2023-09-12 06:06:46
“City, lies, unrest”: That was the motto for an evening organized in Kleine Auguststrasse on Monday by the Berliner Zeitung in cooperation with the painter Norbert Bisky. It was the start of Art Week Berlin, which begins on September 13th, and the collaboration between the Berliner Zeitung and Norbert Bisky, the Leipzig-born artist, who will design four front pages of the Berliner Zeitung from Wednesday to Saturday (from the 13th to the 16th). September). The publisher of the Berliner Zeitung Silke Friedrich invited around 100 guests to Kleine Auguststrasse in Berlin-Mitte to discuss the joint project and his art with Bisky.
Silke Friedrich introduced the evening by explaining her motives for acquiring the Berlin publishing house about three years ago: The publisher Holger Friedrich and she wanted to create a place of information and debate where the public could find out about the challenges of the present without prejudice can inform and exchange information. “The beginning is to talk and discuss. After all, it could be that the other person is right,” said Silke Friedrich, describing the journalistic guidelines of the Berlin publishing house and at the same time the motto of the evening. Before the discussion began, the publisher honored one of the company’s most distinguished and deserving employees: the art critic Ingeborg Ruthe, who has been working for the Berliner Zeitung for almost 50 years.
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The certainty that systems can collapse
Committed to tradition. Especially the East German tradition. This is how one could summarize the opening thesis of the evening, in which Bisky described his beginnings as an artist. Born and raised in the GDR in 1970, he spoke about his beginnings at the University of the Arts, now the University of the Arts, in the west of Berlin. He was one of the very few and very first East Germans there. “I had the feeling that I didn’t really fit in.” His teacher Georg Baselitz motivated him to use his East German identity as a source of inspiration for his art. “I didn’t want to do this at first,” said Bisky. But later he took his mentor’s advice seriously and implemented his experiences as an East German in his works: East German scenes that always imply a premonition of doom.
Photo gallery
Best of B: A selection of the cover pages of the Berliner Zeitung at the weekend was available to take away at the vernissage.Benjamin Pritzkuleit
The artist Norbert Bisky (r.) at the opening in Berlin-MitteBenjamin Pritzkuleit
In conversation: The Senate Building Director Petra Kahlfeldt, the publisher of the Berlin newspaper Silke Friedrich, the head of the Kunstverein Ost (Kvost) Stephan Koal and the painter Norbert Bisky (from left) Benjamin Pritzkuleit
Editor-in-chief Tomasz Kurianowicz (m.) in conversation with political director Moritz Eichhorn (l.) and the journalist and author Timo FeldhausBenjamin Pritzkuleit
On the wall in the exhibition rooms: suggestions for using a newspaperBenjamin Pritzkuleit
Silke Friedrich is among the two paintings by Norbert Bisky that he made for the cover of the Berliner Zeitung.Benjamin Pritzkuleit
Silke Friedrich in conversation with Thomas Oberender, the dramaturge and former director of the Berlin Festival, Benjamin Pritzkuleit
Invited guests on Kleine AuguststraßeBenjamin Pritzkuleit
Norbert Bisky next to Ingeborg Ruthe, the art editor of the Berliner ZeitungBenjamin Pritzkuleit
Invited guests at the vernissageBenjamin Pritzkuleit
The publisher Silke Friedrich and the artist Norbert BiskyBenjamin Pritzkuleit
Around 100 guests accepted the invitation of the Berliner Zeitung.Benjamin Pritzkuleit
Twice B: Bisky and Berliner Zeitung Benjamin Pritzkuleit
On Kleine Auguststrasse in Berlin-MitteBenjamin Pritzkuleit
Silke Friedrich summarized that many East Germans in the post-reunification period wanted to adapt and erase their past. But now a time for curiosity and reappraisal has come. “Now that I’m our age, I find the East interesting again,” said Friedrich. Bisky pointed out that the fall of the GDR had taught him that nothing was certain and that every system could disappear. A level of awareness that Westerners couldn’t necessarily demonstrate. “Nothing is certain, everything can change and things can really collapse.” This feeling fits well into this time. The only difference from before is that this feeling now applies to everyone. “There is now a balance, even for people who grew up sheltered in Münsterland.”
Not a poster boy from the East
Bisky, son of the left-wing politician Lothar Bisky, who died in 2013, emphasized that he no longer wanted to pursue politics in his works, even if it was difficult for him. He is now trying to concentrate on more abstract motifs. His dream is to paint pictures of flowers. The painter couldn’t be entirely serious, thought some people in the room. After all, the motifs that he put together for the cover photos of the Berliner Zeitung are decidedly political figures. The idea of lies, the city, unrest – all ideas that represent a kind of discomfort.
Silke Friedrich in conversation with Norbert Bisky on September 11, 2023.Benjamin Pritzkuleit
Silke Friedrich wanted to know why Bisky wasn’t and didn’t want to be the poster boy of the East. Bisky replied that he couldn’t do anything with such names. He said that he would probably have emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany if the Wall had not fallen. His ambivalent attitude towards the GDR can be seen as the reason why his pictures, which draw on the imagery of the East, are almost never understood as Ostalgian.
The gift: the Norbert Bisky coffee cup
Are we living in a time of crisis and upheaval? Bisky did not want to give a clear answer to this time-diagnostic question from Silke Friedrich. He is sensitive and unstable as a character, so instability would be an obvious theme to him and would constantly concern him. Nevertheless, he is not sure whether the crises diagnosed in the newspapers, which he feels and often perceives, are perhaps sheer alarmism. Silke Friedrich agreed with him and emphasized that the lack of certainties is probably the most present feeling that describes the present. Bisky didn’t want to deny it.
With this quintessence and unity, the moderator dismissed those present in the hall. But before the end of the evening, she gave Bisky a gift that he had described as a horror vision for the sale of his art a few days ago: seeing his works as a motif on a coffee cup. The gift fulfilled the horror expectation. Bisky showed a sense of humor and gratefully accepted the coffee cup.
Nobert Bisky will design the front pages of the Berliner Zeitung for Berlin Art Week from Wednesday, September 13th, 2023 to Saturday, September 16th, 2023. Get your copy at the kiosk. https://aboshop.berliner-zeitung.de/
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