Delighted Awe in Berlin

“I am in Pandemonium undergoing hygienic solace.”

Georg Baselitz, ‘Pandemonium Manifestos’, 1961-62, Translation from Georg Baselitz: Paintings 1960-83, London, Whitechapel Gallery, 1983.

“Madonnas in Ecstasy: I selected my madonnas from more than 3000 porno magazines. There are two paths to enlightenment. The dry one and the wet one. My madonnas take the middle path.”

Jiri Georg Dokoupil, View into The Twenty-First Century.  Hanover: Kestner Gesellschaft, 2002, P.44.

“I myself want to achieve nothing. I want the art to achieve something! Art should be a revolution in and for itself, the only alternative for anything. There’s reality and then there is art… Art is all embracing. Everything that has gone on in human history has turned into art – all wars, Napoleon, religions. Everything has been stored in museums and perceived as art… Art cannot be extended either. There’s just art and then there are things that are not art.”

Jonathan Meese In Conversation with the collector Karlheinz Essl and the composer Karlheinz Essl Jr. Jonathan Meese: Fraulein Atlantis, Essl Museum, Sammlung: Essl, 2007, P30.

In the Second week of June 2008, I visited Berlin with Carol for six days. Carol paid for my air tickets and our hotel, my mum gave me €300 and Steve gave me €70! On top of that, I had €700 of my own money saved from my sales. My mother was not happy I was going to Germany on holidays – she was convinced they were still Nazi’s. “Don’t were your hat over there! They’ll think you are Jewish!” She told me. We landed in Schonefeld airport - late in the evening on Saturday the 7th June and left in the mid-afternoon on Thursday 12th June. It was quite simply the best holiday I had had since Barcelona in 1999.                                             

                                                                  

We were staying in the Comfort Hotel on Rennbahnstrabe in Weinbensee - on the very edge of the storied metropolis - to the North East of the city centre. It was a three-star hotel and very reasonable. We thought it was kind of cool that we were staying in the less fashionable East Berlin. However, we had to take a bus to the nearest metro station in Pankow and then a fifteen-minute trip into the centre of the city. A lot of the time, we chose to take taxis around the city since we were no good at reading maps or figuring out the complex metro system. Overall, I found Berlin far more reasonably priced than London, Paris, Madrid or Dublin. Art books, cigarettes, drinks, meals, taxis, clothes, public-transport and porn-magazines were all quite cheep.            

I enjoyed escaping my worries for a week and leave my locked-in life behind for a while. I had long since contemplated going to Germany – their art and history had fascinated me non-stop since I was a boy in short pants - but had always put it off, since I couldn’t decide which city in Germany to visit first. I also doubted I would like the Germans. I still very unfairly associated them with Hitler and the Second World War. Added to that - was my mother’s general dislike of the Germans. Apart from Charles Haughey, Sinn Féin, and the CIA - my mother in her madness - also thought the Nazis were out to get us!                         

That said in Amsterdam as a young man I had often picked out German prostitutes which I thought unspeakably beautiful. Moreover two of my casual ex-girlfriends had been a sweet-tempered German and mysterious Swiss-German. Still I had the preconception that German women would be stout towering maidens – so I was pleasantly surprised to see how ravishingly beautiful and petite many young German women were. In fact, I thought Berlin was one of the best cities for beautiful women I had ever been to – up-there with Barcelona. Typically, I preferred darker haired girls but the naturally blonde German girls were a different story! Still I also enjoyed the darker haired German girls with their dark heavily lidded, almond shaped eyes, plump cheekbones, soft features, budding mouths and oval faces. There were attractive women of all kinds in Berlin; students, business-women, tourists, Hippies, Punks and Goths. Even the anarchists were beautiful! We saw a handful of attractive older German women but on average, we thought Irish older women were better looking. By the third day I was tired of counting all the hot women – but Carol was still enthralled.                                                                                                                               

I did not go to Berlin to stick my nose into its Nazi past. I looked at enough of that on the History Channel and Discovery Civilization. I knew it all perfectly well. I came to see how a people and civilization could progress from such a history. I came to find the real Germany of my day. The Germans did not event dictatorship or war and they did not event race-hate - history has proven that demonic governments are possible in any nation amongst any race. Democracy, civil liberties and human rights have to be constantly fought for, protected and nurtured. Every time I saw lesbians holding hands, Punks hanging out or multi-racial children playing – I smiled and imagined Hitler’s skull and bones rattling in his various container boxes in Russian museums.                                                           

For me Berlin was after Paris the best city for art I had ever been to. However, whereas Paris gave off the aura of a dead museum city – Berlin felt vibrant and alive. Many foreign artists like Damien Hirst, Fiona Rae and Irish painters like Michael Cullen and Sean Skully had lived in Berlin. Over 25,000 people worked in the arts in the German capital - painters, photographers, sculptors, performance artists, architects, designers, actors, filmmakers and musicians. It had over 120 museums - many of the highest quality and historical interest. With only four full sight-seeing days - Carol and I could only get a small sample of what was on offer.         

