7/23/09

Me with an Ivory

Today we slept in a little bit. I met Madeleine for lunch and on the way I almost got ticket for not validating my U-bahn ticket. They finally let me go with a warning because I am a tourist. It was a bit confusing because one guy told me it was a warning but the woman he was with said it wasn’t… and then they handed me a ticket? I don’t really know what happened. They just jumped back on the train before I could ask any more questions. OOOPPPSSS. Seriously upsetting. Of course it happens to me! Apparently people rarely get caught for such things.

Anyway, I met Madeleine and we had a little lunch and sat on the windowsill of a grand government building and chatted. It was very pleasant and she told me I should look into the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships for funding to go to London for Graduate School. I will look into it! She has a scholarship for LSE and is really enjoying the applied economics firm she is working for in the Mitte in Berlin. After lunch I met Matt at Marienkirche (Church of Mary), one of the oldest churches in Berlin, it is from the 13th century, and became Protestant after the Reformation. I went inside and checked it out. There was an organ playing and then when they organist finished everyone clapped! We can clap in church again! For those of you who don’t understand why I was excited, it is because in Orthodox churches you are NOT allowed to clap at all after any sort of performances… which seems a bit harsh and encouraging for the performers.

Marienkirche

Marienkirche

Drawing of the fresco in Marienkirche (I couldnt get a good photo of the real thing)

Anyway, then I went to the Bode museum on Museum Island with Matt. It was all sculpture from ancient Rome to the 18th century. They had some amazing German, Italian, Byzantine, and Flemish sculptures. I got books on the whole collection. It was very exciting. Not as fulfilling as the Gemaldegallerie but is was definitely still an amazing collection. Here is a little blurb I put together about it:
In 1829 the philosophy became “first delight, then instruct” and the Altes Museum opened to the public in 1830. This held the beginnings of the future Bode Museum collection. Now the Altes Museum holds modern art instead of the Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, etc. work that is now in the Gemaldegalerie, Bode, and other museums. In a memorandum of 1883, published on the occasion of an exhibition of old master paintings from Berlin private collections, Crown Princess Victoria expressed her own ideas on the expansion of the royal museums and outlined her conception of how exhibits, “can be most beautifully put on show”. “Hiterto,” she observed, “the approach taken to display of collections in museums sees always to have been guided by scholarly principles. A precise classification, ad a separation of the different visual arts, has always been maintained. […] Often one regrets that works of art that one formerly knew in palaces and churches are now dully stood somewhere in galleries or arranged in rows along the wall, when in fact they should be the splendid adornment of a fine room, and impress us by their beauty [..].” She went on: “A grey room of stucco or stone, filled with ugly pedestals and grey statues, is not pleasing sight for anyone. […] Could one not create a splendid, harmonious totality if statues and paintings, busts and reliefs were placed together in attractive rooms where there were also tasteful display cases showing medallions, cameos etc.?” This comment was instrumental in Bode’s decision to reconstruct part of the museum to make it a more natural context. “for the first time, the figurative arts, painting and sculpture, were displayed in parallel, and on terms of equality in their development, within one building.”

View of the Bode

View of the Bode

View of the Dome in the Bode

Hiiii!

Close up of Bode altar

One of many altarpieces

Details

Front of a Bode Altarpiece

Back of a Bode Altarpiece

You can see all of the wings! (same altarpiece from the previous 2 photos)

Another altar.. they don't really have distinctive names.

Detail.

Alabaster last supper

An all wood altarpiece

Detail of one of the altars

Fountain...

Breast feeding fragments.

This is called "Bust of a Bad Tempered Boy"

Chess figures...

Christ Child

Wooden crucifix with lots of detail

There are little wooden caves wooden people

Dagolshiem Virgin and Child

Descent into hell ivory.

Double sided Jesus

Extremely dramatic pieta.

"God caused Mary Magdalene’s hair to grow so long that it clothed her like a garment."

Half body Virgin and Child

Head of John the Baptist

The hole in the back of John the Baptists head

There is a head under the Virgin and Child

Humility Personification and a view of the Bode Museum

Icon in the Booooode

What is that baby doing??

Byzantine Ivories

More Bode Ivories

Some super famous Byzantine Ivories.

Ivory box

Ivory Crucifixed Jesus

Amazing Ivory Triptych!

Jesus and John, Bffs

Head of John the Baptist... there are lots of decapitated heads in the Bode Museum

Italian jointed crucifix. Christ’s head, arms and legs are movable so that he deposition from the cross could be re-enacted in mystery play during Holy Week.

