Skip to main content

MY ESCAPE FROM “THERE IS NO ESCAPE” – PART FOUR

At the end of my second visit to the Hockney exhibition a few weeks ago, I decided to have another walk through the Gemäldegalerie.  I’ve seen the permanent collection several times before, often in combination with a special exhibition, but I thought, “Why not?  You can never see too much good art.”  I don’t think I made it around more than 2/3 of the galleries, but what I saw was a Greatest Hits of European painting from the 13th to the 18th century.   

Here, in no particular order, is what I was able to capture.  If you are in Berlin, I recommend seeing the works in person.  My photos don't do them justice.

Jan Van Eyck  (ca. 12" tall!)

Rogier van der Weyden

Rembrandt (self-portrait, top)



 Vermeer


Georges de La Tour

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Raphael

Dürer

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Hans Holbein

Botticelli

Fra Filippo Lippi

Masaccio (front)

Masaccio (retro)

Ghirlandaio

Bellini

Caravaggio

Frans Hals

Watteau

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Reubens

Van Dyck

What with a pandemic, record heat waves, a war of attrition, and a general sense of something between malaise and foreboding, it feels so good to get back into a museum to see how others saw their world, coped with their trials and tribulations, and left us some things of beauty and permanence. 

Keep it real!

Marilyn

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE UNDER MY FEET

  I feel the earth move under my feet I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down I just lose control Down to my very soul.                                     Carole King, 1971 This is a very personal post--about a very personal apocalypse, one quite different from the Biblical one imaged above. Carole King's words come to mind because they describe how I feel about this upside down, ass-backwards moment in time.   While there are good things happening in the world, their scale when compared to the bad things that are happening seems to me pitifully dwarfed.  When you look at this short list of events and trends, can you tell me what's right with this picture?  Do these items upset your even keel and threaten to drown you in pessimism?  Consider... Russia and Israel are killin...

THE BROLIGARCHS V. DEMOCRACY

Although not elected by the American people, the world’s wealthiest person, a South African businessman, is running the United States government with the blessing of its chief executive and without meaningful opposition from the legislature or definitive censure by the judiciary.   What is going on?   Has business trumped politics, and if so, doesn’t that raise an interesting question:        Is capitalism compatible with democracy? In pondering this, my research led me to an American billionaire; a German emeritus professor of political science at the Berlin Social Sciences Center; and a Dutch former member of the European Parliament, now a Fellow at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, all of whom had quite a lot to say.     First, Peter Thiel, the billionaire. Peter Thiel’s Wiki bio says he co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk; he was the initial outside investor in Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook; and he co-founded Palantir, the big-d...

NEW GAME, NEW RULES

Let me set the stage.   I am a U.S. citizen and a permanent resident of Germany.   In other words, I am an immigrant.   That status didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t come easily.   When we moved to Italy, it took me five years to convert my visa to a Permesso di Soggiorno.   When we subsequently moved to Germany, I had to surrender my Italian residency permit, and it took me another five years to obtain my Daueraufenthaltstitel .   In each country, I jumped through the hoops, produced the necessary documents, fulfilled the language requirements, attended the obligatory immigration appointments, paid my fees, didn’t attempt to work until I could do so legally, and counted the days.   In short, I respected the process and the law.   It has always been crystal clear to me that I live here at the discretion of the German government.   If I screw up, they can “ask” me to leave.   Therefore, I don’t have much sympathy for people who ju...