Gemaldegalerie’s director Bernd Wolfang Lindemann talks with Conceptual Fine Arts, in Berlin? No, at the Collezione Maramotti

 

We haven’t meet Professor Bernd Wolfang Lindeman at the museum he directs, the National Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, but at the Collezione Maramotti, in Reggio Emilia, Italy, which last Saturday hosted an art talk focused on landscape painting. The lecturers were Lindemann himself, Maria Vittoria Marini – director of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome – an the artist Flavio De Marco. The Collezione Maramotti is to be considered among of the top five private contemporary art collections in Italy, but since we know them this is the first time that the point of view of the old masters has been put under the light. That is why it has been so meaningful for us to meet him there.

 

Do you like contemporary art?

 

Yes, I do.

 

Could you elaborate?

 

From time to time we have confrontations between old masters painting and contemporary art in the Gemaldegalerie. For example, some years ago we put Mark Rothko in relation with two paintings by Giotto, because it is known Rothko was very impressed by Giotto’s paintings. Beside seeing them in books of course, he also travelled to Italy to study them. Then we had an exhibition by a young American artist, David Shutter. He made what he calls “after paintings”, that is to say paintings derived from old masters’ one, such as Vermeer or Jacob van Ruysdael. As these painters did, he starts from drawing, but the result in his case is a pure monochrome picture. Surprisingly, the more you look at these paintings the more you recognize their model.

 

Also artist Walter De Maria worked for the Gemaldegalerie, didn’t he?

 

He did the two large fountains that welcome our visitors at the main entrance, but actually these artworks belong to the collection of the Neue National Galerie, even if they have been conceived for this specific place. The curious thing is that Walter De Maria doesn’t allow other works of contemporary art to be exhibited in this place.

 

Do you agree with the idea that all art is contemporary?

 

In Berlin there are two performing artists, called Eva and Adele. They are pretty well known to the art world. Eva dresses like a man and Adele does the opposite. Some time ago “The girl with the pearl earring” by Vermeer was at the Gemaldegalerie, and during an event they were there, both wearing pearl earrings. I did a postcard picturing them beside the painting: I named this postcard “six hundred years of contemporary art”.

 

Which is the advantage to have the old masters in dialogue with contemporary art?

 

The public is always interested either in contemporary art or old masters. Moreover, I’ve realized that many contemporary artists are interested in the art from the past. From their own point of view the old masters, or the Hellenic sculptors, or even the Impressionists, are… just colleagues!

 

Is there any contemporary artist you follow?

 

Not with the intensity my colleagues from contemporary art do. Nevertheless I have connections with many artists based in Berlin. I like to talk with them, and sometimes we develop projects together. I am interested in the way they deal with my field.

 

Which is your favourite museum of contemporary art?

 

It is the Hamburger Bahnhof, in Berlin. The huge entrance of this former train station is really impressive.

 

How much does the building count when lodging a museum?

 

Of course it’s very important. In this case my favourite is the Bode Museum, again in Berlin. It fits perfectly with both paintings and sculptures, having huge rooms for monumental objects and very intimate cabinets for the small ones. On the opposite, the problem of the Gemaldegalerie is that rooms are too big. It’s not easy to have twenty Dutch paintings in the same room.

 

What is the advantage of having an “encyclopedic” collection, as the Gemaldegalerie does?

 

Berlin’s collections started in 1830 with paintings that were brought from the prince’s collection to the museum. Part of it was the famous Vincenzo Giustiniani’ collection, that was sold in 1815 in Paris, and some came from the collection of an English merchant, Edward Solly. During the 19th century the museum’s director got the chance to buy on the international market, and the result was our beautiful collection of early Italian paintings, never collected by German princes in the 18th century, when this kind of art was unknown. After all, Botticelli was literally reinvented during the 19^th century, as well as the German art from the fifteen century. But now, at the Gemaldegalerie, we have the history of painting on our walls. It means that to study art history in Berlin you just have to visit the museum and go from one object to the other.

September 22, 2014