Home again to the comfort of long-living
in one place and welcoming phone calls and
emails are easing me back. The lush woods and towering trees still shelter my house. I return to yoga on my cushy mat and at the Y. The washing machine and drier are at the ready, and
the pile up of mail (and bills) is shrinking. Most happily, the plants on the deck burgeoned during my three-weeks
away.
I’ve already taken the train twice into NYC, once walking touristy 42nd
Street to Dorothy (www.vfa.us/honor.htm) Round Table and where over an Afghani lunch we, a group of eight, discussed NYC
theatre, the city's foibles, politics, and the world’s mayhem. And just the other day to spend a totally splendid afternoon with Shefali from India (www.amazon.com/Shefali-Moitra/e/B001ICNGN2) on her rarest of trips to the USA and NYC. But wait, remember I’ve barely
returned from roaming London/Prague/Berlin where Europe’s perfectly preserved
marvels of civilization chugged before me and World Wars
and the communist era remain topics to consider especially in Prague and Berlin where
I’d not been before.
So, let me say before more time floods by:
As major cities usually are London is full of itself (and justly so). Tourists of
all stripes come and go, decked in all imaginings of clothing (even more so in
Berlin). They come and go, talking not of Michelangelo but of the latest
whatever at the Tate. I went for the Matisse exhibit, largest collection of his paper cutouts. Waiting my turn (you get a ticket for a certain time) I marveled at the Surrealist show, discovered a luminous
Turner, photographed the ugly building and some folk at rest from their culture glut.
 |
| Turner | |
 |
| Inside the Tate |
 | | |  |
Madonna of the Tate
|
|
The Matisse paper cutouts are brilliant, bright and huge. I thought I was familiar with them. The MET has the jazz series. Many were new to me. I loved the big mockup for stained glass. The intense colors and large scale of the works actually made me dizzy. I had to take it slow. Now at home, I cut out a copy of his
Venus and tacked it on my studio wall for inspiration. Grace and simplicity, what a great lesson.
Painter friend Alan
Dick brought me into the
National Gallery through a side entrance. Knowing artist that he is, he walked me straight
to the paintings in Proust I seek. The
 |
| Rembrandt Self portrait, age 63 |
perfectly painted Rembrandt at age 63
stared back at us with the wisdom of his genius. We spot the
Hendrickje Stoffels Proust mentions,
Woman
Bathing in a Stream.
Alan lives frugally in London. I
stayed four days, sleeping each night on a futon on his spare studio floor. He brilliantly conjures all colors with a brief palette: titanium yellow, manganese blue
and a single red. He paints thinly with carefully tended brushes. His
life appears to be, but is not simple. He’s very Zen from years in Japan, admirably
cultural, codifying a breadth of philosophy, championing the literary greats, brilliant books,
classic films, and the piano (he plays Satie) into a grand parade of ideas and
clear thinking. His models are beautiful young women with cultivated minds. They
pose for his paintings, are admired, and love him as devoted
nieces. Each artwork ventures beyond the portrait, a dense cultural
statement. Here's Alan pouring me a glass of wine, his Paris painting so beautifully rendered behind.
 |
| Alan Dick, the painter at home in his London flat. Painting on the wall |
London is vibrant, beyond Rome where I was last December. London
has it all, folk from all the world and walks of life, busyness, gaiety,
quiet parks, Indian shopkeepers, taxis, the Tube, red buses, great museums, and
nowadays, wonderful food, everything. I’d spent November into December in Assisi,
Italy last year where the devout and not the various come, not those looking for
life beyond religion (save for us artists at the Arte Studio Ginestrelle). London
embraces the spectrum of the here and now.
 |
| And London's literate homeless |
|
Yet, you can't be in England or anywhere in Europe without reminders of difficult histories. While I was in London, it was the anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand that led to World War I. Discourse on that scourge was aired. What would be facing me in Prague and Berlin?
Back to the history and legacy of art. I went alone to the
Wallace collection to absorb its
banquet of a display. There’s Gainsborough
 |
| Gainsborough detail |
|
|
Joshua Reynolds, Van Dyck, Canaletto
 |
| Venice, Canaleto |
Pieter de Hooch, Rembrandt, and more. Rembrandt’s Titus was there, looking
wan, having lived through the death of his mother, his father’s bankruptcy, and
the servant who became his father’s next woman.
 |
| Titus, Rembrandt |
|
 |
| Titus? Monoprint with Chine Colle, Suzanne Benton |
I created a monoprint with an
image from a Rembrandt painting. The painting is in the National Gallery hanging near the Titus. I'd thought the image was of Titus, but no, it’s
A Boy in a Fanciful Costume. Here's my print.
