Posts Tagged ‘West Germany’

There is a certain age when writing on walls is somewhat socially acceptable, although parents don’t exactly shriek with excitement when their budding Matisses and Kahlos show artistic talent with markers on the living room wall.  But, imagine it now, a large scale 8′ x 14′ Crayola on plaster drawing already installed.  Give it some time and it could be worth thousands!  For most kids, it isn’t about the finished product; it is the act of drawing on the wall that makes up a majority of the thrill.  It is liberating!  But those were the days, when cupboards weren’t loaded with Magic Erasers and scribbles weren’t loaded with a political statement.

While part of Los Angeles will be working itself into a Gustavo Dudamel frenzy November 8th at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, there will another group of Angelenos in a similar state commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall that will have a lot to do with drawing on walls and making political statements.  Making a direct connection to our sister city Berlin with live feed, The Wall Project recreates the Berlin Wall by erecting 40 painted panels of ‘wall’ across and near Wilshire Blvd. for three hours that Sunday.  With the exhibition Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures at LACMA earlier this year in the back of our minds, the newly constructed Berlin Wall will be stationed outside of the museum in the 5900 block of Wilshire.  Headed by the Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War, The Wall Project will divide the city into a temporary East LA and West LA to parallel the Berlin Wall’s division of Germany into East and West.  The Wall Project notes on its website that “led by city officials and international dignitaries wielding sledgehammers, and backed by musical performances, our wall falls, too.”

Both the Angeleno Berlin Wall and remnants of the German Berlin Wall will be painted as part of the commemoration of the original fall.  The LA version of the wall will be divided into two portions.  The ‘Wall Across Wilshire’ will cross the street and will be painted by Shepard Fairey, ArtStorm, and student artists.  The ‘Wall Along Wilshire – Eastside Gallery West,’ will be painted by Kent Twitchell and Berlin-based Thierry Noir and is to remain in front of the 5900 Wilshire building for a longer period of time.  Furthermore, artists on the other side of the Atlantic will be preparing to revamp the remains of the original wall.  All previous works of art have been removed (hmm…)  in order to prepare the original Berlin Wall scribblers to recreate their late 80s – early 90s work.

Be sure you have a marker or paintbrush at hand, it might be time to make history instead of just making your landlord upset.

We live in a world of dichotomies as much as we like to think we don’t. Despite having many choices, there are typically only two: “to be or not to be,” Democratic vs. Republican, East Coast vs. West Coast hip-hop…you get the picture. 

And although most of us lie between the larger black vs. white continuum in a shade of gray, most of the time we think of these binaries to be two sides of the same coin that focuses on one central concept. 

For a limited time, Los Angeles has one particular case study that enables us to understand the two faces of Janus by a crux in history.  LACMA presents Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures, which gives us a modern understanding and interpretation of Two Germanys.

East Germany and West Germany during the Cold War closely identified to their political systems: the Eastern communist government of the German Democratic Republic and the Western democratic government of the Federal Republic of Germany.  And so did the work of their artists, whether congruent or in opposition to them. 

The four sections of the exhibition contain the work of 120 artists while examining the range of art created during the Cold War.  The first part shows work created 1945-49 reflecting Germany’s defeat at the end of World War II .  The second section about the 1950s depicts “the contradiction of West Germany’s reliance upon now-flourishing modernist abstractions and East Germany’s connection to Soviet-style socialist realism,” LACMA writes.  The third and most complex portion of the exhibition documents the flourishing arts scene with new forms, materials, technology, as well as the rising status of the artist and his/her work in the 1960s and 1970s.  And finally, the fourth section focuses on the civil unrest and politicization of visual arts in the late 70s and 80s. 

And while we tend to think of this particular time period in terms of East and West Germany, this exhibition dissects the intricacies of a world with its sky falling on either sides of the Berlin Wall. 

Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures closes April 19 at LACMA.  Please call (323) 857-6010 for more information.