 |
| Der Jahrhundertschritt |
A great place to begin is the cool statue outside of the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum:
Der Jahrhundertschritt (which I'll translate as "the step-through-the-century"). Naturally one recognizes the fascist salute immediately. But you also see the raised fist of the communists and the jackboot of the militarist. As for the bare foot/leg? I'm not sure. Perhaps it represents the humanity seeking to stride forward and away from all we did to make ourselves miserable in the past century. Perhaps it represents naked victims of torture and imprisonment. The figure's head is tucked down into his jacket, trying to survive the dehumanizing terror. It's an ugly sculpture, but the more I think about it the more I like it's violent dynamism. I feel like I can empathize with the man ducking into his collar, waiting for the hurricane to pass. Sometimes you need to go full-on turtle.
I also liked Arno Rink's
Terror II (1978)
. I visited the MdbK (Museum der bildenden Kunste). The Rink exhibition will be gone by September, but I was thrilled to see work from an artist who spent most of his career in the service of "Real, Existing Socialism". There were repeated themes in his work, all of which emphasized the human body. Some pieces were largely unpolitical: lovers embracing or models in his studio. Other works, like
Terror II, clearly address the danger of dehumanizing fascism in the non-socialist world. He seems to have been very dedicated to the GDR. After
die Wende (the fall of communism) he painted a series of self-portraits with his studio burning down around him. His final works are more expressionistic. It appears he made the leap from "socialist collectivism" to "bourgeois individualism" just fine.
 |
| Terror II |
 |
| Rink could do socialist-realist paintings as well |