One painting in the Wallace is by a woman, Elizabeth-Louise Vigee LE
BRUN. It's in the same room as two new-to-me magnificent large
Rembrandts. Her name is partly hidden by a cupid statuette.
Then, there it was, what I’d come
to the Wallace to see, a painting in Proust, a lush and seemingly still alive Fruit and Flowers by Jan van Huysum (before
1726).
Pieter de Hooch’s were nearby, preparing me for the one I’d seek out
in Berlin.
Prague is another story, a picture perfect walking city, a museum
of the streets where ancient and impeccably restored architecture (as far back
as 800 AD) make it seem a continuous film set, a wonderland of on and on, and I enjoyed it all for six ever-unfolding days.
  |
| |
|
 |
On the Charles Bridge with Suzanna Simor, my gracious host in Prague.
Suzanna's home on the outskirts had formerly been her Grandmother’s. She
bought and meticulously restored it after the Communist era. I shifted to its
luxury from Alan’s modest and comfortable studio to her impeccably designed and
groomed rooms with skylight metal blinds that close and open at the touch of a switch. Her
fully restored Art Nouveau living room hides off the entry behind double
doors. Its fabric wallpaper was specially selected by Suzanna to match the
scene: an exquisite parquet floor, a polished to a rich shine large (is it
cherry wood?) dining room table, built in commodes with exotic inlaid wood, upholstered
dining room chairs, all topped with a suspended of the period chandelier. Another note of grandeur is the broad and winding
staircase traveling to Suzanna’s second floor suite and my bedroom.
 |
| A partial view of Suzanna's house from the stoney road. |
|
We had a great treat through my
Bulgarian friend Anna's recommendation that I contact her friend, the
American Cultural Affairs Officer in Prague. We were thus invited to an early morning visit
on my first day in the city. We left Suzanna's house very early, walked
the stony road to the train into the city and took a city bus through the most
excellent part of town to the beautiful American
Embassy. Our bags were scanned. We gave in our passports, cameras
and cell phones in exchange for a receipt and day pass tag. Then shepherded into the garden behind the Embassy, we walked up and
up stairs and more stairs to the highest point overlooking all of Prague and its red tiled
roofs. The American flag flew above. Suzanna told our host that it had flown thus throughout
the Communist era. Visible throughout the city, it beamed the hope of Democracy
with its every wave over Prague’s populace.
It was still morning when we left the
embassy. Suzanna proceeded to show me the city, indeed every site in the guidebooks. At the famous Jewish Quarter, I walked in its ancient cemetery. 100,000 dead are buried there, 12 layers deep (contrary to Jewish
law, but there was no choice, no other space).
Most sobering was the silent
memorial in the Pinkas Synagogue. Its
walls are totally covered with calligraphy. Lists and lists of beautiful uniformly written names of those who died in Nazi
concentration camps, the names of the perished, the families, and where
they’d lived. Up and down every interior walls, upstairs and down. Names cover
every room. Many were familiar, held by neighbors from my childhood in
Queens. I've friends bearing these names. Can I ask about their perished, their
disappeared?
We walked on,
first across the Charles Bridge, then
past great buildings and monuments, the sculpture of Jan Hus, where Protestants were
martyred in the 30 years war, where the Nazis executed, and then the communists (even more brutal). We walked past buildings built in the styles of time that now harmoniously nestle side by side. We passed through grand
plazas. Lunch was potato soup and very good bread in the peaceful courtyard of the Campanuella Cafe Restaurant. Stepping
inside a fine art gallery to see Eastern European and Russian contemporary
art., and then surely the best handmade puppet shop in Prague, Truhlar
Marionety. Suzanna bought a charming crafted angel. I
took pics.
|
|
|
The famous Prague Castle’s
flow of tourists. The guards stand impeccably still.