                                                         

Germany was the third largest economy in the world and Government funding for the arts was one of the highest in the world. Added to that was the deep pool of powerful German private collectors and the aggressive investment in contemporary art by German banks and corporations. Its art galleries were rich, influential and powerful. In the newsagents in the metro stations in Berlin, I found that they stocked up to five different German art magazines! This was utterly unheard of in Ireland where usually only the largest or most specialist shops stocked magazines to do with art. They even stocked a magazine called Artinvestor, which - with typical German efficiency - detailed the ups and downs, in the prices, auction records, critical approval and curatorial backing of the art world’s leading artists. It was for the now professional art investors, hedge-fund managers and tycoons who treated art-works as ultra-commodities, long-term investments and grandiose bets on art history.                

German art history was storied and full of men and women of genius and talent. Artists like Dürer, Cranach, Hans Holbein, David Casper Friedrich, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Beckman, Otto Dix and George Grosz were excellent painters of real power, originality and expressive honesty. Germany had also produced some very talented, emotive and skilled female artists like Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Hannah Hoch.                                        

Recent German artists like Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, A. R. Penck, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger, Neo Rauch and Jonathan Meese had made a major impact (for good or ill) on contemporary art since the 1970s and they were still a source of influence for young art students. Moreover, Germany was one of the few countries still producing ‘cutting-edge’ hardcore oil painters.                                                                                                                 

However, German art, which tended towards the unhappy, gloomy, ugly and odd – had never found the favour with the worldwide, general public - that the more elegant and beautiful art of Italy or France had. Which suited Carol and me fine. It was pleasant to go into world-class museums that were not rammed full of tourists.                                                                                               

  

I thought Berlin was a majestic, historically rich city of ancient, grand, bullet-ridden or state-of-the-art futuristic architecture and full of handsome people. Everywhere we walked, there was history under our feet. Berlin was one of the greenest cities I have ever been to. Large thick trees lined the streets and open park areas were plentiful. While we were there the weather was freakishly warm for Berlin – up to 30 degrees Centigrade. The women were in short skirts showing off their bare, tanned, legs and adorable feet. Carol and I got on like a house on fire. We never really argued and did what we enjoyed doing most – sight-seeing, shopping and treating ourselves to nice meals.                        

We never once felt unsafe or threatened in this restrained, gentile and polite city. We were struck by its cleanness, its wide streets and lack of oppressive crowds or traffic congestion. However, we did find the serious, stoic, and hard-to-read German mentality a stark contrast to the friendly wildness of Irish people. On the negative side, I found the Berliners could be quite snobbish and could look you over very critically as you passed in the street or sat in the metro.                                                 

We never once saw anyone drunk, throwing up on the side of the street, shouting or starting a fight. Polite Berlin made Dublin on a Saturday night look like a mass drunken, orgy or riot. I would not have recommended the German capital to young people looking for a wild party – but for more mature sightseers it was a paradise of respectful and responsible adults who drank in moderation. That said – we were only tourists – we did not know where the cool hangout’s where located.                

The German people seemed to have a liking for blacks, greys, olives and biscuit colours in their clothing, design and architecture. It struck me that in such a refined, responsible and hardworking country - violent Expressionist paintings were a true rebellion against Prussian Patrician reserve. Dark Gothic, fevered Expressionist and wild Neo-Expressionist art I noted - came out of a wealthy land of picturesque landscapes and fairy-tail palaces called Schloss. Even if their art gave off a wild impression - German people were as middle-class and in love with kitsch, the low-brow and the trappings of wealth, pop culture and social propriety - as any other nation.                                                 

At night after a long day going around the galleries, we often stayed in the hotel and watched German television. We watched the German Big Brother, the news, animal shows, music shows and comedy shows. I had only a few words of German so it was hard to know what was being said, what peoples’ accents were like or what was their class and background. Even though we did not know what was being said - we had fun trying to figure out what was happening. The Germans had a clear love for their adorable pets - which Carol and I identified with. We saw many cute little dogs being brought around on the metro or to a café. German television also had some of the best animal programs we had ever seen with cute dogs, puppies, cats, kittens and polar bears.                                            

I found the massive number of American television programs and movies dubbed into German and the prevalence of American and English music and words disconcerting. Was there no-where in the world that was not colonized by US culture?                                                                                

I found German comedy rather unfunny. It was too slapstick, oafish and idiotic. Watching German comedy on the television also gave me more insight into the performance art of Joseph Beuys, Martin Kippenberger and Jonathan Meese than a dozen dry art texts.                                               

One television program in particular baffled and amused me. In it, elderly German new-age hippies/mystics/artists played the bongos, sang and played the organ, danced, talked, made models and painted pictures with hearts in them! This went on for hours - live in a huge studio. People phoned in and asked questions and they gave replies. However, I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.                                                                                                                                       

Every night at about 12:30AM, one channel began showing endless soft-core porn - advertising phone sex lines. The women writhed, masturbated and salivated while other German women voiced over the phone-numbers in breathy voices. You could see breasts but the vaginas were covered over with pixels or love hearts. They featured everything from young women to mature housewife’s dressed up in bikinis, lingerie, school uniforms, sports shirts or naked save for a pair of high heeled mules. I had expected to see hardcore porn in-your-face on the streets in Berlin like it was on the Rambles in Barcelona or in the red light district in Amsterdam. However, while we saw some porn shops, gay saunas and strip-clubs - they were fairly discrete. Moreover newsagents did not seem to stock even many soft-core magazines. We liked this freedom mixed with politeness.                                 

