Museum #5: Gemäldegalerie

Gemäldegalerie

Matthäikirchplatz


10785 Berlin

S- & U-Bahn Potsdamer Platz

Berlin’s picture gallery is home to a breathtaking collection of Old Master paintings spanning the 13th to the 18th centuries, including works from German, Dutch, Italian and British schools and artists. It is an enormous, overwhelming experience of colour, drama, light and precision on a large scale. 

The gallery forms one important part of the modern Kulturforum complex near Potsdamer Platz, in the city’s west. Opened in 1998, the building itself is understated and spare. The external entrance presents a sparse welcome in jagged lines, more modern in approach than the art contained within.

The Gemäldegalerie’s internal arrangement focuses on a central atrium, with the gallery rooms running more or less in two horseshoes – an inner and outer – around it. The layout in this respect makes it easy to either selectively navigate yourself to known favourites or periods of interest, or to follow five centuries of artistic achievement and development chronologically. Doing the latter will have you walking 2km in order to take in the richness and vastness of the collection.

In roughly 70 parquet-floored rooms, on velvet-covered walls of various hues, hang some of the big names of the art world past: Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Velázquez, Rafael, Fra Angelico, Dürer, Jan Van Eyck and more.

Also look out for Hugo van der Goes’ 15th-century paintings and altarpieces; his sophisticated use of light embues the corporality of his figures with the semblance of living flesh; a hand reaches as though it could clutch what it seeks; eyes are rendered so wonderfully as to gaze piercingly at the viewer.

The large group of Peter Paul Rubens’ baroque works, of which I wasn’t expecting to be drawn to, demonstrate both an incredible ability to render the human form and a mastery of the chiaroscuro technique he learnt from Caravaggio; these are powerful and moving. A series of Canaletto’s paintings of Venice include two wonderful night scenes, their incredible detail blanketed in darkness against a midnight blue sky.

Keep in mind you’ll need a number of hours to do this gallery justice, and even then you will have skimmed the surface. Taking a break is a great idea. I walked the inner horseshoe first, then sought respite in the (rather uninspiring) cafe. Once rejuvenated by caffeine, I returned to the galleries, beginning this time in the outer horseshoe. In doing so I covered the chronology from start to finish again, which gave me both a refreshed view and a deeper appreciation of what I was experiencing.

Museum #4: Bode Museum

Bode Museum

Am Kupfergraben

10117 Berlin

U- & S-Bahn Friedrichstrasse, S-Bahn Hackeschenmarkt

The showpiece at the pointy northern end of Museumsinsel (Museum Island), the Bode Museum is a star in every way. The neobaroque structure greets the city from three directions and lures the eye with its colonnaded, rounded form topped with two restored copper-covered cupolas. Built up against the edge of the island, it reminds me somewhat of the prow of a ship; and indeed it is an enormous, royal and majestic vessel of art.

Museumsinsel is a small island in the middle of the Spree River, and home to five museums built over roughly 70 years through the 19th century. Its variety of architectural styles and vast wealth of art spanning thousands of years has quite rightly gained it a Unesco World Heritage Site designation, and ensures it’s one of Berlin’s key attractions. The Bode Museum was the last museum to be built on the island, and opened in 1904 with the name Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum after the deceased emperor. Damaged during WWII, the museum was afterwards restored and renamed.

The museum was originally built to house Renaissance art, but these days is home to the incredible Sculpture Collection, the Museum of Byzantine Art and, on the second floor, the Münzkabinett coin collection. The trail through art history is long and intricate in this museum, leading you from early Byzantine to Italian Renaissance and neoclassicism. The range on display here is both enormous and impressive, from pale and lifelike marble statues of classical mythology, to large fireplaces and altarpieces; from small metalwork artefacts to large marble columns. The big names are here, too: watch for the tender Pazzi Madonna by Donatello. The depth, number and variety of art and artifacts makes it impossible to absorb it all in just one visit.

