Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the city has been a magnet for artists. Rents are low, studio spaces are plentiful, and for a relatively small city the atmosphere is culturally diverse and cosmopolitan with many people from around the world passing through - and some of them choosing never to leave. This has meant that Berlin, along with London, New York and Los Angeles, has developed into one of the most exciting art scenes in the world with its own annual art fair and a biennial, as well as hundreds of galleries and many active collectors.
Two books published this month explore what it is about Berlin that has generated such exceptional talent and such a thriving and internationally acclaimed arts community. In Berlin Art Now (Thames & Hudson) the critic and curator Mark Gisbourne, now a resident in Berlin, selects 19 of the most exciting artists living in the city. Photographs of each artist, their studio and their work are accompanied by illuminating commentary or interviews with the chosen artists - Norbert Bisky, Mona Hatoum, Candice Breitz, Martin Eder, Tim Eitel, Daniel Pflumm, Tacita Dean, Jonathan Meese, Cornelia Renz, Bjorn Melhus, Julian Rosefeldt, Thomas Demand, Monica Bonvicini, Thomas Scheibitz, Michael Wesley, Yehudit Sasportas, Thomas Rentmeister, John Bock and Bernhard Martin.
Gisbourne's book provides the perfect introduction to these artists, some of whom are native Berliners, while for many of them their careers as artists have flourished since adopting Berlin as home. For all of them it's a city that has had an enormous impact on their work, enabling it to take certain directions that might not have been possible in other city, and also facilitating meetings between other artists from around the world. As Thomas Demand puts it, 'There is something special here. Musil calls it moglichkeitsinn, a sense of possibility in every little corner... As an artist you are always thinking about possibilities; you never think about what is, or what was, but rather could I do something here. That is why it is so attractive to everyone, since they can come and potentially do something here. And the city is not only physically free, but mentally it is full of possibilities.'
In the multi-authored New German Painting (Prestel), editor Christoph Tannert zooms in on a particular slice of Germany's artistic output to consider the enormous impact of German painting on the international art world and the domination of the medium by German artists over the last twenty years. The story begins in Leipzig, where in the 1980s a group of artists, led be Neo Rauch, were making paintings that reflected a struggle with capitalism, high unemployment and the depopulisation of East Germany.
Whilst figures such as Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger and Georg Baselitz loom large throughout these pages, the book's main focus is the many younger German painters, such as Matthias Weischer, Thomas Scheibitz, Kai Althoff and Franz Ackermann, whose work is attracting critical acclaim internationally as well as staggering prices. In the two essays in this lavishly illustrated, bilingual volume, Tannert and the American art historian Graham Bader explore the extraordinary position many of these painters now occupy in the contemporary art world.
Bader is particularly fascinated by Germany's relationship with America, asking why German artists have such an allure for US collectors, critics and dealers. To his own question, 'Is there such a thing any more as specifically American or German art?', Bader answers in the affirmative, though he recognises that these national boundaries are murkier and more complex: 'If the international transmission of these artists' work is a far cry from Beuys' ceremonious airport arrival and felt-wrapped ambulance ride back in 1974, there's no doubting that their stateside reception is every bit as prominent.' But surely the interest isn't simply one way, if it ever really was - with artists such as Dana Schutz, Barnaby Furnas, Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, Inka Essenhigh, Ellen Altfest, Adam Cvijanovic, now beginning to exhibit their work internationally, and collectors lining up to acquire their work, what may once have been a one-way transmission is now surely an even more exciting two-way fascination, with Germany and the US producing some of the most exciting artists currently making work, be they painters, sculptors, photographers or artists working across a range of different mediums.
New German Painting, ed Christoph Tannert
Prestel, £35.00 |
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