Brassai/Rondeau/Soupault

This afternoon Mama and I went to the Martin-Gropius-Bau to see three photo exhibitions. It was very hot, especially in the bus. But when we got out and walked across Potsdamer Platz, there was a slight breeze already, and once we were inside the Bau it was pleasantly cool.

We started with the exhibition of Jacques Brassaï's art. It didn't start at the entrance, but at the other end. And, beginning at this end, there were rooms full of black and white photos that Brassaï had taken at nighttime in Paris in the 1930s and 40s. He photographed everything from the Pont de Neuf (with its lights glowing through the fog) through the intricate ironwork on a fence, members of a street gang, a clockmaker, and a statue of the Maréchal Ney, to graffiti that had been scratched into walls. His photos are all lovely, evocative, and wholly efficient. One gets the sense that he has noticed every detail of his scenes, and in his photos each scene is beautifully ordered (but not at all regimented) and neat. The photos are often witty; for example, in one of his photos of the statue (the Maréchal with sabre dramatically extended into the air) the modest small neon sign "Hotel" glows anticlimactically out of the shadowy background. Where he photographs couples in clubs, he uses their mirror images often to comical effect. Then there are photos -- quite frank but not distasteful photos -- "Chez Suzy," which, as far as I could tell, seems to have been a brothel. Then there are a few nudes; I wondered as I looked at them if it wasn't boring for the subjects to lie around arching their back, etc., for a photographer who liked the shape of their posterior.

These photos were followed by a roomful of photos of coral and one large seashell. One crest of coral looked, Mama poetically remarked, like an eye with large intricate lashes spreading out from it. I less poetically remarked that the spiralling coral branches reminded me of rotini. Finally, (besides some sketches of nudes), there were glass cases with stones that had been hewn into figures, most often of stylized female bodies with exaggeratedly broad hips and narrow chests, as well as birds and heads, for example, of Venus. I was amused that anyone would look at a rock and think of the human body. Especially given my Geology lab course in university, the thing that I think about when I see rocks is usually whether they are igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary. The greatest leap of imagination I've thus far been capable of is to think that a boulder (one that was near my grandfather's seaside apartment) looks like the head of a triceratops. The last room had the remaining photos of graffiti -- lots of skulls or skull-like faces, which painted a disturbing picture of the average mental state of the time.

So much for Monsieur Brassaï. The next exhibition, with the photos of Gérard Rondeau, was less crowded with people. First we looked at the photos of famous people. The photos felt very untidy after the previous exhibition, though the people in them were interesting (all edgy or gloomy or both). It was also unsettling to come from the 1930s and 40s to the present, especially since the photos were still black and white. There was Susan Sonntag, Jürgen Habermas, fashion celebrities like Jean-Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix, the director Jim Jarmusch, Maria Vargas Llosa, Iggy Pop, the actor Daniel Auteuil, and many others -- no glossy photos of the lesser personalities who are more popularly photographed. Some photo-portraits that appeared in newspapers are displayed here, too, photographed as they are printed in smooth beige newspapers with weathered edges. Mama said that it reminded her of the trompe l'oeil art where collages (e.g. of newspaper clippings) are painted against particular backgrounds.

Both Mama and I preferred the photos that had been taken in a museum where the exhibitions were being set up. Each photo (or nearly each one) featured a particular exhibit that somehow interacted with the formal but slightly chaotic surroundings. There was a sculpture, perhaps of Buddha, with a clear plastic cover like a veil making the serene face with its topknot look like a calm, happy bride. Then there was the sculpture of a horse, tied up to prevent it from moving, so that it looked as if it had a bridle and halter. And a sculpture of Mary tenderly holding her baby, as one of the museum workers held on to the sculpture to hold it steady or move it, and embraced them both. And so on and so forth.

Finally, we went up to the second floor to see photos (mostly) by Ré Soupault. I'd never heard of her before (neither, I might add, had I heard of the two other artists before), but I've gathered that she was born in Germany, became fluent in French, a Surrealist, pacifist, interested in fashion, travelled a lot, rather unhappy, and the fond wife of Philippe Soupault, who was French, wrote poetry, also Surrealist and pacifist, fond of children and of his wife, also travelled a lot, and not particularly chipper either. The photos were mostly from the inter-war years. They start out with the time of the Locarno Pact in 1925, and move on to Germany and Spain just before the Spanish Revolution. Some of the Spanish villagers are shown giving what appears to be a worker's salute, with raised fist, a little stage-y. There are nice rural photos and equally nice urban photos, giving a swift overview of the country. The rural ones seem, at least to me, fairly remote. The urban ones are crowded with detail, bright, with a little edge of dirt and neglect.

M. Soupault is definitely a favourite subject of his wife. In the photos in which she appears she is usually a little artist-y in her look, whereas he is always in full suit, even later on when the two are in a desert and both are for some reason wearing dark formal clothing and, to their credit, look perfectly cool though one would expect that they would be perspiring like the proverbial pig. His expression is never, I would say, particularly open, or particularly happy, except with the cheerful faces of loveable urchins around him. But at least his expression is never insincere; neither is that of his wife. I was wondering if a marriage could be particularly good if one's spouse never smiles in a photograph, but it seems that both were exceptionally earnest -- I should guess tormented -- souls. I don't know if the torment is Weltschmerz or something more personal.

There were further photos taken among the nomads in Tunisia, then a series about pilgrims on their way to Mecca, a series of photographic self-portraits; there were also glass cases along the way with correspondence, articles, and two cameras like the ones that Philippe and Ré Soupault used. When we were inside the last room, with sobering photos from the "quartier reservé" (the quarter that was reserved to prostitution) in Tunis, we heard something like a mixture of rain and rumbling. At first I thought it was something like the ventilation system, but after we had all slightly turned around, the woman who was in the room with us remarked, "Ich glaube, das dürfte das Wetter sein." And, indeed, I became aware that the sound of trickling water that had puzzled me when I was looking at a Spanish fortress was probably rain flowing down a pipe, and that the thunder-and-lightning-storm forecast for the evening had probably proved more accurate than on previous occasions. Mama and I were both nervous about venturing out into the rain, but we finished the exhibition either way.

Then we descended the stairs to the gift shop, where Mama looked in vain for Brassaï postcards. There seemed to be postcards and books featuring the works of nearly every major artist, though. I didn't spot a Hermann Nitsch postcard anywhere, and I did wonder if there is any sort of acquaintance to whom one might send a picture of a tunic adorned in dried blood without making the recipient uneasy.

When we left the museum -- without having filled its coffers any more, alas -- the sky was one expanse of grey, it was appreciably cooler, and lightning flickered soundlessly from behind the buildings to the right. Mama paused to take a photo, then we passed along the wet sidewalk strewn with fallen plane-tree leaves and the occasional branch. There was one bright lightning flash in front of us, soon followed with a loud thunder that resonated from the ground and made me slightly trembly. But, as we crossed Potsdamer Platz, I reflected that it was exciting and nice to be inside a thunderstorm in summer clothing, without being wet or particularly cold. Then, without further incident, we caught the bus back home.

P.S.: I wrote a long time ago that the balusters of the staircase inside had acanthus leaves on them; today I checked again and they are not necessarily acanthus.