sometime, though I don't believe that is a trip I wish to do alone, at least not right now.

Forest in late autumn, by Caspar David Friedrich. Isn't this the perfect fairy tale setting?

 I remember an exhibition once (maybe in Rio de Janeiro) that explained that there used to be a hierarchy of paintings from the lowest to the most important (and therefore more handsomely compensated). Still lifes were at the bottom of this food chain, followed by landscapes, behind portraits and mythological scenes. Caspar David Friedrich favored landscapes, it seems, montains and forests being frequent subjects of his art.

Forest interior by moonlight, by Caspar Devid Friedrich

Cathedral, by Caspar Devid Friedrich

Cross in the Mountains,  by Caspar Devid Friedrich. According to the explanatory text, Caspar David used evergreens to symbolize hope somehow. I don't see it. This image seems haunting and scary, and this is not a place I would ever wish to visit, especially on my own. There is a sense that being there one would be frozen, unable to ever leave.

The Sea of Ice, by Caspar David Friedrich. It could be a Magic card, could it not?

Although the focus of the exhibition were his landscapes, some of the paintings depicted human figures (including the certerpiece, Monk by the sea, below). People together and people alone. What else is there? 

Two Men Contemplating the Moon, by Caspar David Friedrich. This one made me think of Lestat taking Louis to see his last sunset.

Moonrise over the sea, by Caspar David Friedrich.

This piece, inspired by moonrise over the sea, is my Hiroyuki Masuyama. It is a LED lightbox combining multiple photographs, not a painting.

Some of Caspar David's underdrawings, obtained through reflectophotography were on display at this exhibition. I had never see the X-ray of a painting before, so this wasn't without interest, but it would have been better to place them in the same room as the originals I think. Also, on this session there was some text sying that he likely used a prominent textbook on painting named Die durch Theorie erfundene Practic. Should I ever become interested in learning how to paint, this is something I should probably look up in the future. 

Underdrawing of Monk by the Sea, by Caspar Friederich

The Original

Underdrawing of the Abbey in the Oakwood, by Caspar David Friendrich

The original

 

A copy by an unknown artist. I really like the copy, I have to say. Perhaps more than the original.

The exhibition featured paintings by other artists as well. I particularly enjoyed the paintings of artists in their studio - something I always enjoy whenever it appears in museums it seems...

Life class at the art academy, by Wilhelm Bendz

Portrait of the Artist Christian August Lorentzen, by Martinus Rørbye

Life Class at the Academy by Christian August Lorentzen,

Pigments he would have used...

Travel Log | Berlin Day 3 - Four painters I have discovered at the Alten Nationalgalerie

1. Max Liebermann

Max Liebermann was an impressionist educated at the University of Berlin, city where he lived for most of his life. 

 

Cobbler's Workshop, by Max Liebermann.  There is something indescribably romantic about the way education used to work. In another life, instead of navigating the social dynamics of a class of sixty aspiring medics trying to learn from teachers who would prefer not to be there, I would have been an apprentice to an experienced doctor. I would live in her house, eat with her family and learn from her books. Not unlike the cobbler apprentice in this painting. And perhaps that way was better...

Flax spinners in Laren, by Max Liebermann. This picture reminds me of "At the end of the day", from Les mis

2. Fritz von Uhde

Uhde was a student of Max Liebermann, who went to the Netherlands at his teacher's suggestion. It is there that he painted this image (below).

Organgrinder in Zandvoort, by Fritz von Uhde.

3. Ferdinand Hodler

Hodler was Swiss, and he lost his entire family to tuberculosis before becoming an apprentice to the painter Ferdinand Sommer. According to wikipedie: "Hodler developed a style he called "parallelism" that emphasized the symmetry and rhythm he believed formed the basis of human society.". I would never describe human society with the word symetry, by any means. His style reminded me a bit of Egon Schiele. Am I way off?

Young man admired by woman II, by Ferdinand Hodler

4. Lesser Ury

Ury was born in the Kingdom of Prussia. He is an impressionist from the Düsseldorf school (a group of painters that studied at the Dusseldorf academy).

Nollendorfplatz by night, by Lesser Ury

Travel Log | Berlim Day 3 - Highlights of the Bode Museum

The Bode Museum, from the River Spree

 

The Bode Museum is the home of medieval art, located at the very tip of the island (I had to walk around the construction works of the pergamon, get off island and back in again through a different bridge to get there). The Bode is also famous for its coin collection, but I had been walking for over ten thousand stepts at this point and barely gave a look to some of those coins. Something to return to another time, I suppose...

One of the rooms of the Bode Museum

 

1. The Pazzi Madonna

There were many works by Donatello in the Bode museum - I think I read somewhere there that someone connected to the Bode was particularly fond of the renaissance master, but sadly, I didn't keep notes about the connection. One of the most important pieces was this marble relief of the virgin and child. My experience with it was strange. It was as if I had seen this image a billion times before, but never quite like this, and I was drawn to how this seems more like a portrait of a woman and her child than an image of a God. The flattened profile of the baby is a bit weird though, and the side of his head is out of proportion (too small for his age), make it seem more abstract, more medieval than  renaissance, at least to my untrained eyes. The woman seems sad... I could imagine her struggling, financially perhaps, touching her head to the child and thinking "what will we do, my son?". I doubt that was what was in the artist's mind though... 

The Pazzi Madonna

The room where the Pazzi Madonna was had plenty of other versions of the Virgin and Child

2. Medieval Sculptures

Niederbayern: I was not familiar with the concept of a Palmesel prior to seeing this piece. A palmesel  is a sculpture of Jesus mounting a donkey with wheels, traditionally pulled along the processions of the Palm Sunday (Domingo de Palmas). I have very vague memories of going to church once with my mother and brother as a child, gathering palm tree branches on the way, but I am not sure if it relates to the same celebration. In any case, the palmesel at the Bode is a reconstruction, as the original donkey burned down in 1945 - this is a constant in Berlin museums, as one might expect. A lot of things were lost or destroyed around that time. Jesus' hand is in the traditional blessing pose - which in humans is not unlike the position of the hand of one who has a lesion in the median nerve. 

The reconstructed palmesel. It was in the same room as a very large and very tortured crucifix.

 

This head of St John the Baptist stroke me because of how realistic it was. The sculpture depicts the dead of St John as it would have seem on a plate as requested by Salome. It is made of oak wood and has a hollow in the back where there used to be a relic.

St Dionysius statue: This statue drew my attention because the saint is holding his own decapitated head. There's a whole genre of christian sculptures about people carrying their own heads: it's called a cephalophore. According to this source, st Dionysius was a martyr, beheaded after several different tortures, but after they took his head he simply picked it up and walked around town, until giving it to a pious woman and falling dead.

St Dionysius

Christ on the mount of olives (Christi gebet am Olberg, meister von rabenden)

This is St Barbara. Caught my attention because my grandmother used to talk about this saint all the time, but I don't know anything about her. I think she is "sincretized" with Oyá in afro-Brasilian religions. 

These are St Sebastian and St Florian... I wonder if there is more than one St Sebastian as the one I usually see is represented with barely any clothes and his body pierced by arrows... in any case, these statues were ridiculously enormous. I'm at least 5 metres away in this photo, trying to fit them both in the frame.

Head of the philosopher Seneca

St Wendelin