Close up of the joints.... Just like a Barbie Doll!

King David

Rebel Angels/Last Judgment Ivory... RIDICULOUS

Close up of the Rebel Angels/Last Judgment Ivory

Another detail

Another detail

Lionsss

Spanish man of sorrows.. pretty intense.

This a Man of Sorrows with huge feet.

I tried to make the feet look like they fit with the body. This angle sort of works..

I don't think this angle helps...

Mass of St. Gregory

Matt with a painted Altar

Matt with a Bacchus (I think)

Horray!

In the Booooode

With a copy of Reymerswaele's Money Lenders...! The RISD Museum has a copy as well.

Medal of Mehmed II! I wrote about this too!

Incredibly mini ivory altar

More decapitation

An Apse Mosaic from Ravenna

Mourner

Mary opens up..?

And there's a Jesus too!

Detail

Peter Martyr bidding farewell to his brothers.

Pietaaa

Detail of this particularly awkward and disturbing Pieta.

Pope Silvester.

Matt posing... just FABULOUS

Angels doing some presentation

Revenge of Queen Tomyris

Piece of a Sarcophagus

Scenes from the Passion of Christ in Ivory

Really sexual sculpture

see..

Sexy baby.

Martyr Shadow Box

A saint in a kettle

Really terrifying fragment of a crucified Jesus

Detail of textiles painted onto a sculpture.

Gooolden Virgin and Child

I need to research what this head underneath Mary's mantel is all about...

Virgin of Mercy

a close up on a Virgin and Child

After the Bode museum we sat at the fake beach across the bridge for some refreshments and extortionist pizza. Then we went to the Pergamon Museum where we saw the Pergamon altar and Mshatta and the Ishtar Gate…. Some very important historical architectural cornerstones!!

Beach Restaurant we could see from the Bode Museum. This is the moat around museum ISLAND.

Matt being despondent at the extortionist beachish restaurant/bar/hang out.

Pergamon Altar... How did they even get a hold of this thing?

Fragments

Half horse

More fragments

Inside the altar... look! A princess (she is wearing a tiara)

Heeey

Mock up and Matt

Babylonian Market in the Pergamon Museum

Another view on the market and into the next room/hall which holds the Ishtar Gate.

Athena in the Pergamon

Athena vessel where she is beating an enemy with his own arm.

Aphrodite in Pergamon

Dionysus vessel

I like how they conveyed multiple horses... just millions of legs. Creating a Futurism, centipede horse.

A plaster Lamassu

Bath with...

Fish man

Hole mouth

Zoomorphic Amphora

Ishtar Gate

Bull on Ishtar Gate

Ishtar Gate

Mock up of the Ishtar Gate

Lion... I am going to assume this is plaster

WILD MAN

Mashatta

Detail of Mashatta

After we finished in the museum we ran to the Crepes and Ice cream place in the Alexanderplatz U-bahn station because we have wanted to try their crepes and ice cream since we first saw it. It was so good but so messy. Mint chocolate chip ice cream wrapped in a nutella crepe!! MMMMM. After getting our hands all sticky and gross we hopped n the U-bahn and returned to Teals. For dinner we walked to Morusha (?) which was an excellent Turkish “fast food” place with wonderful falafel and I feel so fat. Afterward we went to a bar called Cake and watched people dance to Spanish music. Very entertaining and I really enjoyed my evening even though I ate way too much food. I wasn’t really in the mood for dancing… but some people were very good so it was a little intimidating. There as a robotic “strictly ballroom” German girl and some fantastic native Spaniards moving effortlessly to the music. Good day (minus almost maybe 40 euro ticket). *** UPDATE 8/24/09: Today my parents called me from California and informed me that they received a letter for Frau Mills Wucher that was entirely in German… and when my mom typed some of it into a translator they figured out that it was a TICKET from the German Transit Authority saying that I owe 79.54 Euro. HOW DID THEY FIND ME??? Amazing.

AMAZING crepe/icecream shop in Alexanderplatz Station.

AMAZING CREPE FILLED WITH NUTELLA WRAPPED AROUND ICE CREAM. Unfortunately the warm crepe melts the ice cream and then you make a mess of yourself. I thought it was still worth it.

Berliner Dome

Another view of the Berliner Dome

Segway tours of Berlin.

Lustgarten.

Matt and Teal in the Havana Club