After the seriousness of this. . .
or this
to see this. . .
or this, nonsense, . . .
. . .although i am guilty for filling in the blanks for this.
Perhaps, the American left has been all wrong about how they try to advocate against war. Perhaps, if like these Aids ads in the U bahn (directly above), we tried a different approach, we wouldn’t have such ridiculousness like the marginalization of Checkpoint Charlie, or the Curry at the Wall place. For young Germans, I can understand it.
The weight of Hitler and his regime weighed heavy on the post-WW2 boomers of Germany. Fassbinder is one of them, many we never knew. As if, it were their guilt. American contemporaries hardly have shown signs of embarrassment over Truman dropping the atomic bomb, not once, but two times, on Japanese civilians. It makes me furious to see Dick “Five Time Deferement” Cheney, speaking so non-challantly about war, without taking on responsibility for the horrors and aftermaths of it.
I stand as I watch a young woman reading the signage at the Topography of Terror, this about the complete annihilation of Warsaw, as the allies stood by and let Stalin plan on what he was going to do next. And Roosevelt sitting there with him at Tehran. Maybe Truman picked the wrong target, he should have picked Stalin and Beria’s respective houses. I think of Warsaw being leveled, I think of the Hungarians in ’56. All of this, for what? This visit brought out the stupidity of war, the sheer abuse of power, throwing people away like garbage. This young woman, by me reading about this was Japanese. I felt embarrassed, I felt like, look at what we inflicted upon your generations.
The young girl’s reaction to Caravaggio’s young angel, arrows in hand, showing off all his stuff. You should have heard two woman at one of the Jan Gossaert’s Adam and Eve!!!
Thank goodness the Berliners were able to hold onto some of their art when the bombs came down like candy, and to make up the wonderful Gemäldegalerie after the split, then reunify everything during reunification. How lucky we are. I never knew so many Fra Fillippos, Fra Bartolomeos, Dürers, Cranachs, Altdorfers, Holbeins, Rembrandts, Hals, etc. Yes, dodo, I have been to Vienna, Paris, London, Rome and Florence. But once again, not all my books covered this, nor did my professors. Some I learned from Berenson, some from Wölfflin.
Lucas Cranach the Elder’s The Jurist Leonhard Badehorn. No, it is not a Dürer!
And by the way, what about Cranach as a great portrait painter? All he seems to be remembered for is those enticing boneless girls!!!!
Germans are pretty nice in the museum. They don’t play with their phones, like the Americans when they get bored. They don’t travel in packs like the older Japanese do. They don’t talk much, like the French. And they aren’t as loud as the Italians. More on this later.
The Gemaldegalerie is a complex and contains several smaller shows.
The Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) which I wanted to see, part of the complex, is closed at present.
thinkMuseum 