For the Germans I discovered – football was a religion. At night in our hotel - when we phoned down to room service for a meal - it was not delivered until the European Cup game had finished that night! Cars everywhere sported German flags or occasionally Turkish flags. Berlin had a large Turkish emigrant population (up to 200,000 in a city of 3.4 million) who seemed to do the menial jobs Germans’ did not want to do.                                                                                          

On Sunday – our first sightseeing day - we visited the Hamburger Bahnhof museum of contemporary art. Housed in a superb old railway station - this gallery was one of the finest display cases for contemporary art I had ever seen. The rooms were large - with high walls, good lighting and clean lines.                                                                                                                                  

I was stunned by the historical density and profundity of the Anselm Kiefer’s. The iconic staying power of Warhol and the surprising sensitivity of his silkscreen technique. I was impressed by the spiritual magic and originality of Beuys even if most of his stuff was already falling apart. In addition, I loved the trippy, messy, but well-drawn painterliness of Daniel Richter.                                         

However, I was disappointed by the dry, thin, anaemic and contrived emptiness of the Twombly paintings on view – I thought his work looked better in reproduction – a damming indictment for a painter! At times, his paint looked like nothing better than caked toothpaste or knotted chewing gum.                                                                                                                     

The three huge Rainer Fetting paintings I saw - were not quite as bad as I had thought they might be. Painted in ‘Dispersion paint’ a form of commercial latex-based house-paint. They still looked in surprisingly good condition after over twenty-five years. They were flashy and stylish with a nice sense of daring colour – but they were also flabbily drawn, second-hand and a bit of a con.                        

Beside Fetting’s canvases were two paintings by the English yBa Fiona Rae – one of Carols heroines. I had never liked her paintings – finding them pointless, derivative and a visual mess. However, in the flesh they were a bit better than in reproduction.                                                      

Donald Judd impressed me with his gravitas, perfectionism, and sensitivity towards his materials - even if he stood for everything, I was against. Yet again, I remained unmoved by the modern-salon, comic-book derived paintings of Roy Lichtenstein and the pointless day-glow abstracts of Peter Halley. I was impressed by the Rauschenberg Combine-Paintings (from the late 1950s) on display. However, I also saw them as the start of painting in quotation-marks – the age of Post-Modern pastiche and rehash.                                                                                           

Mathew Barney’s Cremaster No. 1 - which we watched for ten minutes on a monitor - was quite impressive and big-budget for an art video. However, it also felt second-hand, technically not quite right and too dependent on the influence of the likes of Busby Berkeley, Leni Reisenthal, David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Besides, apart from its symbolic representations of the male genitals - I hadn’t really a clue what any of it meant.                                                                                      

Also in the Hamburger Bahnhof - we saw Pure Reason a retrospective of black and white photographs by Anna & Bernhard Blume. I hated it. In their photographs, these German losers grimaced, play-acted or fell about. Yet again I wondered if you had to be a clown like Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Gilbert & George, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jonathan Meese or the Blumes’ - to be accepted as an important artist. Before leaving, I bought two full bags of books on German art from the bookshop in the museum. It was one of the best bookshops for contemporary art I had ever been in. Even though most of the books were in German – I enjoyed looking at the pictures. Painting was a universal language.                                                  

In the beautiful and sedate café in the Hamburger Banhoff, we had something to eat. I had a Café Viennese and delicious melt in the mouth Vienna Torte – a lovely sponge cake that dated back to the eighteenth century and the Austrian court. While in Berlin I also treated myself to tasty things like; Salami, Edammer cheese and German breads, a Tower burger and chips in KFC, Kirsch ice-cream, a lovely chocolate cake in a the Leysieffer chocolatier shop and café and a Bradwurst and salad in the Gemäldegalerie.                                                                                                                            

Later that day we went to Potsdamer Platz – up from which we saw - outside the Spielbank Berlin centre - an amazing large sculpture by Jeff Koons – Balloon Flower, 1995-1999. It was made of shinny stainless steel tinted aqua-blue. Based on a blow-up plastic flower –it also echoed the modernist sculptures of Henry Moore and the inflatable silver pillows of Andy Warhol. I usually hated this kind of contemporary manufactured art. However, in Koons case his originality and perfectionism wrought works of surprising beauty, accessibility and craft. Not of the same quality was a welded steel sculpture in blue and red by Keith Haring. Personally I found his work too comic-book, too simplistic and too shallow. In fact, I thought he was just lucky. But that didn’t stop me posing for a photograph beside his sculpture or buying a Keith Haring t-shirt. What can I say – I love art - all art. If only to give out about it! I also got an A. R. Penck t-shirt – whose work I really did love!                                                                                                                                           

The following day we visited The Pergamon Museum that was quite simply the greatest collection of sculptures I had ever seen. They made what was on offer in our National Gallery look like the knock-offs from a car boot sale. Carol and I were utterly gob-smacked and left wondering how this huge alter and hundreds of sculptures were; dug up, crated up, shipped from Turkey to Berlin and then reassembled in this vast hall. In the presence of this monumental art, I felt embarrassed to call myself an artist. For the first ten minutes, I did nothing but sit on a bench and try to take it all in. My head was swimming and I was in awe. For years, I had thought that Michelangelo, Bernini or Rodin were the greatest figurative sculptors – but these Greeks put them to shame.               

