Walking. Gossip. Travel.

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  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Bildelf by Georg Baselitz)

    Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Bildelf by Georg Baselitz)

    And another post in Julian’s seemingly endless photos of artworks of which he understands very little, but comments anyway.

    This delicate little thing is called “paintingeleven” which isn’t the most revealing title. Painted in 1992 and purchased in 1997, this artwork is by Georg Baselitz who was born in 1938 and is still alive today. Wikipedia note that this artist “is seen as a revolutionary painter as he draws the viewer’s attention to his works by making them think and sparking their interest”. I can spend some time looking with my unexpert eye at a painting and try to put some meaning to it, but it’s fair to say that I didn’t understand this at all.

    However, the Kunsthalle is prepared for this, and has made an huge effort to add narrative to artworks for those who want to get some understanding of them. So, Baselitz started in 1991 to paint large canvasses and the painting name is simply the order in which he created his works. I like that sense of order. The gallery seem to struggle from here, they describe the red and white fields on which two figures (the black lines) are painted. I’m not convinced, although apparently he painted them with his fingers. Anyway, from here the four green lines are dripped from a higher platform, with the paint transferred to them by Baselitz getting into a tub of green paint with his shoes on.

    I still have no idea, although it occurs to me that this would fit into the Five Guys red and white background style….

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Twenty-Seven

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Twenty-Seven

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Billingsgate Language

    This is according to the dictionary, “foul language or abuse from the market where the fish(er)women assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes, they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a little on the left hand”. There was historically another similar term, although it had the same meaning, of ‘Billingsgate Discourse’.

    Billingsgate Market was once the fish market which was in operation near to the Tower of London from around the sixteenth century until 1982. At that stage it was moved to a site near to Canary Wharf, although the area only became built up as a commercial district later on. The term Billingsgate for offensive language persisted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although I’m not sure it’s very common today.

    Although this reminds me of the fisherwomen who came to Lowestoft over the last few decades, who received a reputation in parts for their direct language. The same principles no doubt applied back in Billingsgate…

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Forgery by Óscar Domínguez)

    Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Forgery by Óscar Domínguez)

    The gallery has now made a little exhibit about this painting, which is a forgery that they managed to accidentally buy. I suppose it’s easier for galleries to do this in retrospect, they can blame a previous curator more easily…

    The gallery purchased this painting in 1957, which was meant to be ‘Mystery and Melancholy of a Street’ by Giorgio de Chirico. Now, this shouldn’t have been too difficult, as de Chirico (1888-1978) was still alive, but there was a little problem and that was that he had seemingly got a bit confused. This had led to him painting artworks and dating them incorrectly to a previous date, as well as declaring perfectly authentic works as fakes. Anyway, he declared this painting as fake in 1970, which I can imagine moderately irritated the curators.

    On this occasion though, he was correct, he hadn’t painted it. Someone called Óscar Domínguez had faked it, but that was only discovered after the gallery had conducted numerous tests. Perhaps those tests might have been better before they bought it, but I imagine scientific advances made that much easier in the 1980s. Anyway, now the gallery has a different story to tell, which is that through careful analysis they are able to prove that some works are fakes and not as they might seem. And since every artwork has a story, this made this perhaps more interesting than it would have been if de Chirico had actually painted it.

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Self-Portrait by Franz Nölken)

    Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Self-Portrait by Franz Nölken)

    Visiting art galleries in Germany is interesting to me as they have to deal with the challenges of the Second World War, but often in a different way to those in Poland and other occupied territories. I’ve visited tens of galleries and museums in Poland, most of which were raided by the Nazis and their collections either pinched by corrupt officials and sold for profit, destroyed or shipped back to the Fatherland. Even today, there are tens of thousands of paintings, artworks and collectables which haven’t been found or which are residing in collections where they probably shouldn’t be. Poland isn’t alone, this happened throughout Europe and the level of destruction was enormous, but over 500,000 Polish artworks were looted and many are still in Germany.

    In Germany, this all presented a different problem, which was that artworks were bring procured cheaply or just given to galleries. Sometimes it’s the case that artworks were forcibly taken from Jewish families, or brought back from occupied territories, other times it’s less clear cut, Jewish families selling property as they wanted to flee Germany. But very rarely were artworks willingly sold by anyone at this time, it became a necessity for many families.

    This was a huge problem for curators at German museums, they had seen some of their collections raided as the Nazis considered it ‘degenerate art’, but it was clear they didn’t particularly want their artworks destroyed. So, rather than see them burnt as happened on some occasions, other galleries such as the Basel Museum in Switzerland tried to buy artworks up. Much else was sold at auction, some legitimate sales from galleries who were told to dispose of items, other times it was that of families forced to sell their belongings.

    So, this left museums and galleries such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle in a dilemma, as they saw paintings and artworks arriving into their building. I’m sure at the time there wasn’t much that could be done, but as the decades have gone by, the gallery has wanted to do the right thing.

    This is the self-portrait painted by Franz Nölken, a German artist who was killed just before the end of the First World War. The artwork was painted in 1904 and it was owned by a Jewish family named von der Porten. They decided to flee to Belgium in 1938 and they tried to sell this painting to the Kunsthalle, who rejected it. However, in 1939, the gallery acquired it from a private dealer in exchange for another artwork by the same artist that they had in their collections. It’s not known how much the art dealer paid for it, but it was likely only a fraction of its worth at the time.

