Don't hold your breath – Tripping the world, slowly

Street Art of Bielefeld: Monday Art

Ninety years ago, Bielefeld became a stronghold of the Nazis. The Jewish synagogue was burnt, Jews were deported to Riga, and disabled people were sterilized and later killed. After the end of the war the city has rigorously investigated and uncovered the crimes committed during that era and tried to make restitution. It is a continuing effort. Recently, the library at the University traced books which were stolen by Nazis. I was happy to see that this de-Nazification extends to the imagination of young creators of street art.

Every film is political
Wim Wenders (1988) in his book The Logic of Images

Politics is not a stranger to art, especially not street art. But art must also stand on its own, irrespective of its politics. In the same car park that I saw the featured image, the other pieces that you see here also made an appearance. I liked them a lot.

This kind of street art appropriates images from popular culture and turns them into something out of the artists’ life. I do not watch enough of animation to be able to recognize all the figures of monsters that I saw in this parking lot. So I’m not able to trace in what sense the figures have been liberated from their corporate moorings and transmuted by the artists. But I’m pretty sure that the slogans incorporated into the images are not shown in any corporate owned animated cartoons.

Two drinks

Always the same question. What should we drink with the food? One afternoon, when we stopped in the middle of a walk for a quick sandwich, the question bothered us. Neither of us wanted water: it was a hot day, and we’d been drinking a lot of it all day. I decided to have a Darjeeling. The Family spent longer thinking about it, and finally decided on a lemonade. “Nice”, we said to each other, after a sip. We tasted the others’ drink. “Nice”, we nodded. Little did we know that the lemonade had a story behind it.

Serenity

Forest spiral

Waldspiral looked wild, in a nice leafy suburb of Darmstadt. Designed by the Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, it was built by the architect Heinz Springmann. We drove around it, and looked at the way the building spirals up from the street level to the golden onion domes. Completed in 2000 CE, the design does not conform to grids and straight lines, in a style typical of Hundertwasser. Each window that I could see seems different from the others. Trees come out of windows, and others grow on the roof terrace, which slopes up to a height of twelve stories. I wondered how it manages to comply with the strict German building codes, but it must, since there are people living there.

I discovered a very topical thing about Hundertwasser. He had designed stamps for the FIFA underdog Cape Verde. One of them can be seen here.

The doors of Mathildenhohe

The Family said that she was attracted to the door that you see above by the six-meter-high figures of a man and a woman. They are sculptures by Ludwig Habich, one of the resident artists in Darmstadt’s Mathildenhohe artists’ colony in the early years of the 20th century CE. She saw the details of the gilded ornaments only when she came closer. The inscription above the entrance is a sentence from Hermann Bahr: “The artist shows his world – which never was and never will be.” This is the entrance to the Ernst Ludwig House, a communal studio building for the artists. It was built to plans by Joseph Maria Olbrich, and the foundation stone was laid on March 24, 1900. In the center of the main floor was designed to be a room for assembly and functions. It has paintings by Paul Bürck, and is flanked by artists’ studios. The houses of the artists were built around it. It was reconstructed as a museum in the 1980s.

Two other notable doors from the colony that she had photos of are above. The one on the left shows the door of the Russian revival style St. Mary Magdalene Chapel, completed in 1899. The photo on the right is of the entrance to the famous Hochzeitcentrum of Darmstadt, its wonderful Jugendstil Wedding tower, whose top is visible from most of the center of the town.

Deep waters

Kirchlengern is a small town in eastern Westphalia. We spent a weekend in the countryside near it with friends. It was a perfect spring weekend, cool and sunny, with puffy clouds. Now and then they would gather in promise of rain, but then would scatter again to let us see the blue sky. “It’s perfect for a walk,” The Family said late in the afternoon, and everyone agreed. So we walked past the last houses, and past meadows full of buttercups and late daisies to the stream nearby. It’s called Ostbach, and it drains into the Else, which joins the Werre, which falls into the Weser, which flows into the North Sea.

We crossed a bridge over it. The river is shallow under it, strewn with rocks. Looking at the quick flowing water, I guessed that it would be deeper and broader upstream. That was the way we walked. The river floods now and then, so houses are built further away, leaving a lot of moist land to turn into meadows. The result is beautiful. I took a few photos: I’d not seen a spring day like this for a long time. I took my phone out of my pocket to take a few shots. In places like this, you don’t even have to think about structuring your photos. Depth arises naturally from perspective and scale. You can keep your mind on the beautiful present.