However, The Pergamon Alter was a group work woven into a living community. One could only imagine how many people were involved in its making. Architects, site foremen, master carvers, assistants, pupils, labourers, cooks and slaves. All backed-up, by the money and patronage of powerful; political, military and religious leaders.                                     

                                           

Berlin’s once bombed-out city now rebuilt and restored, The Pergamon Museum and later the Gemäldegalerie - made me think more than ever about the frailty of human beings, art and civilization. But also on how much we can rebuild, restore, preserve and revive. As a teenager, I had an extremist faith in art. Not to offer me anything petty like tabloid fame, disposable money or art-groupies. No, I thought it would give me immortality! As a young painter, I obsessed about making the most permanent paintings possible. So I only ever used the best quality materials. The thought of one of my drawings or paintings fading, yellowing, cracking or discolouring - put shivers of abject terror down my spine. However when I approached my fortieth year I came to appreciate the aging of art works and their imperfect-perfection. No matter what you made an artwork from - even rock - its permanency required the protection of someone- a family member, a collector, a gallery owner, a museum, a state, a church or a corporation. Representations of the human figure in particular were subject to the greatest possible threat of vandalism. Parts of the Pergamon bore witness to this. Some faces, breasts, buttocks and genitals - had been hacked off by; Islamists, Christians, Barbarians or iconoclasts. Making some of the marble torsos - look like symbolic corpses from a blood-lust sex-crime scene. Given the various risks of theft, fire, vandalism, war, iconoclasm or natural disaster – I thought it miraculous that anything survived at all.                                                                                           

Looking around these various sculptures and pillars that were over 2,200 years old I wondered what of our culture would survive as long? We lived in an increasingly disposable, trash culture, of trivial subjects and idiotic characters. Few things were built to last and most things were recycled. We simply did not have the patience or communal belief to create art works of this kind of iconic power, supreme craft, endless-labour and philosophical density any more. Our major cultural mediums where no longer - sculptural, potted or painted. They were film based - advertising, cinema, television and the inter-net. The vast majority of it in comparison with The Pergamon was pure junk – visual rubbish, decadent distraction, spiritual kitsch and intellectual pollution.                                      

Apart from the Pergamon Alter - the museum also had an amazing collection of sculptural antiquities. Some of the ancient Greek sculptures were still stained with the rich colours (mostly the reds survived) - which the Greeks had painted them with. The greatest lie of Neo-Classism in the 18th and 19th century was that Classism was based on the sculptural and linear. Colour was a taboo subject which artists like Ingres railed against. However, for the Greeks who sought to create a total work of art – bright evocative colour was an essential part of the sculptural and architectural Gesamtkunstwerk. I could see how fine their painters might have been - by looking at the surviving Attic Vases – which possessed a design, linear beauty and anatomical realism that reminded me of Picasso who was very fond of them. As anyone who has watched even just five minute of an archaeological program knows –archaeologists are always find bits of pottery! Its bloody everywhere! Most of this mud coloured stuff was of interest only to the specialist – but these Greek vases were quite another story. These were gob-smacking works of visual beauty and eternal history.                       

While in the airy rooms of Greek sculptures, I stumbled upon a female nude with no arms, head or knees - which I had drawn in charcoal at the age of seventeen from a black and white photograph – (Plaster Cast Drawing No.2, 1988 & 1991.) I later felt dissatisfied with the drawing and mounted it onto a larger sheet of paper then partially obscured the drawing with splattered paint. I sold it in my first show with the Oisín Gallery in 2000. Seeing this sculpture again after twenty years and this time in the flesh really touched me. I felt like I had met a long lost lover! Seeing its fragile and subtly modelled marble in the flesh sent shivers down my spine. Carol took a photograph of me looking at it like a dirty old man!                                                                                                            

Seeing the development of Greek sculpture from enigmatic but somewhat primitive and stylized carvings of men or women - to ever more elaborate and anatomically accurate representations was highly instructive. By the second century BC, Greek sculptors could seemingly carve anything; the male torso, the female torso, dense and creased fabric, complex armour, and animals like snakes, lions and wolfs – then integrate them into dynamic and dense compositions. After the decline in Greek power and the rise of the Roman Empire – Greek sculptors brought their skills to Rome in order to glorify the new super power. By the Greco-Roman period, carvers were clearly showing-off in their figure packed reliefs that defied belief. However, I found an emotional dishonesty and flashiness to late Greco-Roman sculpture - which verged on kitsch.                                               

In the Pergamon Museum, we also saw an awe-inspiring collection of Islamic art from Turkey wonderfully titled Turkish Delight - which we were very impressed by. I was dumbfounded by the obsessively pattered Islamic script and decoration in prayer niches, rugs, metalwork and even walls - which went beyond all reasonable necessity into a zone of pure devotion. Looking at the intricate patterns in Islamic art – I was reminded of those Spatial reasoning tests you are given in IQ tests. It made me think that these ancient men would have been undoubted geniuses at such exams. Their work spoke to me of a sublime and humbling faith in the largeness of God and his law. I also feel in love with the Islamic artists’ use of Cerulean blue. I suggested to Carol that maybe cool blues looked soothing in the heat of the middle-east.                                                                                                     