    This is a photo of the artwork when it was owned by the von der Porten family, who were able to flee Hamburg. Sadly, Frieda von der Porten and Dr. Ernst von der Porten both killed themselves in 1940 when the Nazi hatred they thought they had escaped from engulfed them once again.

    With both of the owners dead, this artwork remained in the collections of the gallery. But it has recently decided to pro-actively find ancestors of these artworks, as part of the country’s “fair and just settlement”. With this artwork, the gallery has been unable to find any descendants, although its work continues.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Twenty-Six

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Twenty-Six

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    To Bilk

    The dictionary defines this as “to cheat. Let us bilk the rattling cove; let us cheat the hackney coachman of his fare”. This is one of those words that has somehow survived in its original form, with bilking today being the term for driving off without paying for petrol. So, pretty much the same meaning as running off from a taxi without paying, although the word can be used to describe any act of fraud or attempt to withhold money.

    The dictionary was published around 1800, so the word was more common then. It nearly fell out of usage during the early part of the nineteenth century, but seems to be a little more in vogue again now. Back in the seventeenth century, the word bilk mean to spoil an opponent’s score in a game, so the word is some derivative of that.

  • Pittsburgh – PPG Place

    Pittsburgh – PPG Place

    This is PPG Place in the heart of Pittsburgh, with what I consider to be an architecturally stunning building.

    It’s the Head Office of what is now PPG Industries, although it was formerly known as the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.

    The building was designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee and although it looks very modern, it was opened in 1983. Given the company’s heritage the heavy use of glass was perhaps inevitable, but the neo-Gothic style is just something quite special.

    The building used just under 20,000 panes of glass in its construction, with PPG Place seemingly having been well received by locals when it was built. That sheer amount of glass is around one million square feet in size, with the whole project costing 200 million dollars back in the 1980s. That was a brave investment given the decline that Pittsburgh was suffering from at the time, although it appears to have been a financial success for the company.

    There are 231 glass spires throughout the building complex and this is the main tower, standing 40 storeys in height. The whole set-up reminded me a glass version of the Palace of Westminster, and this was apparently asked of the designers, who said there were other buildings in the United States that were really their inspiration.

    The centrepiece of the complex. All very lovely.

  • Pittsburgh – Smithfield Street Bridge

    Pittsburgh – Smithfield Street Bridge

    The Smithfield Street Bridge is a sweeping statement of a river crossing, designed by Gustav Lindenthal and constructed between 1881 and 1883. It’s the third bridge at this location, the first was destroyed in a large city fire and the second wasn’t substantial enough to deal with the increase in traffic.

    Looking back towards South Side, this bridge is made from steel, not unexpected from the Steel City and it’s the second oldest bridge made from this material in the United States. What is more surprising is that some wit from the local transport authority thought in the 1990s that they should demolish this bridge to replace it with a new one. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and the structure was instead repaired.

    Originally the city’s trams went over the bridge, but these were replaced by Pittsburgh’s light rail system which takes a different route.

    The bridge at the end of the nineteenth century, which was widened on a couple of occasions.

  • Pittsburgh – East Carson Street

    Pittsburgh – East Carson Street

    East Carson Street runs along near to the river on the South Side of Pittsburgh, a long and grand street which was named by property developer Nathaniel Bedford after one of his friends. His friend was called Carson, not East…..

    What impressed me most about this street is that if you could take the cars away, it felt like nineteenth century America (or what I imagine nineteenth century America was like). Indeed, most of the buildings are from when this area was created in the mid-nineteenth century, when Pittsburgh was becoming a prosperous city.

    In the 1950s, the population of Pittsburgh was just shy of 700,000 people, up from 325,000 at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now, with the collapse of the steel industry, the population is under 300,000, which has meant that many buildings were just left and never modernised or developed. This area is now protected to ensure that its heritage is maintained, but it’s a charming and quirky street with many bars and restaurants along it.

    I hope that this street doesn’t change, it would be easy to modernise and gentrify it, but I like this piece of nineteenth century heritage. I also thought that I had some better photos of this street with more heritage and fewer traffic cones, but perhaps not…..

  • Pittsburgh – East Carson Street Mural

    Pittsburgh – East Carson Street Mural

    The quality of this mural is one of the finest that I’ve seen on any piece of street art, even down to the South Side leaflet in the girl’s hand (might be necessary to click on the image to enlarge it). It was painted by David Hawbaker, a local art teacher, and shows a community gathering, being looked over by a steelworker from the past. This image is swarming with history, community and positivity. Just a slight shame its location is in front of a small car park, but it’s pretty much still visible.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Twenty-Five

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Twenty-Five

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Betwattled

    The dictionary defines this as “surprised, confounded, out of one’s senses” and I’ve no idea how this has fallen out of common usage as it’s quite a catchy word…. It was more commonly used in the west country and was in use from at least the sixteenth century, so it remained used for three centuries at least.

    Although used relatively rarely in written English, it’s clear from this graph that it has remained in use to a small degree. There’s been a recent uptick in its usage as well, although Susie Dent did mention the word on Countdown, so that might have been the cause of that.