The City as Subject: Public Art and Urban Discourse in Berlin

289 Pages·2022·22.879 MB·English

by  Carolyn S. Loeb

The City as Subject
ii
The City as Subject
Public Art and Urban Discourse in Berlin
Carolyn S. Loeb
BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published in Great Britain 2022
Copyright © Carolyn S. Loeb, 2022
Carolyn S. Loeb has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
For legal purposes the Preface and Acknowledgments on pp. xv–xviii constitute
an extension of this copyright page.
Cover images: (front) Paul Aguirre / EyeEm via Getty; (back) Werner Brunner,
Das Wandbild am ehemaligen besetzten Regenbogenhaus (1980), übermalt 1988
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For Dick—again and always
vi
Contents
List of Illustrations viii
Preface and Acknowledgments xv
1 Introduction: Public Art and the Affirmation of the City 1
An Overview of Themes 3
Berlin Background 11
The Aim and Description of This Book 13
2 West Berlin Walls, Street Art, and the Right to the City 21
The Murals and Their West Berlin Context 24
The Right to the City: A New Paradigm for Public Art 39
Street Art and the Right to the City 45
3 City Spaces: Contemporary Public Sculpture in Berlin 69
New Monuments 73
Networks 82
Voids 89
Ground Planes 97
Conflicts 105
Sculpture Reclaiming the Urban Realm 113
4 The Memorial Landscape of the Berlin Wall 127
Where Was the Wall? 134
Toward Memorialization 147
The Memorial Landscape 154
The Afterlife of the Memorial Landscape 171
The Persistence of Forgetting 175
The Memorial and the City 181
5 Conclusion: Public Art within an Urban Discourse 201
Bibliography 210
Index 225
Illustrations
Plates
1 Ben Wagin, Weltbaum—Grün ist Leben (World Tree I—Green Is
Life), 1975. (Author, 2012)
2 Christian Rothmann, Jürgen Wäldrich, Annegret Hauffe, Hans-
Christian Kuhnow, Stefan Halbscheffel, Wo ist die Admiralstrasse
geblieben? (What’s left of Admiralstrasse?), 1986. (Author, 2012)
3 Ratgeb Artists Group (Werner Brunner, Paul Blankenburg, Werner
Steinbrecher, Nil Ausländer, and Bernd Micka), Muskauer Strasse,
1982. (Author, 2012)
4 Building residents, Waldemarstrasse 81, 1975. (Author, 2012)
5 Gert Neuhaus, Zipper, 1979. (Author, 2012)
6 Irene Niepel, Tempelhofer Ufer, 1981. (Courtesy of Jutta Lüderitz, 2019)
7 Ratgeb Artists Group (Werner Brunner, Paul Blankenburg, Werner
Steinbrecher, Nil Ausländer, and Bernd Micka), The Civilization-
damaged Tree of Redevelopment Breaks through Moabit’s Historical
Landscape, 1979. (Courtesy of Jutta Lüderitz, 2019)
8 Akbar Behkalam, 1980. (Author, 2012)
9 Fabian Fritz, 1987. (Author, 2019)
10 Spekulanten Raus (Speculators Get Out). (Author, 2012)
11 Félix González-Torres, Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit (It’s just a
matter of time), 2002. (Author, 2012)
12 Giggling figure in doorway. (Author, 2012)
13 Blu, Hourglass, 2010. (Author, 2012)
14 On the left, a monster menaces a city. (Author, 2012)
15 Os Gemeos, Yellow Man, 2005, for the second Backjumps Live Issue
exhibition. (Author, 2012)
16 Wolf Vostell, Two Concrete Cadillacs in the Form of the Naked Maja,
1987. (Author, 2006)
17 Brigitte and Martin Matschinsky-Denninghoff, Berlin, 1987.
(Author, 2006)
Illustrations ix
18 Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, Orte des Erinnerns (Places of
Remembrance), 1994. The label depicted on the plaque on the left
blends in with ordinary street signage. (Author, 2006)
19 Orte des Schreckens (Places of Terror), Wittenbergplatz, 1967.
(Author, 2006)
20 Peter Herbrich, Jürgen Wenzel, and Theseus Bappert, Memorial on
Levetzowstrasse, 1988. (Author, 2006)
21 Gerhard Marcks, Der Rufer (The Caller), 1967, installed in the
Tiergarten in 1989. (Author, 2019)
22 Christian Boltanski, The Missing House, 1990. (Author, 2006)
23 Footprint of the former Bohemian church on Bethlehemkirchplatz,
1994; Claes Oldenburg and Coosji van Bruggen, Houseball.
(Author, 2006)
24 Double cobblestones marking the path of the West-facing Wall,
beginning 1997. (Author, 2006)
25 Karla Sachse, Kaninchenfeld (Rabbit Field), 1999. (Author, 2006)
26 Gabriele Basch, Wahre Geschichte (Genuine History), 1999.
(Author, 2006)
27 Christine Gersch and Igor Jerschov, Pocketpark, 2005. (Author, 2019)
28 Wolfgang Rüppel, June 17, 1953 Memorial, 2000. (Author, 2006)
29 A viewing platform with visitors looking from West Berlin into the
East, as seen in a photograph from 1965 posted on a Berlin Wall
Memorial information stele. It shows the Wall at Schwedter Strasse,
where it turned north from Bernauer Strasse. The building at the
right would be torn down to build the concrete slabs of the Wall,
exposing the firewall seen in Plates 42, 43, and 44. (Author, 2017)
30 Ernst-Reuter-Siedlung, Wedding, 1954. (Author, 2016)
31 Juxtaposition of Cor-ten steel rods with the exposed steel
reinforcement bars of a deteriorated surviving section of the Wall
along Bernauer Strasse. Remains of pre-Wall paving at the fronts of
destroyed buildings can be seen at intervals at the foot of the Wall.
(Author, 2017)
32 Within the Berlin Wall Memorial, the width of the Wall zone
is most apparent at the west end, at the beginning of Area A.
This view from the site of the Wall, where it would have run
along Bernauer Strasse, looks across no-man’s land at closed-off
Bergstrasse, to remains of a rear East-facing Wall. Information