Unfortunately, rooms of the Ancient Near East were closed for renovations. However, through security barriers, scaffolding, wrappings and working men we could see the famous Ishtar Gate (604-562BC) – a stunning decorated wall of polychrome bricks from Babylonian times with animals and abstract pattering on either side of the gate and around the archway.                                                 

An even more mind-blowing wall for me was the Façade of the Mishatta Palace (743-744BC.) The wall was discovered near Amman in Jordan and was given as a gift to the German Kiaser by the Ottoman Sultan. This vast limestone wall over five meters high was carved with the most intricate, rhythmic and hallucinogenic patterning - reminiscent of the coils of branches, ivy and cellular organisms. After centuries of minute abrasion from human hands and desert sandstorms, the carvings had lost some of their sharpness and detail but they had gained an almost organic fluidity. Its aged appearance only added to its beauty for me. It was a wall of absolute power and tear inducing beauty – what a strange achievement. My only regret was that it had been taken from its spiritual home – even if it had been perfectly legal at the time.                                                                         

On our travels, we bumped into the Art’otel – a small and expensive, boutique-hotel which had an interesting collection of prints, drawings and paintings by Warhol and Baselitz. We went into the lobby and inspected three huge (about six feet by four feet) etchings by Baselitz. I found them rather flaccid, cynical, money-driven works. Art I observed in Berlin was big business – the age of artists like Kirchner killing himself in exile was long gone. That said I would have loved to stay in the Art’otel if I returned to Berlin!                                                                                                        

At the end of the day when we visited Check Point Charley – which neither of us had any real interest in - we also stumbled upon the Jablonka Gallery. It was a powerful, influential and rich gallery - that had showed the likes of Francisco Clemente, Eric Fishel, Miquel Barcelo, Richard Prince, David Salle, Damian Loeb, and Damien Hirst. The gallery was closed but we could see into the exhibition through the large plate glass windows. It was a show of large oil paintings - which I was very impressed by. Years before I had submitted my work to the Jablonka and they had turned me down. Looking at the patchwork-like, painterly oil paintings - of well-drawn groups of figures and passages of pasted and splattered paint – I thought I had probably never deserved to get into the Jablonka Gallery.                                                      

                                                                                      

The same could not be said for the ‘cutting-edge’ art on display at the Neue Nationalgalerie – as part of The 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art. It was trivial, pretentious, obscure and instantly forgettable work - with not a shred of manual skill. It looked and felt more like a smart-assed design or home-store than a show of art. For the only time in a Berlin art gallery, my blood boiled. Even Jonathan Meese would have looked like a Wagner sized genius in this kind of company. I wondered at a world that thought these artists important and me an irrelevancy. Then Carol and I were devastated when we heard that the Neue Nationalgalerie’s permanent collection - which we had only paid in to see - was closed! However, we did manage to buy a number of great books and postcards in the shop.                                                                                                                                        

The next day we visited the Gemäldegalerie - which housed the finest and most comprehensive collections of thirteenth to sixteenth century German oil paintings I had ever seen. In all the Gemäldegalerie possessed over 3,000 paintings of which 1,150 were on display. The condition and quality of these works was outstanding. Many paintings were so clean, fresh and vibrantly coloured that they could have been painted the year before. I noted that paintings on wooden panels had by and large (apart from some warping of the panels) survived the course of time better than those on canvas.                                                                                                                                                 

As to be expected, the Gemäldegalerie was especially good on German painters. However, it also had a fully representative collection of; French, Italian, Belgian, Dutch, English and Spanish painters from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. The Gallery rooms were laid-out in a horseshoe design and in its centre was a large hallway with a beautiful modern minimalist sculpture pool by Walter De Maria. The walls of the galleries were covered with a light gray, light-absorbing fabric. The lighting was all natural daylight coming from skylights. However, despite its beauty and functional intelligence I found the Gemäldegalerie too modern and new looking to house these works in some kind of historical context.                                                                                                

The collection started with the early ‘primitive’ representations of Christ, the Madonna and Child and the Saints - in a flat space - covered with symbolic designs surrounding the figures of from the late Middle Ages. Slowly artists began to place figures within definable architectural spaces and in front of far off landscapes. Artists progressed from a painting style that depended upon a schematically drawn, iconic, design. To one that relied on a fully worked out under-drawing (that was true to perspective and anatomy), which was then filled in with oils - to an almost photographic finish. Finally by the age of Titian, Hals and Rembrandt artists where painting directly upon the canvas - letting the image emerge from the paint itself – creating a lush, almost cinematic look. They were no longer drawing with the paint-brush – they were painting with the paint-brush! This history of European painting proved to me that the human figure, face and placement of people within space - was the hardest task for our artists. Long after painters had managed to paint realistic and convincing landscape backdrops, architectural settings, flora, fauna, fur, silk, satin, lace, jewellery, metals, woods, marbles, rocks and armour – they still struggled to give people; believable expressions, anatomically accurate figures and a flawless integration within a defined space.                                    

