Bits

How does a work of art come into being? Impulsively and expressively with brush and palette on canvas, spontaneously as a drawing or study with pencil on paper, with hammer and chisel in hand on stone or with fingers on a keyboard? Or as an already finished image in the mind of an artist?

Pictures speak their own language. Even though they are seemingly silent, they do communicate with viewers and create a resonance in them. And although they only come to us as the result of an artistic process, and therefore seem static, they carry the process of their creation within them. It sounds and resonates in them.

When you think of the work of the Russian-French painter Marc Chagall, the first thing that probably comes to mind are his dreamlike or biblical themes or his stained glass windows which bathe some of the world’s church buildings in such a truly wonderful light.

Three weeks ago, “between the years”, as I was once again dipping into the shelves of our collected world of books, I spontaneously reached out for two picture books. They lay across the other neatly lined up books which was very much in character with the artist whose work they contained. Herbert Achternbusch.

In March 2004 OUBEY announced that he would paint a thousand stars. It was the first time in twenty years that he so concretely envisaged and publicly announced an artistic project. And it was certainly no coincidence that he dedicated this project to the stars.

More than two thirds of all people on this planet live in cities today – and the tendency is rising. Cities made of stone, concrete and asphalt. Cities in which the air is difficult to breath and where the chirping of a bird is drowned out by the noise of traffic.  Cities in which streets and parking places take up many times the amount of space available for parks, playgrounds and sports fields. This brings up the question of whether the city of the future will, and should, look like this.

This film is simple and difficult at the same time. It’s a joy for the eye, for the ear, and above all for the soul. In times like these. Nomadland – the first film I’ve seen in the cinema for over nine months when the cinemas in Germany were closed because of the pandemic. A great cloud of longing hung over this time. It evaporated for a brief moment after a few minutes in the cinema and then turned into a cloud of happy melancholy that accompanies this film from its beginning to its end.  

"Nature does not know extinction; it only knows transformation. All that science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." - Wernher von Braun

Long time ago, at twelve years old, I sat in front of our tube radio, my big brother's tape recorder on my lap, microphone in hand, ready to record a new song from the only station that broadcast pop music for an hour every day at 6 p.m. After each announcement, I pressed the record button. This was also the case when a voice unexpectedly reached me from the loudspeaker and electrified me. It was the voice of Bob Dylan.

Who doesn’t know them, the lively R2D2 and the stiff highly polished 3-CPO? They’re the companions and helpers of the Star Wars heroes, sometimes even their saviours when the going gets really tough. A lot more than just machines, they have their own personalities which make them not only friends of the heroes but favourites with the audience too. The Hubble Space Telescope is real and has nothing of all this. Even so, it has become the darling not only of scientists but of an interested world audience.  

A palm tree extends its full length, from the root ball to the tips of its fronds, diagonally across an appropriately sized exhibition space. Anselm Kiefer has called this impressive installation "Palm Sunday".

Since Plato at the latest, we have been asking ourselves what we actually see when we look at things that are of this world. Which of the things that make up our image of the world exist independently of what we actively perceive; that is when we are awake? And what happens when we are sleeping?