Help! I've got a puzzler. I'm writing about a painting made in 1959 that has the title "Steinläuse." So I thought, huh, what're those? and I went to the internet, which never fails me. I found out that they're not real bugs (duh, I suppose I might have guessed), but something that Loriot invented in 1976. This according to the Wikipedia. Now the problem, you may notice, is that my painting predates the Loriot sketch by more than 15 years. So was the Steinlaus already a joke, like the Jackalope, that Loriot just elaborated on? Any ideas about where I might get some kind of a reference for it?
This campaign for, oh, I don't know, solidarity I guess, can get pretty irritating. (Just a warning, Safari doesn't like the page much. Oh, and it's all in German.)
Many hilarious and embittered responses have been created by Regular Germans and are available at the dubistdeutschland pool on Flickr. Read about it at Spreeblick.
With less time than ever to be doing this, I've been peeking around a little to see what's on in the artworld in Berlin. ArtNet is featuring this review of the "Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst."
What interested me more than the news that Berlin now has a major contemporary art prize was the mention that the show is sharing space with the Bernd and Hilla Becher retrospective. Hurrah! It's up until January, another thing I'm adding to the might-see list.
The FAZ has some nice shots of the Immendorf show in Berlin, as well as a few choice words. Sounds like you and I didn't miss anything at the opening, but I'm still hoping that I'll get to see this one in person.
This says that we'll be feeling the effects of the new hurricane sometime on Saturday. I'm worried, no sense in pretending I'm not, even this far away from the coast. I'm not sure how else I should feel or how to prepare. It's bizarre to know several days in advance what's coming your way, very ominous, especially when the current weather here is normal: sunny, hotter than is comfortable, the usual. It's scary, because you just have to wait. I grew up in a place where tornadoes happened every so often, and they continue to scare me badly, but they happen suddenly. Hurricanes? They lumber on the horizon for days, threatening. This is new for me.
EDIT: you'll see if you click the above image link that the storm has veered away from us to a path that's a lot closer to where the last one went. The immediate fear I was feeling has changed to something still insistent but with more distance: what happens if the same places get hit again?
Well. She who hesitates. Gisela Schirmer's new book,
möglichst oft die Gleichwertigkeit des sozialistischen Realismus mit den westlichen Kunstströmungen beweisen zu müssen. Sie setzt dabei auf das extrem vereinfachende Muster, dass Kunst in der DDR gesellschaftspolitisch engagiert und also relevant gewesen sei, während die autonome Kunst des Westens gesellschaftsfern gewesen sei, aber auf der documenta als Propagandamittel für die freien Gesellschaften eingesetzt worden sei.*
Sounds less than subtle, but I'll wait until I see for myself. Schirmer's "Parteilichkeit" (the BZ's word) is pretty well established after her biography of Willi Sitte. And I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, either; we spend all this time gathering evidence, at some point you want to be allowed to make a judgement, or at least to draw some subjective conclusions. Leaves more room for the rest of us to think and draw some of our own. Hm. Doesn't sound very scholarly of me.
*to prove, as often as possible, socialist realism's parity with western art styles. In doing so she banks on an extremely simplified model in which the art of the GDR was socially engaged and thus relevant, whereas the autonomous art of the west was removed from society but was utilized as propoganda for free societies at documenta.
Ich stimme für die Sozialdemokraten, weil sie auf Seiten der sozial Schwachen stehen und uns vor dem Absturz in amerikanische Klassenverhältnisse zu schützen wissen.
from Günter Grass' speech in support of Red-Green government. (Not to be confused with Red Green. He doesn't have a government. Yet.)