For me, the architecture itself is part of the great thrill of this museum. In the entrance beneath the main cupola a large bronze statue of Kaiser Wilhelm mounted on a steed takes centre stage, but it’s the design of the palace that takes all the attention. The enormous cupola soars above pale marble floors, pink marbled colonnades and sweeping staircases with gilded ornamentation. The space feels almost hallowed; it’s still and magnificent. This space is joined to the smaller, also lovely, cupola by a long basilica.

The gallery spaces run off the small cupola on the ground floor through unmarked dark-wood doors. Discrete signs next to them are the only indication that this is the way to the various collections. The experience of the Bode is a little like navigating a pick-a-path book that you might have had when you were a child. Which door will you choose? What will it lead you to? There’s a wonderful mazelike and secretive feeling to this layout. The marble floors are the restored originals, and don’t forget to look up as you work your way through the galleries to gaze at the original restored wood panelled ceilings. The experience here is full-bodied and three dimensional, as if you’re walking through art itself. 

Museum #2: Museum Berggruen

Museum Berggruen
Schloßstrasse 1, 14059 Berlin

U-Bahn Richard-Wagner-Platz or Sophie-Charlotte-Platz; S-Bahn Westend

Opposite the gold-spangled Schloss Charlottenburg, tucked behind the solid walls of a former Prussian officers’ barracks building, lives a rich collection of modern works from the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso is the undoubtable hero at Museum Berggruen. More than 100 drawings and paintings span this modern great’s artistic career from childhood sketches to his Blue and Rose periods, through his ground-breaking journey into Cubism, and up to his death in 1973. Complementary to this, an impressive accumulation of 70-odd works by Paul Klee provides a sweeping view of the artist, backed up with a number of pieces by Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and Alberto Giacometti.

The collection is the stunning acquirement of private collector Heinz Berggruen, whose accumulation of over half a decade was first loaned and then sold to the National Galerie for permanent public exhibition.  The Museum Berggruen opened its doors in 1996.

There’s no grand announcement of the museum; no large renovated, windowed entrance. Just a wooden door with a gold plaque. An understatement that belies what lies behind.

The building itself was built in the 1850s by architect Friedrich August Stüler, who is also famed for designing Berlin’s Neues Museum and Berliner Stadtschloss. The strong neoclassical exterior of the old barracks is topped with a cupola, which provides a nice mirroring of Schloss Charlottenburg’s famous dome across the street.

There were few other gallery-goers on the day of my visit, which emphasised the quietude and intimacy of this building. The architecture itself focuses on a spiral staircase around a ground-floor atrium leading to the fantastic glass-roofed cupola. Don’t forget to look up, of course, but neither forget to look back down from the upper levels for a full sense of the design. The exhibition space itself, runs a loop around the building, which brings a nice fluidity to the viewing, as if one is really moving through the artists’ timeline.

One of the fascinating aspects is the competitive yet mutually inspiring artistic dialogue between Picasso and Georges Braque during their Analytic Cubism phase. As a result, some of their works are almost indistinguishable. The signature use of musical instruments; letters and words inscribed in the works; bottles and glasses; and playing cards are present in the work of both artists, as is the conceit of objects upon a table top. The monochromatic neutral tones – browns mostly – and crystal-like composition provide multiple dimensions and views into the objects, fragmented as they are to the point of scarce recognition.

Picasso was a figurist at heart, however, and despite this Cubist style that took him to the edge of abstract art, he never journeyed over the line into pure abstraction. His portraits, especially those of Dora Maar, his lover of seven years from when he was aged 55, are powerful and deep works that show the complexities of her character.

The journey through Klee’s many canvases is an unmissable journey through both the delight and darkness of this artist. He developed a particular use of symbols (the arrow, for example) and almost child-like way of rendering figures. A versatile and highly trained artist who once taught in the Bauhaus school, Klee’s abstract blocks of colour and pointillist words are as arresting as his collages and line drawings.