The museums are pleasure
treasures and surprisingly spare of curious souls. I took in the Castle’s art
collection (costs extra) and came unexpectedly upon Titian’s Woman at her Toilet, the very painting
in Proust I’d searched and searched for at the Louvre last summer and where it was purported to
be. It suddenly showed itself as I flitted past paintings less magnificent. A great reward!
 |
Woman at her Toilet, Titian
There's a unique family art collection at the Lobkowicz Palace by Prague Castle. It houses paintings of Brueghel, Velazquez, Canaletto, and Cranach. Owned by Prince William zu Lobkowicz (born 1961) a nobleman from the House of Lobkowicz is an American with Bohemian (Czech) roots who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1990, he moved to then Czechoslovakia to claim his family's vast ancestral holdings, which he continues to restore, preserve and display. Here's the Breueghal:
| |
I met PhDr. Blanka
Knotkova-Capkova through a long time Philosophy Professor friend
in India, Shefali Moitra. We've stayed in touch since the 1970's. At her suggestion I applied for and received a Fulbright to India
(1992-93). This time she wrote that I should meet Blanka. She and I sat in her lovely garden on my very last afternoon in the
city talking about India (she’s been there 18 times), feminism, and the Czech
psyche. She's invited me to return and lecture to her Gender and Asian Studies students. Perhaps I shall.
Next branch of my journey, to Berlin by train from Prague. The railway station for the
train to Berlin is a throwback to Prague's past. I assume a bleak and barren communist past. There I also encountered only surly workers, seeming sour and hopeless spirits condemned to life in a grey and dismal railway station. Regardless, I rolled my suitcase and carry-on breathlessly up a long incline to the platform and holding fast to my first class ticket. When the
train arrived, I was the sole first class passenger standing before that carriage. There was no one to
help hoist my suitcase onto the train so I moved over to a second class carriage. A sturdy man weightlessly took on the chore. I squeezed into the crowd and luckily found a seat.
My ticket was checked officiously
three times along the way, my passport twice. The train stopped briefly in
Dresden, a still beautiful station built before the world wars. Its high glass arched steel framed ceiling overlooks a broad airy expanse. As promised, I waved through the air to Colin Ardley,
Alan’s sculptor friend who has settled there.
The train ride sped by with friendly conversation with a middle aged German couple, unmarried and affectionate,
and three Swedish young men on college holidays, one studying engineering and the
others business. Gratefully, all spoke nearly fluent English.
I was excited to arrive in Berlin. The train
station is modern, lively, and clearly marked for getting tourist information. I got a street and a metro/bus map with script large enough to read without a
squint and caught a taxi at the stand. I asked the driver if he enjoyed being a
Berliner. He glumly said, “No, life is full of problems.” “No, it’s not the
traffic.” I didn’t probe. He drove to the apartment I’d
rented for nine days through airBNB.
It was exactly as it appeared on line, roomy
and modern. In the kitchen: electric coffee maker, electric tea kettle, a
toaster, dishwasher, small fridge, a stove that started with the touch of a
finger, and a washing machine. Around the corner: a German, Italian, Egyptian, Indian, Turkish, two Vietnamese
restaurants, two bakeshops, an ice cream parlor, and the Karstadt department
store. Across that street, a park.
Barbara Rothenberg’s
amazing musician son David (davidrothenberg.wordpress.com/), in Berlin on an academic sabbatical and with wife and
son was living in a flat around the corner and graciously helpful as well as wonderfully
interesting as he filled me in with Berlin data. He walked me round the neighborhood. Following his lead, I bought cheese and a smoked whitefish at the Turkish Market.
I walked to the Holocaust Museum from my Kreuzberg flat.
The architecture of the museum
rattled me with the armor of its façade.
It's stark interior was disorienting (on purpose). A hugely
tall space epitomizes bleak absence. Most searing for me - the long room - that hall laden with steel cut, calling/crying
masks piled one onto another endlessly along the floor. Their silent
screams stabbed, peeled raw - the grief, loss and fear.
The next day I set out for the
Gemaldegallerie of old master paintings,
knowing from an email I’d sent and received before I left where I'd find
Mantegna’s
Cardinal Ludivico Trevisan whose hard, hard face Proust matches with his Marquis de Beausergent’s “doomed majesty.”
The reference comes up in the final volume, Time Regained in Proust's Remembrance of Lost Time.
Pieter de Hooch
The Mother, another Proust painting that was of
course among the Dutch paintings.
The museum's superb collection boasts
of artists van Eyck,
Bruegel, Durer, Rafael, Titian, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Rubens. The painting though that stopped my breath:
Woman in an Ermine Jacket, Vermeer
A superb,
magically, alive Vermeer. Its suspended moment in movement captured my delight as
soon as I walked into its room. How did he do it? Certainly not as Tim hypothesizes
in his film,
Tim’s Vermeer. Tim never approached the magic. He spent more time replicating the tapestry than the faces.
