Buckets and Buckets of Artistic Blood

Today my cousin A., Mama and I went to the Hermann Nitsch exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau. We took the M48 bus to Verian-Fry Strasse, then walked under the brilliant fluorescent lights of Potsdamer Platz until we reached the building in question. The Bau is a decorous building in a neoclassical style, but none of the pomposity that is associated with it. The bases of the columns in front are bountifully decorated with putti and vines, the pillars running along the edge of the first floor are rectangular and painted in black with gold bands and a golden Corinthian capital, the roof over it consists of a firm wooden grid covered with some opaque material (which brings to mind Japanese architecture), the doors are of wood, the floor is covered in beautiful intricate designs in dark colours and gold, and the molded leaves, etc., in plaster that adorn the ceilings are detailed, free, and profuse.

We bought tickets in the ground floor, then ascended to the first floor along the fine broad turnout-ed (this pseudo-word brought to you by Wikipedia) stairway with whimsical green ceramic balusters (also Wikipedia) decorated in acanthus leaves. The first thing we saw were a series of neatly arranged photos, in red and white, of naked people bathed in blood and apparently spilling out their intestines. I caught sight of a white frock and perhaps the stance of the unfortunate subjects, which made me aware that religion was a thematic element. I averted my eyes and walked past with Mama, considerably dubious (I wasn't expecting much blood). Then we entered the exhibition. Right beside the entrance way a video of some Catholic feast was running. In the room itself there were rudimentary wooden altars with standing boards behind them, on which there were frocks that had rust-coloured dried blood or paint on them. At the figurative feet of these frocks there was often an ornate priest's surplice, perhaps a surgical tool or three or four. There were also tables covered in glass that had surplices with these tools neatly laid on top, and a test tube or two for good measure. Some feet away there was a rudimentary table with neat stacks of about four tissues each placed at precise intervals on top of them.

As for the rest of the rooms, they contained more of the same, bloody frocks, huge canvases with loads of red or black paint (or both, or a bit of purple too), photos of starkly naked people with pig intestines on top of them made to look like their own (at this point I was relieved that it really was pig intestines), photos of somber-looking students (the artist's acolytes) in white frocks with some obliging colleague pouring blood into their mouths and down the front of their frocks (as Mama asked, who had to clean that up?), photos of the acolytes stuffing a pig corpse with its intestines (ashes to ashes, guts to guts?), detailed pseudo-anatomical drawings, and posters and books about previous exhibitions of Mr. Nitsch. Mr. Nitsch, with a long da Vincian beard, glowing cheeks and mild blue eyes, and the general air of an early twentieth-century grandfather, seemed a surprising source of all these bloody spectacles. There was, incidentally, also a more peaceful room, where there were shelves (Ikea, as Mama said below her breath), a painting of Jesus looking unhappy, religious regalia and ornaments, and lots of test tubes with blood (fake?) and other colourful liquids.

Mr. Nitsch seemed to be commentating on the idea of Jesus spilling his blood for us (though I don't know what that comment would be), on the violence of the ritual slaughter of animals for religious purposes, and perhaps on the slaughter of animals in general. The bloodiness was so unappealing that the artist was clearly not glorifying violence -- that much must be said for him. But I thought that his point was excessively belaboured. Also, while it did have artistic value, one cannot enjoy it because of what it represents.

When we left the exhibition both of us were mildly traumatized, Mama a little indignant. A., who had gone off on his own, didn't seem to mind it so much, but he wasn't especially taken with it either. We quickly popped into the Rebecca Horn exhibition before we went. There was a sort of mirror-pool in the middle of the floor, which had different lenses and mirrors suspended above it, that reflected the room and our faces and the blue light at the top of the lighting apparatus. It was very calm and nice. I happened to need a tissue, and Mama, as she gave me one, joked that she had brought one along from the previous exhibition. (May it be granted to me that I can hear of or see a tissue again without thinking of blood!) Then we looked at a similarly calm exhibit, which I liked very much, of a giant needle circling like a compass in the center of a round area, with a dragonfly perched somewhere, an inverted funnel full of a blue liquid at the edge, and perhaps stones at intervals -- at any rate, a garden scene. It was, in terms of colour and mood and theme, the opposite of the other exhibition, and helped me to regain my mental equilibrium.

Surprisingly, all three of us still had enough of an appetite to get something from a bakery as we headed home!