Extensive renovations saw the opening in March 2013 of the adjacent Kommandantenhaus, joined by a glass corridor, and designed to display the full extent of the museum’s collection. Misfortune hit, however, when mould was discovered beneath the roof just months after the opening. The annex has been closed since October 2013 and is expected to remain so for a year.  On our visit, the Klee collection had been moved temporarily across the road to the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg.

to the island

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Insta-city

This month involved a brief sojourn in Sydney, where time was spent supping coffees in schmick Surry Hills cafes, eating copious dumplings and exploring the 18th Biennale of Sydney (http://bos18.com/). I walked the city one cold afternoon, taking Instragram photos for Lonely Planet (@lonelyplanet, @littlecollisions). When you're a regular visitor to a city, it's easy to veer towards a jaded and flat encounter, but with camera (or, rather, iphone) firmly in hand, I felt a revived enthusiasm, and set off to discover the city as if for the first time. Emerging from Central Station, the most prosaic of Sydney transit points, I had that famous Proust quote in mind: The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. A wet and wintry city is a ripe setting for architecture, interiors and light. No change to preoccupation, then, in this new voyage.

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Cockatoos and Convicts

Did you know there is an incredible industrial and historic relic of an island sitting plump in Sydney Harbour? Maybe you do if you frequent the Balmain ferry route or have headed there to watch the New Year’s Eve fireworks. Information about the island’s Aboriginal history is scant, but it was known by local indigenous people as Wa-rea-mah, and later Biloela, meaning ‘cockatoo’. The island is an eerie place, scattered with remnants of its various personas as convict penal colony, school for wayward boys and orphans, and government ship yards. You can easily imagine the ghosts of men in chains from almost 200 years ago, toiling to blast the cliff and excavate the dock area. It’s a brutal history that offsets the maritime success achieved through the ships constructed in the island's workshops and launched into the bay.

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Modern artscape

One of the island’s modern incarnations is as a location for the Biennale of Sydney. The juxtaposition of an industrial and historical site housing contemporary art creates a fascinating yet unsettling context for the installations, housed in warehouses, old grain silos and set along pitch-black tunnels through the cliff. Cranes and industrial machinery along the wharf and around the island take on a creative appearance, tall and poetic as sculptures. Looming on long legs, they appear almost humanesque. Functional objects that transform into artistic spectacle and comment. The interplay between historical and modern occupation was acknowledged, intentionally or otherwise, in several exhibitions at the Biennale. It was these works that referenced the layering of historical transformation and the container of the art itself – chiselled tunnels, industrial-sized cogs and winches, giant steel frames and parts I couldn’t name a purpose for – that I found most engaging. Here, too, the journey became one about having new eyes. About reinvention.

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The pieces

Chasm, by Fujiko Nakay, involved an artificial mist periodically ejected in great bursts from the cliffside near the entrance to Building 150, itself once a turbine shop and brass foundry. The mist's eruption against the afternoon sky when viewed from the darkness inside the warehouse created a magical scene of silhouettes as people interacted with the piece. Morphing forms would appear and then disappear without a trace. 

Inside Building 150, against a constant electronic soundscape tumbling and crashing, the beauty and symmetry found in the industrial machinery was poignantly referenced by Cal Lane. Lace designs in red sand, an odd contrast against the concrete flooring, led to a white lattice-work shipping container, resembling a large, elaborate bird cage. 

Jonathan Jones' untitled light installation through Tunnel 1 cut a jagged path through the cliff, created a metaphoric connection to the convict chiselling once done to create this corridor. 

Outside, the weather was suitably tempestuous and unnerving – gloomy clouds threatened, dissipated to blue, reformed, then erupted into showers and downpour before clearing, only to repeat throughout the day. My day at the Biennale involved constant transformations and new perspectives on a fantastic hybrid island beneath shifting skies.