Every avid sporting fan knows about stupendous sporting moments of genius. Battles of will between two men that transcends everything they think they can achieve. The same is true in painting. Paintings so perfect that that they defy belief. I saw so many paintings of this quality in the Gemädegalerie in Berlin.                                                                                  
                                       

I was heart-broken with envy at the painterly skills of (in order of my preference for their paintings on show at the time); Rembrandt, Hans Holbein The Younger, Petrus Christus, Lucas Cranach The Elder, Jan Vermeer, Albrecht Dürer, Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, Sir Anthony Van Dyke - and a host of ‘minor’ painters whose technique made me look like a painterly retard. Compared to the patient, methodical, disciplined, skilled and laborious technique of these master painters – my work looked rough, crude, primitive, naïve, ugly and dreadfully hasty.                                                                                                                                    

The minute details in the German paintings - was dumbfounding – it seemed as though many of these paintings had been painted with a one haired brush! Many of the German and Flemish Gothic oil paintings on panel were so minutely detailed - that a magnifying glass would have helped to see all the super-fine details. These oil paintings did not need any art-jargon to justify them – their technical perfection was more than enough.

            
I fell-in-love with the Cranach nudes on show. He had been a teenage hero for me – because I liked his darker visions of nudity. I found his thin super-model like, pale, blonde maidens - with cute little pot-bellies - very sexy. Moreover, I found his minute technique impressive. Looking at all the German maidens in the paintings of Hans Baldung Grien, Dürer, Holbein, Cranach, I noted to Carol that they had the same distinctive features of the women in Berlin.                                                                      

Hans Holbein The Younger’s largish oil painting on oak panel; The Merchant Georg Gisze 1532 – was one of the most technically flawless - almost photographic paintings - I had ever seen. It showed Holbein the equal of Van Eyck and Vermeer in this kind of ultra-realism. Added to its perfection of drawing, shading, painting and psychological insight – was its immaculate condition. I could have wept with humility. Recently David Hockey had claimed that artists like Holbein had used camera-obscura’s to paint these kinds of paintings. As someone who had used all kinds of tricks like squaring-up, tracing from the television screen and the use of light-boxes in order to get an accurate under-drawing. I could say that - works of this kind of genius - could only have been helped a little by a camera-obscura. Even after you had acquired a perfect tracing of an image – you still had to understand human-anatomy, perspective and posses a precise, painterly, touch - in order to covert a mere tracing into a convincing painting.                                                                                             

There were some superb Dürer’s on show but also some very badly drawn and painted ones - which baffled me. How could a master like Dürer produce such clumsy work? I had similar thoughts with other masters in the Gemäldegalerie. Some paintings were virtually perfect – all expect for a badly draw and badly painted, landscape, dog, baby or face. Which gave me some sense of hope to see that even the most talented, intelligent and well-trained artists could produce poor paintings at times.                                                                                                 

           
My favourite painting bar-none in the Gemäldegalerie was Portrait of a Young Lady, c.1470. By the little known Bruges painter Petrus Christus (c.1410-72/3.) His work was built upon the lessons of Jan Van Eyck and Rogier Van der Weyden. The portrait was thought to be of a granddaughter of the English Lord Talbot. This small oil painting on an oak panel (it was no bigger than a sheet of A4 paper) was more enigmatic to me than the Mona Lisa. It was a humble picture - but also a magical one - of flawless technique and minute detail. The thin doll-like young woman in a black bonnet, fur lined dress and pictured from the bust drew me towards her like a desperate lover in a darkened room. It was a terribly sexy painting - and full of mystery.                                                                             

Two gems in the Gemäldegalerie were by Van Eyck and Vermeer.  Jan van Eyck’s painting of The Madonna in the Church, c.1425 - was magical in its surreal religious intensity and visual fireworks of light and shade rendered with an immaculate oil painting technique. Long after I had left Berlin this painting returned to my mind like an apparition. Vermeer’s painting Girl with Pearl Necklace 1662/65 was ravishingly beautiful in a subtler way. It was a quite painting, that hypnotized me with its infinitely subtle modulations of tone and colour, light and shade. In addition, I thought the softly rendered young woman - in the yellow satin robe with fur rim - an utter beauty.

           
Looking at a late nude by Titian - I was astonished by an almost total lack of line, outline or edges - forms just floated into each other imperceptibly.  It was an astonishing lesson in the art of painting with the brush.

          
Leda by Correggio was shocking in its sexy vulgarity. It was a painting full of light and movement – and painterly skill of the highest order. However, its sensuality and covert bestiality was astonishing in a public gallery. I told Carol what was happening in the painting and she could not believe me. I showed her how the swan was having sex with Leda. At first, she thought I was joking but soon she realized I was right. I also quickly saw a similarity between Correggio’s ancient nudes and the recent oil paintings of women John Currin in New York.