Sure enough, as we walked along the water turned placid and deep. This was the home of coots and geese. The banks were overgrown with wildflowers. I recognize very few of these flowers of north Europe, so I just admire them in passing. The path faded into squelchy mud in about a kilometer,. A little before that a fallen trunk was covered with mold and moss, with a scramble cleared over it by previous walkers.

On the way back I noticed places where there were path down to the water, and benches at the edges. You could come here with a book and a bag full of berries. Or you could spend a few hours fishing. Or, like us you could just meet with friends and walk past the benches. Anything at all is pleasant on a mellow spring day like this.

Canada goose + Birds of the Week Invitation CLXXIV

Canada geese (Branta canadensis) are native to north America. Migrating birds were once spotted rarely in Iceland and the extreme west of Ireland, as well as in eastern Siberia. This large goose is unmistakable due to its black head and neck with a white “chin strap”. As in many long-lived birds, the pairs stay together over many breeding seasons. Chicks remain with the parents for a full year, and form a family group which migrates together, until the young find mates in their second spring. I first saw a flock almost thirty years ago in Long Island, USA, but I don’t seem to have a photo from that encounter. There are several subspecies, which differ from each other both genetically and in morphology.

They were introduced into France and UK in the 17th century CE, and soon established feral breeding colonies, which expanded into the rest of Europe by the early 20th century. I saw a breeding pair in the small village of Kirchlengern in northern Germany. The photo here shows one of the pair. They are considered to be pests in Europe, because they drive away native species and overgraze on aquatic grass and sedge.

This is an invitation to share your post about birds, their photos, or their behaviour. If you post about birds this week (starting today and up to next Monday), you could leave a link in the comments, or a pingback, for others to follow. You don’t have to have a recent photo, nor do you have to post a photo of the same bird as mine. Do use the tag “Bird of the Week” to help others find your post, and remember to visit other people’s posts. For more information see the main landing page for this invitation.

Birds of the Week CLXXIII

Jugendstil at Mathildenhohe: Monday Art

On a cold but sunny day in May, I was off to meetings, but The Family decided to visit Mathildenhöhe, a famous early 20th century artists’ colony in Darmstadt. She told me later that it was easy to navigate by dead reckoning using one of the most famous Jugendstil (Art Nouveu) structures in all of Germany. This is the “Wedding Tower”, a landmark of the Mathildenhöhe and the city of Darmstadt (featured photo) . The 48.5 m high tower was designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich, and built using dark red clinker bricks. It was commissioned by the city of Darmstadt to commemorate the wedding of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig and Grand Duchess Eleonore on February 2, 1905. The five barrel-vaulted arches of the roof are striking, resembling an outstretched hand, which is why it is also called the “Five-Finger Tower”.

In 1899 the grand duke invited seven artists involved in the development of Jugendstil, namely Peter Behrens, Paul Bürck, Rudolf Bosselt, Hans Christiansen, Ludwig Habich, Patriz Huber, and Joseph Maria Olbrich, to set up a colony in the former ducal park of Mathildenhöhe. The Family said the artists’ village was full of interesting houses, traditional in outline but with innovative details. The area, especially a grove of trees, was full of interesting sculpture. She came back with lots of photos, a selection of which you can see in the gallery above.

Although it is not a Jugendstil structure, I’ll add a small gallery of photos of the exterior of St. Mary Magdalene Chapel, because it stands next to the Wedding Tower. This Russian revival style church with gold onion domes was built between 1897 and 1899 by the architect Leon Benois, and used as a private chapel by Tsar Nicholas II, whose wife Alexandra Feodorovna was born in Darmstadt. It was built of Russian stone. Sometimes it is claimed that it was built on soil from Russia brought to Darmstadt by train. For reasons that everyone will know, the Mathildenhöhe experiment came to an end in 1914.

Chocolate

Confusion is my natural state when I look at chocolate. I know I don’t want to eat it, but I can’t look away. I know that The Family also suffers from this. One day she came back from a walk in Cologne with this photo, and a small parcel of chocolates in her bag. She declared “I got these for you.” I protested, “I’m not sure I should have any.” “You can’t say that now. Anyway, we are on a holiday,” she replied. We shared the chocolate and The Family mused, “I don’t like chocolate any more.” I have a feeling that this confusion may be everyone’s natural reaction to chocolate.

Football fans make street art

Football fans and art! What else do you call the deliberate creation of something that pleases the eye and has no practical use? In a village in Germany a wall was painted over with slogans of the local football club. Next to it a small wooden bridge over a stream was decorated with this pattern made from caps of beer bottles. Was it a collaborative piece? From the depth to which each had been punched, it probably was. Football fans can give other street artists a lesson in permanence.