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Creative Destruction
The Berlin Holocaust Memorial was dedicated today.
I really wish they had exercised the vision necessary to go with one of Horst Hoheisel’s concepts instead of Peter Eisenman’s gray concrete slabs:
Hoheisel instead takes on a kind of deconstructive and destructive approach to everything. The object of his design was Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate, the imperial bulwark without which, for many residents and visitors alike, there would be no Berlin. Hoheisel’s most shocking idea was to raze the Brandenburg Gate to the ground, crush it to bits and pieces, and make a memorial out of what was left. Barring the destruction or absence of the gate, he also had a design in which the infamous sign at the gateway to Auschwitz–”Arbeit Macht Frei” or “Work Sets You Free”–would be superimposed on the Brandenburg Gate, in forever fashion.
Something Incredible
I went to the National Gallery with a friend who was visiting from Connecticut over the weekend. While viewing the the lower-level sculpture gallery in the west wing I noticed an wonderful new acquisition to the permanent collection–a white marble statue from the mid-nineteenth century by a Milanese artist named Pietro Magni. The work, aptly titled The Reading Girl, left me absolutely speechless.
Every detail is executed perfectly, from the way the fabric pulls from the stitching on sides of the figure’s dress to the folded page in the open book she holds.
The pictures here don’t really do it justice. It’s something you need to see in person.