Its the faces, the hands, the gesture, the light, ah, the light, always the
light that catches the life.
Light is magical everywhere, and today in
my town, Ridgefield, CT it's spreading out its New England grey. The Director of Wilton's, CT Weir Farm artist residency (when I’d been there ten
weeks years back) said that grey was my cultural heritage, that German, Russian and Polish
grey. Is that why I feel at home in Germany? I’ve spent months in
Koln and time in Munich, Hanover, Stuttgart and Kastl year after
year throughout the 1980’s and sporadically since. Again, just now.
Though my first time in Berlin, I
recognize immediately it is totally unique among German cities. It’s energy, the preponderance of young people strutting about in all manner of casual and
still-hippy dress, and yes, its disorder. It continues on with what seems a laissez-faire re-invention of self. Cranes everywhere lack all aesthetic
thought about blocking or not blocking the view of a Baroque architectural marvel.
One building, as if to hide dishevelment is wrapped with a painted scrim, a replica of what will
eventually be restored within.
WWII bombs destroyed the city that
keeps rebuilding itself as if Jesus lives amid the cranes and promising future salvation. I walked
and walked, took the Metro, buses, saw the Brandenberg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, etc. I went to Potsdammer
Platz's modern marvel of a mall with
friend Eva and her friend Kat on the only day it’s empty of people, Sunday.
Of
all the untold tales, endless ones still surface within those who've lived through through WWII and the communist era. My new friends in Berlin (through Eva) took me throughout the city. They’d lived there during and after WWII, as a divided city before the wall
and then were frozen behind the wall they'd witnessed rising. Do the memorials and reminders splayed throughout the city matter to the
young who keep coming to new Berlin? They seek its openness, cheap living and the
anything goes spirit. Who's to blame them for harking back to a spirit reminiscent of the 1920’s, that
slice of time, not quite a haven, but a respite between wars. It's revisited in today’s
beat, technology, and now accepted diversity. Seems to me that people’s gestures mimic German Expressionist
paintings. And the dramas of Berthold Brecht?
 |
| Brandenberg Gate |
 |
| Kathe Kollowitz Memorial to the Victims of War and Terrorism |
My Koln friend Eva arranged for me to meet her dear friends Elke and Ditte. They generously took me where I'd not know to venture and emboldened me to use the buses on my own. Invited to their Monday morning English class, I found the discussion broad and lively. Their Irish teach made occasional grammatical corrections. He'd just become a German citizen.
 |
| Suzanne, Elke and Ditta, Berlin 2014 |
|
They took me to the marvelous
Museum Berggruen that houses a great collection of Picasso (many of Dora Maar), Mattisse, Klee and Giacommetti. After the wall fell, gallerist and private collector (Jewish) Heinz Berggruen was granted a newly vacant building to exhibit his collection. Prussian Cultural Heritage purchased the collection for the Nationalgalerie in 2000. After he died in 2007, family members added to the collection and continue their support.
 |
| Dora Maar, Picasso |
|
 |
| Dora Maar, Picasso | | | | |
|
I bought a three day museum pass and went to each one on Museum Island:
the Altes Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Mseum, the Neues Museum and the Pergamon Museum. The Pergamon is soon closing for years of renovations. I got there in time. Nefertiti and Lion Gate won't be seen for a number of years. Two works in the Pergamon collection:
 |
| Lion Gate |
|
Lots of great work throughout
Museum Mile. The buildings are astonishing
 |
| Altes Museum, Museuminsel, Berlin |
|
My favorite collection is the Gemaldegallerie where the Vermeer is. Look at what else I happened upon:
  |
| Botticelli and Cranach |
 |
| Durer | | |
Besides seeing art, let me not forget the balmy Saturday evening
I came upon
the tango dancers. The rhythmic music and the dancing went on non stop. I was pinned to it, pied-pipered, watching, listening. It was then that I fell in love with Berlin.
Seemingly out of character, I went to the David Bowie show at the Martin-Gropious-Bau. Getting on in years, he's now planning to tour virtually! I encountered a documentary on David Bowie in India during some political mayhem when people were forbidden to go out on the streets. I was in India on a Fulbright and briefly in a Delhi hotel without a restaurant. There was just the TV and the government had shut out all the news. All there was to see was the David Bowie documentary. I watched. What I like was his talking about the difference between his being a person and a persona. There was a small mime of his enacting putting on a mask and then not being able to take it off. Obviously, that would interest me as a mask maker/performance artist.
