2023-08-25 09:36:37
One hundred and thirty years is a long time. That’s four generations. And in Germany even more political systems. If a village like Ahrenshoop has attracted painters almost continuously over such a period of time – initially thanks to the artists’ colony founded around the painting school of Paul Müller-Kaempff in 1892, later during socialism as a “bath for cultural workers” – this is reflected, as expected, in their pictures reflects the aesthetic development of a century. And beyond that, different sensitivities can be recognized in the works. Nevertheless, one theme in particular shimmers through almost all of the works in the two-part exhibition “Halle am Meer”: longing.
Freddy Langer
Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Reiseblatt”.
She speaks equally from the works from the late 19th century, in which the thatched cottages of the fishing village on the Fischland-Darß peninsula are placed against the backdrop of crooked trees and threatening clouds, and from works from the 1980s, in which Gudrun Brüne, for example, is far from socialist glory fills the beach with thousands of people, squashed body to body under the sun. And it applies to the many pictures in which couples are entwined at the edge of the sea, lying strangely cramped in the dunes or sitting together in the sand, as in the triptych by Moritz Götze from 2013.
In the central part, the painter shows himself together with his wife among all sorts of rubbish, while in the left wing a modern hotel towers into the sky and in the right wing a watchtower with the gleaming beam of a searchlight reminds us that the coastline was not just a topographical border. There is finally nothing more to be seen of the “socialist Arcadia”, as Ahrenshoop was sometimes called. Of course, the view across the sea to the horizon has always had a political element in many beach pictures and sea views. In the face of stranded utopias, the Baltic Sea, which in the days of the GDR was synonymous with vacation and relaxation, also became a place for many to flee from the republic.
picture series
Exhibition Halle am Meer: sun, sand and sea
The fact that artists from Halle and there, in turn, above all from the Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy, had and have a special relationship with Ahrenshoop is the reason for the current presentation, after exhibitions a few years ago already dealt with the Leipzig and Dresden painters and their relationship to the Baltic Sea had. This not insignificantly restricted the selection of images, but now, for the period between the Second World War and reunification, caused a not to be overlooked intensification of the representations, which, as the catalog puts it, “in open conflict with the norms of the official art creation stand”. The artists from Halle found visual metaphors on the beach very early on, first for the imprecisely felt doubts of the post-war generation, and later for disillusionment with the political and economic situation in the country. This ranged from dead fish and broken fishing boats to the collected rubbish washed up from the West, which Wasja Götze arranged in object boxes.
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And yet at the end of the presentation with almost 300 works, a cheerful and melancholy mood prevails, as if the promise of happiness from sun, sand and sea can never be completely banished. Here the sun shines with the edges and tips of a bizarre crystal over the gently sloping surf, there children proudly walk their inflatable predators on the beach. Fish colorfully adorn ceramics and tapestries, and against the backdrop of the sea, groups of nude women are busy showing off their beauty. But nowhere does the enchanting experience by the sea find a more convincing implementation than in the image of a prefabricated housing estate. There, the chicken gods collected on the beach hang on a string stretched out on a balcony: as talismans against the gray everyday life.
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