          
In Dublin, our National Gallery had one very small and minor Rembrandt and a dozen works by his pupils or studio. The Gemäldegalerie on-the-other-hand had at least a dozen large-scale masterpieces by Rembrandt and two-dozen, top-notch works by his pupils and studio. The same could be said for Rubens who was represented by every kind of work. Quick oil sketches made by Rubens alone - which his assistants then blew-up on a large-scale canvas. Large oil paintings in which Rubens had done the finishing touches and overblown ‘factory paintings’ he may not have done much of anything to. I disliked the waxy, radiated looking pinkness of Ruben’s flesh – at times, it could be very off putting especially when carried out by his assistants.                                               

Alongside these works were oil paintings by his pupils and assistants - made on their own time. Painters who specialized in one particular aspect of Rubens’ studio production – animals, flora and fauna, cupids, landscapes or still-life’s were fully shown.                                                                        

In both cases, the contrast of master and pupil works helped show me the gap between genius and talent. The whip, brio, accuracy and subtlety of Ruben’s line and brushwork were inimitable. While the heart-rending psychological insight and muscular, magical, paint-handling of Rembrandt was unmistakable.                                                                                                         

Frans Hals was again something of a disappointment. The brushwork in Hals’ later work was shockingly raw compared to most of the oil paintings that had come before in the Gemäldegalerie. Yet at other times, it was mind-blowing in its precision, speed and detail. As in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, I was left feeling strangely unaffected by the Hals paintings on show - which I wanted to like more. I felt the same for Caravaggio, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and finally Boucher – who appeared trivial like a saucy postcard.

             
At the end of the day, we went to the café outside the Gemäldegalerie to have something to drink. The girl behind the counter was the happiest looking person we had seen in Berlin. She was also smoking hot! Petite, with dark hair tied up, cute piercings and tattoos - she was also very friendly. Carol and I talked about her as we drank our Cokes. When we got up to leave, she called after us: “Goodbye! Come back tomorrow! I’ll be here!” Then we freaked out a bit - wondering if she had over-heard us praising her.                                                                                                                      

             
The following day we revisited the Gemäldegalerie for another quick reviewing of our favourite paintings. We also went around the museum with our camera and took photographs of each other posing for photographs. Alarmed guards followed us around anxiously and watched us like hawks.  We had also planned to visit the Kupferstichkabinett museum next-door - which housed a great collection of old master drawings. However, that too was closed! When we left - we went for a coffee at the outside café where the attractive girl worked. I was so shy that I could not even bring myself to go up and order our drinks. Besides I only really liked to look at girls – I didn’t want to know them! So Carol went up instead. Carol said she had been very nice to her and had been looking around for me.                                                                                                               

               
At the end of that evening, we visited the Filmmuseum of Berlin in the space-age Sony Centre. Carol and I were delighted and enthralled by its state-of-the-art multimedia presentation of German film and television. In the film section, the films, storyboards, documentation, and mock ups for the Expressionist inspired Dr Caligari and the futuristic and prophetic Metropolis excited us. The next highlight was the iconic Marlene Dietrich rooms. Then we saw the very emotional, mortuary-style rooms dealing with the radioactive Nazi era. The vile Nazi propaganda, race-hate, warmongering and holocaust of the Jews made me shake with rage and tears. However, I was equally moved by the films showing the effects of Allied bombing on the civilians of Berlin. Overall I was impressed with the even-handedness of the historical documentation and Germanys’ honesty about their past. In the last film rooms covering modern German film, I fell in love with the tragically beautiful German actress Romy Schneider. Finally, in the Filmmuseum we saw a funny, moving and intriguing video compilation of German television – from the 1950s right up to 2008 - which gave me some insights into post-war Germany.                                                                                                                                                                                     
While in the museum shop, Carol bought me two t-shirts. The first was a stark black and white image of Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu - from Werner Herzog’s remake of the original 1922 film in 1979. The second was from Psycho, which was all in black with just the title of the film in white. Carol thought it hilarious for me to wear it!                                                                               

             
While in Berlin I bought twelve art books on; The Germaldegalerie, The Pergamon Museum, Jonathan Meese Fraulein Atlantis catalogue (which included a DVD of his performance in The Essl Museum in 2007), the German Neo-Expressionists, the Transanguardia artists, Martin Kippenberger’s drawings on hotel stationary, master drawings and sculptures from Europe from the Jan and Maria-Anne Krugier Pontiatowski collection (especially for its superb drawings from 1430 until 1990), Jiri Georg Dokoupil, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Max Liebermann and artists self-portraits.                                                                                                                                                  
Jonathan Meese had been a subject of much interest to me since late 2007. I could not believe that a base artist only a year older than me, with similar influences and provocative works - yet none of my skills, intelligence or integrity could have had such a successful, notorious and inflated career - while I could not get anyone in the world to show my work. Since the mid 1990s I had struggled to get five minor solo shows in Dublin - meanwhile in the same space of time Meese had sixty-five major exhibitions all over the world.                                                                                                                            

In the Hamburger Banhoff museum bookshop they had over ten large catalogues, one devoted entirely to his drawings - was the size of small concrete slab. I simply could not believe that his pompous doodles could be deemed worthy of even a pamphlet - never mind a virtual catalogue resume! Meese applied his paint like slop from a bucket. Over all his scrawls were pseudo-ecstatic, quasi-primitive, visual gibberish trying to pass themselves off - as heartfelt, psychotically intense, outsider art.