My dear friend Eva Eckhardt lives in Kol
n. She came to see me in Berlin. We've been friends since the 1980's when I had a studio in Koln and was creating 27 masks on the theme of the Holocaust way before the Shoah and Schindler's List films. Eva brought her
Berlin friend Kat to walk with us and take me to the outdoor Holocaust Memorial.
 |
| Eva |
 |
Hagan, Suzane Benton Holocaust mask
welded steel |
Kat had been a boy solder in Hitler’s arm, drafted at 14 and stationed in
occupied France. Now in his 80s with long white hair and loose clothes, his energy is
prodigious. He'd lived behind the Berlin wall. We walked through the former East Berlin area. He pointed
out where Hitler’s
bunker lay buried. New buildings surround it. Remaining underground,
unmarked,
a hidden secret from the past.
 |
| Kat at the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin |
Here's Kat at the
Holocaust Memorial walking down seemingly endless rows of rectangles, each, if you look,
is somewhat different from the others with singular cracks, holes or scratches. Even the distance between
aisles, deceptively appearing uniform, is in fact varied, telling us of
individuality amid the callous and cruel, the inhuman uniformity of that history
of human annihilation.
Checkpoint Charley, the Holocaust
Museum, the Holocaust Memorial, they are there, on the streets, to be seen, acknowledged or ignored. To me, The
Wall of Terror was mild compared to what I’d learned as a child from refugees
from Hitler, those living in my Queens, NY apartment building, refugees who’d
arrived before, during and after the war with ashen stony faces permanently
etched with their seeping, weeping loss.
Here I am, home again after nine
days in that sleekly renovated apartment in the Kreuzberg district in Berlin with it’s
efficient kitchen, comfortable bed, back terrace, storefront door and more. It was
easy to slip into as if a home. The door was frosted, keeping me from sight, but I saw silhouettes of passersby sweeping past the door long into the night.
I heard their voices, but not in my bedroom. Every room had a door to shut out
all noise.
The Tube was a short walk away. The
Turkish market trotted out twice a week with fresh food and sundries. I ate Vietnamese, Indian, mostly Indian and bought my croissants daily
from the nearest bakeshop. Everything so near. Back home in
Ridgefield, CT. I walk barely trafficked roads with friend Lisa, have
a happy lunch in town miles away with Kathleen from the memoir group, listened to and saw a MET opera DVD at the Playhouse the other day and drove downtown to say hello at Olley Court where two of my artworks
await buyers.
Do I see the familiar with the same
sense of wonder I had on the trip? Proust, still, his prodigious memory
tutors me to keep looking not just blink, to look with commentary. This
morning it was breakfast on the on the deck and taking in the sky with its ocular of
blue amidst the white/grey about to rain clouds. So far its cool today, no rain
after much yesterday night, yesterday and last night, nearly drowning my plants
on the deck. I had to spill the overabundance filling the pots.
My old refrigerator is filled with Ridgefield’s weekly open market produce, specialty shop cheese and super
market specials. That chilly box sings a peculiar, familiar cadence on auto
defrost. In Berlin, food went into a fridge with transparent shelves for the exact number of days: nine eggs, daily breakfast croissants,
salami (a taste of Italy), a lime. I gave David Rothenberg my jar of quince jam and the lime at lunch on departure day. It was his birthday.
Lastly, I must mention David's telling me about the private Sammlung Hoffman Museum's Saturday
Lisa and I went to learn about Erika Hoffman's unique contemporary collection. We also saw the Flex Gallery two-person exhibit our tour guide Isabel and her colleague Hannah put together. Isabel is coming to CT in August. I've invited her to visit my Ridgefield studio. We can stay in touch. It's a delight when my worlds meet.
I thought coming home would mean
discontent with my kitchen. In Prague I reveled in Suzanna’s perfectly current
kitchen. Her stove too asks only for a finger's touch to start the heat.
Her spiral grand staircase is so generous compared to my nearly hidden one to
the downstairs. But no, home is home, my kitchen is fine, familiar and
functional. I’ll never make changes, well maybe a new stove, dishwasher or
whatever. Settling in as I am,
I must remind myself to look and listen as if
I’ve never been here before. And, my studio awaits attention, devotion, my
life.
 |
| Last trip photo, taken by Alan on my overnight pass-through from Berlin, soon leaving for Heathrow and my flight home. |
%2009%20photo%20-PeterDHolm.jpg)
