Category: Hamburg

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve ever heard of Wilhelm Leibl, but I thought this painting had a bit of depth to it. He is apparently one of the most important German realist painters and he lived from 1844 until 1900, with this artwork being painted in around 1878 to 1882. The aim of the artist was to portray three different generations in a state of prayer and contemplation.

I have no knowledge of this other than having read it on-line, but this is also the most important work which was painted by Leibl. The Kunsthalle obtained the painting in 1906 and it’s apparently a forerunner of the ‘neue sachlichkeit’ generation, or the ‘new objectivity’ movement.

This is part of my “paintings which look interesting to Julian” series, which is based on absolutely no artistic ability on my behalf. This painting is by Caspar David Friedrich, who according to Wikipedia (and of course therefore this must be entirely true) is “generally considered the most important German artist of his generation”. The German Post Office used his work on one of his stamps, an honour he’d have no doubt been thrilled with if he had been alive to see it.

Friedrich lived from 1774 until 1840, with this artwork of a ploughed field having been painted in around 1830. Unfortunately, I can’t find out anything more interesting about this particular painting, other than the Kunsthalle obtained it in 1905.

The artist of this work, which has the longer name of the “Man of Sorrows between the Virgin and Saint John” lived between 1472 and 1553 and was also a friend of Martin Luther. One of the best known paintings of Martin Luther was painted by Cranach, and he became known as of the most important artists of the Reformation period.

I’ve wondered why museums are quite cagey about the provenance of items in their collections, as when paintings such as this go on sale it’s often known where it has been for several centuries. All the gallery says about this one is that it was purchased in 1943 and was restored in 2015.

The theme of this painting is when Jesus Christ was taken to the Temple of Jerusalem for him to be inducted into Judaism. It was painted by Hans Holbein, the older one and not the younger one of Henry VIII fame, in 1500 or 1501 and is painted on a pine panel.

The Kunsthalle acquired the work in 1912 and it was originally part of the high altarpiece of the Dominican Monastery in Frankfurt. I’d be interested to know where this artwork has been for centuries, as the monastery came under municipal ownership by the nineteenth century and it was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.

Although I thought at first this was a bronze sculpture, it’s actually made out of oak. I hadn’t previously heard of Ernst Barlach, although it has transpired that there is a museum dedicated to him and his works which is located in the suburbs of Hamburg. If I come to the city again, I will certainly meander along down to see it.

Barlach became anti-war following the First World War and this later set him on a collision course with the Nazis in the 1930s, who described his art as degenerate. They banned him from working as a sculptor and he could no longer be a member of art academies. He died in October 1938 after having seen many museums in the country have to remove, and sometimes destroy, his artworks in 1937.

This must be one of the museum’s most optimistic projects, an artwork which will only be finished in five hundred years. The set-up, which is in its own room at the gallery, involves collecting rain water from a roof gutter which then goes through carbon dioxide and calcium carbonate before dripping onto a marble plate.

The artwork was installed in 1996, so we’re already 23 years into the project, and the aim is to get the stalagmite to be five centimetres in height. The underlying context is to get visitors to think how much will happen over five hundred years, whilst very little is happening to this artwork.

It’s rocketing along…..

I meandered around the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the city’s main art gallery, and wondered why nearly every single painting had glass in front of it. The gallery has had a brilliant idea in having a series of rooms explaining the scope of their collection and also answering why they have some of the policies that they do.

And, to my surprise, they actually answered the question about why they have glass in front of paintings, so I imagine it’s been asked many times before. The answer is quite simple, they have been putting it there for decades as the smoke from the neighbouring train lines was causing a build up of soot and grime on their paintings from the steam engines.

They do explain that from the 1970s they’ve made efforts to ensure that the glass is anti-reflective, colourless and offers protection from ultraviolet radiation. I’m not sure that they’ve got the anti-reflective glass quite perfect yet, but I’m just pleased that there’s a reason for doing it.

But care has to be taken with glass, as the photo at the top of this post is of the glass which was in front of this painting. It seems that the glass was put on too soon in this case, but it’s still amazing how much of the image transferred to the surface of the glass.

I think I like this, even though I have no clue what it is actually meant to be other than a large number of flints in a defined heap. The artist is though of international acclaim and there’s an interesting summary of his work on Wikipedia which reads:

“Several of his works were based around walks that he has made, and as well as land based natural sculpture, he uses the mediums of photography, text and maps of the landscape he has walked over. In his work, often cited as a response to the environments he walked in, the landscape would be deliberately changed in some way, as in A Line Made by Walking (1967), and sometimes sculptures were made in the landscape from rocks or similar found materials and then photographed. Other pieces consist of photographs or maps of unaltered landscapes accompanied by texts detailing the location and time of the walk it indicates.”

I like the idea of giving meaning to walking and its impact on the natural environment, so the underlying thought behind his works sounds intriguing.

The only slight limitation I have with this is that I don’t have a bloody clue what this artwork is trying to tell me. Insomuch that I carefully stood there and searched for the artwork on-line it worked as I wanted to find out more, but I’m just a little disappointed that I can’t get any real meaning from this. I could add my own meaning, but I could do that to anything and it’d likely just involve me imagining it’s a road to Greggs which the walker cannot stray off of.

The artist is still alive and, to my knowledge, exhibiting and creating artworks and I did think of going as far as contacting him and asking him about the work. But I couldn’t find any contact details and so I didn’t. Which is probably for the best, as I have no idea what I’m talking about at the best of times.