             
I remembered spending the 1990s being dismissed in Ireland as an adolescent artist. Yet Meese made me look like Nicolas Poussin! I wondered if I had not been mad enough? Or maybe I was too repressed? Or maybe I was not arrogant enough? Or maybe I wanted people to like me too much? Or maybe I was not god-awful enough. Or maybe I had too much self-respect to act the clown. When - I wondered - did art become just attention seeking.                                                   

German art since the Second World War had been shaped by a complex mixture of ideological influences and backlashes. The rediscovery, rewards and honours showered on Expressionist painters after the war - was an attempt to redress the insults, censorship, vandalism and even murders carried out by the Nazis against German artists in particular the Expressionists. The value placed on individualism in West Germany during the cold war was a conscious reaction to the censoring, surveillance, police hounding and arrests of East German writers and artists – many of whom had to flee to the West. Added to this were the Hippie and student radical demands for freedom from authoritarian academic methods and the shamanistic teachings of Joseph Beuys which led to the kinds of ‘non-teaching’ that plagues Art Colleges around the world today. Meese was the laughable consequence of all of this.

                 
Meese could not draw, could not paint, had no unique ideas and had a buffoonish egotism and self-love that went beyond that of any sane man. His art seemed to me to be the nightmare result of an idealistic, hippie, kindergarten, educational system that had encouraged the belief that any expression no matter how crass - was a valid expression - and worth something to society. His life’s work also seemed to be based on Gestalt Therapy - which had also been very popular with artists in the 1960s. However, instead of revealing his real inner demons Meese vomited up and degraded Germany’s profound artistic tradition. Meese’s constant use of Nazi imagery and the Hitler salute in his performances did not strike fear into me – it made me laugh and feel sorry for him. Looking at his work I could not believe that an artist so desperate to cause a reaction, so talentless, so adolescent, so technically unskilled, so unsophisticated, so stupid and so unoriginal could have had so many exhibitions, sold so much work and caused so much controversy.                                                             

His drawings, paintings and sculptures where nothing but a dogs dinner of heavily borrowed expressive gimmicks and ideas from; Louis Soutter, Adolf Wölfli, Walter Stohrer, Anselm Kiefer, A. R. Penck, Jörg Immendorff, Albert Oeheln, Martin Kippenberger - to name just a few. While his performances were nothing but an idiotic mimicry of the hysterical oratory of Hitler, the abject, retarded performance videos of Paul McCarthy in the 1990s and the flashy, pompous public painting events of Georges Mathieu in the 1960s. The cringe making sincerity of the teenage heavy-metal, Goth boy’s love of all things outrageous, evil, violent, dark and warlike was also there. Meese ranted about an art revolution during his performance of Fraulein Atlantis - but no revolution had ever occurred in a circus and no nation had ever looked to a clown for leadership – only amusement. Perhaps it was because Meese was so bad and yet so successful - that I was interested in him from a critical point of view. As a kind of dreadful example of just how rotten art could get and how senseless artistic fame had become.                                                                                           

The book on Kippenberger’s drawings confirmed for me the fact that with Baselitz he was one of the few credible ‘cutting-edge’ draughtsmen produced by German Neo-Expressionism. The book on Dokoupil showed him up for me as nothing better than a comic pasticheur of better artists like Pollock, Warhol, Rauschenberg and Beuys. His work was superficially engaging and witty but the thrill quickly evaporated.                                                                                                                      

The book on Paula Modersohn-Becker was a revelation showing her to be perhaps the most tender and profound painters of maternity. Max Liebermann was exposed to me as a rather dumb, simplistic painter of no real depth. Of the Transanguardia painters, I thought Francesco Clemente and Sandro Chia stood out above the rest. However, I found Achille Bonito Oliva’s grandiose poetic and metaphysical justifications for their art pompous, pretentious and meaningless. The book on the early German Expressionist’s Karl Schmidt-Rottluff mostly covered his later years after the 1920s when his raw early style had became more and more academic, graphic and linear. I liked the paintings but did not feel they possessed the ‘sacred-fire’ of his Die Brücke years. In terms of quality and not personal taste, the book on the collection of Jan and Maria-Anne Krugier Pontiatowski was simply mind-blowing. I could not believe that private collectors could possess such a comprehensive and top-quality collection of master drawings and watercolours by the likes of Annibale Carracci, Rembrandt, Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix, Victor Hugo, Turner, Degas, Picasso and Klee.                             

Carol bought me two t-shirts, a beautiful top-quality Moleskine notebook and I bought her two bracelets and a comic-biography on Frida Kahlo. I bought my mum a German doll, a cuddly Panda Bear and a box of German chocolates. I bought Anastasia a big box of German chocolates and Steven a huge German beer tankard with a silver top!                                                                    

While in Berlin I also bought myself two small German comic-biographies on Joseph Beuys and Egon Schiele, three German art magazines, three German soft-core porn magazines (for future paintings), a Berlin t-shirt, a hoodie-top and some underwear. On the way home in the duty-free of Schonefeld airport I bought a Danish made Festina watch for €156 and two bottles of Joop aftershave – a luxury I would normally not have treated myself to. In fact, thanks to my recent sales I had never spent so much on myself on any holiday. We both agreed that we would love to go back to Berlin and even live there if we ever won the lottery! We had only managed to have a small taste of what Berlin had to offer but we were keen to see more.