Art of the Id

Today was a very warm day. In the apartment it is moderately cool, except where a tepid breeze blows in, as if from a hairdryer, from the balcony. The stairway is cooler still. But then, when one steps outside, a mass of hot air envelops one and slowly assimilates one's body temperature until it is no longer pleasantly comfortable but rather stifling. Still, it can get hotter, and it was bearable in the bus. At Potsdamer Platz I was reminded of the concept of the city microclimate (often mentioned in the newspapers when we arrived in Berlin during a heat wave last year) -- cities are always warmer than the surroundings because the streets and buildings soak up and store the heat -- because the street seemed so hot and desert-like. It puzzles me that the weather should heat so quickly, as if to make up for lost time.

Anyway, Mama, M., and I ventured out into these conditions in order to look at exhibitions at the Martin-Gropius-Bau. The sun was shining brightly, the "Die Welt" sightseeing balloon was floating motionlessly at the end of its guy wire, and at least one bus was disgorging a flood of art-seekers to join the queue underneath the sheltering porch of the stately building. So I had time to inspect the carvings on the front wall. There are carvings on the pillars, as I've mentioned in a previous blog entry, but also in the bricks in the wall, along the complex cornices, and on slabs of wood running along the wall. The intricacy of the decorations is, I find, most appealing, and it counteracts any pompous effect. Carved on one of the pillars there is a shield bearing a ribbon-wrapped palette, and though I didn't find it exactly pretty, I admired the veins and rippled edges with which the surrounding sprays of laurel (?) had been sculpted. I like patterns to be small and detailed, and I've often been disillusioned when I look more closely at artwork (for example designs on the bindings of old books) that has a pretty complicated effect but turns out to be composed of crude lines and dots.

Once past the security officer and the rotating door, a blessed frigidity met us. Then we bought the tickets and set off up the stairs to the Cindy Sherman exhibition. This exhibition was composed of sets of photographs with unifying themes. At the beginning there were, for example, washed-out actress types and people waiting at a bus station. Later subjects included "models," clowns, and figures in old paintings. But one thing that unified most of these photos was the fact that it was Cindy Sherman who posed for them, made up and dressed up in order to portray these different characters. The remaining photos were of inanimate objects, in particular a series of mutilated dolls that more or less justified the sign at the exhibition's entrance to the effect that it might hurt one's feelings and was not suitable for children or youths.

The pedantry-tinged but helpful signs indicated clearly enough the central preoccupations of the artist: artificiality, and the way females are viewed in the film and fashion industries. The main thematic tool was caricature, and it was mostly grotesque and disturbing. But in the case of a "model" photo with a brightly painted red face encircled with a mane of straw there was considerable aesthetic value, hardly disturbed by the grimy fingernails of the subject; also, for some reason I did feel like laughing when I saw the recreation of a portrait of the Virgin Mary holding her child, according to the very stiff and unnatural posture in some quite old painting, with a rather supercilious expression on her preternaturally tidy face.

To continue on the subject of the recreated paintings, I think that it is really here where her skill in make-up, costumery and facial expression are most evident. The way she transforms her face to resemble widely different people is incredible. That said, not all the portraits appealed to me, particularly not the Judith-and-Holofernes (?). Besides the ones that did appeal, I also liked many of the black-and-white photos where stereotypical scenes with women in old films were recreated, for instance a woman in noirish artistic clothing striding past a modern office building, or another woman in a nurse-like uniform stretching up for a book in a shelf. But I thought that her poses in many of them were too staged, and the scenes a little flat. I think that many older black-and-white films were made with a very clear eye for aesthetics, which did not seem to concern Cindy Sherman as much.

Altogether, the skill of the photographer was obvious. But I went through the exhibition rather grumpily. One thing that I found unsettling was that the proportions and the cutting of the photos were rarely what I would consider "right." I don't know if this was purposely done or not. For example it really bothers me when a person is in the exact centre of a photo, effectively dividing the picture. (Admittedly I do have a minor fixation with expecting photos to be separated into thirds, for example two-thirds foreground and one-third background.) Or I think that the photo is not long enough, or that the ratio of Cindy Sherman to the background is not right (e.g. in her "Rear Projection" series), or that the background is too blurry. All of this results in an incompleteness and confusion, which is, I think, not necessary for the purposes of the artist. As for her motifs, clowns and plastic dolls and gruesome representations of fairy tales by adults are things I've always found rather garish and disliked anyway. But all of this is a matter of personal taste. Most people probably don't have my aesthetic hang-ups, and are more fond of art that has much to do with effect and shock value. Without knowing much about the field, I suppose that anyone interested in psychoanalysis would find the exhibition particularly absorbing, because the photos are full of archetypes and primal emotions (hence the title of this post). Anyway, I did find the exhibition interesting and don't regret that I went to see it.

We went home again after roaming in the gift shop (which I rather like, with hundreds of postcards neatly arranged along the entry, a generous skylight, and walls and shelves full of picture-filled books). The guiding wire of the "Die Welt" balloon was now at an angle, indicating that a wind had come up; at the street level it was not perceptible except as a breeze that would have done credit to the Sahara, and was laden with car-scent.

Besides this, I read C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, which was nice to reread after many years. I liked its comic moments and well-drawn characters and excellent descriptions of scenery very much, even if the morality did come across as rather ponderous (I mostly ignored it (c: ). Then I browsed the net, and played the piano. The music went decently today. I think I've found out a very bad habit that is partly to blame for my muddy tone: I try to play legato and use the pedal at the same time. If I fix that, I may finally play the non-lento waltzes of Chopin with a modicum of clarity and elegance.