The Kunstmuseum is Bonn’s modern art museum, with a specific focus on German artists that distinguishes it from other German modern art museums, such as the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. Appropriately enough, the museum is housed in very clean and geometric, building. As with the Ludwig, the Kunstmuseum naturally had some great Gerhard Richter paintings, among them Vorhang IV (Curtain), 1024 Colours, and 256 Colours. I can’t tell you how much I really like Richter’s work: I kept staring at Vorhang IV, with its quasi-abstract gray/white colours, from different angles.

In general, although one of the museum’s high points is supposedly its German Expressionist collection, with a particularly good collection of the works of August Macke, I must admit I can’t ever “get” German Expressionism - the works don’t speak to me. Another part of its permanent collection, however, focused on German artists post-1945, a particularly fertile period for art, and some really interesting German modern artists are represented here - I was intrigued by pieces from Georg Baselitz, A.R. Penck, Gotthard Graubner, and Camill Leberer, among others. The picture above shows Beat Zoderer’s Hologram No. 3, 2000, which I found visually captivating with its 3-dimensional effect.

And I’d never really considered the work of Joseph Beuys all that much, but the museum highlighted his “multiples”, juxtaposed with a Duchamp to show the similarities of their philosophies. I suppose that’s one thing about being used to the Anglo-American art world, you get used to certain artists, and it was good to be introduced to other modern artists.

One German artist that I have seen before is Rebecca Horn, but her pieces here were really good I thought. They included Dialogue Between Two Hammers, which still sticks in my mind (although I may be a bit off with the title). Dialogue involves two structures who looked most like those pecking bird desk toys, hammering into the wall - you could see where the plaster was chipping.

I’m still on my somewhat quixotic quest to see an Andreas Gursky piece in a German museum, but oh well. The temporary exhibits were great. “Sich selbst bei Laune halten” (aka “Keeping Up a Good Mood”) was a collection of art from the bequest of Ingrid Oppenheim featuring German art of the 70s. It introduced to me a lot of interesting works - I particularly liked the work of Katharina Sieverding Dusseldorf photos.

And there was Menschenstrom, a wonderful installation by mioon, the name chosen by Kim Min and Choi Moon, a pair of South Korean artists working in Germany. Menschenstrom feature a pair of huge face-shaped wire frames covered in feathers, which had changing images projected on them. Once in a while fans blew the feathers, further adding to the effect of a constantly-shifting screen. On the wall which the two “heads” faced, people stuck their photos (if you stand in one spot, a printer prints out your picture), thus invoking all sorts of questions about viewership and screens.

Some quick thoughts on the Ludwig Museum, Cologne’s museum of modern art. The Ludwig was a mixed bag for me. I did see some of my favourite Gerhard Richters - “48 Portraits”, “Nude Descending a Staircase” - which I had caught a few years back in New York and which I was grateful to have the chance to see again. And their late-Picasso collection was very impressive; haven’t seen that much of the master’s late period work, to be honest, so it was interesting to see how he revisited some themes and works.

As for other artists, I felt there was an ample range of modern artists represented, but not by their best stuff (I’ve definitely seen better Dubuffets, Kellys, and Judds). Still, there was some nice Weegee and Ansel Adams photos, a Duchamp bicycle wheel, an Arp sculpture (”Leaf”) whose shape intrigued me, and a great Oldenburg installation filled with Americana (”Mouse Museum”). And down in the basement, the Pop Art collection was superb - great pieces by Warhol (giant Brillo boxes) and Lichtenstein, and a good Patrick Caulfield piece. Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dots always charm me - they’re slightly off, aren’t they? And Warhol’s seemingly endless “Kiss” video piece was nicely juxtaposed with “Empire”.

I also saw some works by artists that I admittedly don’t know much about - chiefly, “The Portable War Memorial”, a huge Edward Kienholz satirical anti-war piece from 1968 that combined Iwo Jima imagery and other aspects of American iconography, as well as Ed Ruscha’s “A Boulevard Called Sunset”. And put together in one space, I began to have a better sense of the work of Robert Hamilton - what especially caught my eye was one installation of his, “Lobby”, with its sense of the terminal blandness of hotel lobbies, repeated through mirrors and paintings and other media.

But I was a bit surprised to find a German modern art museum without any Andreas Gursky, at least none that I could find. It’s not like German artists were underrepresented - there was a whole wing which was mostly German and unfortunately not as compelling for me - too much representative stuff. I must say I’m not a big Max Ernst fan, which the museum did have a fair bit of.

So that’s some preliminary thoughts….

The Ludwig Museum is on Bischofsgartenstrasse 1 (near the Dom); open Tu-Su 10am-6pm.

The New York Times has a review of the Damien Hirst exhibit at the Boston MFA. I’m kind of torn on what to think of Hirst, whose work I first saw at the Tate, back in the days when the Tate was in Pimlico. Sometimes I feel he’s just too obvious about modernity and soullessness, other times I really like the clinical nature of his work.

Following on from my thoughts on their talk on 9 Dec 2004, here’s some more of what the two sculptors said during the question-and-answer session, paraphrased rather than quoted verbatim:

On how much an influence one’s environment should have:

- Botero: There’s a sense of universality that makes your work understood. Elements of colour and composition can be universally understood.
- Ju Ming: What does the environment lack? What can you add?

- Ju Ming: The difference reflects the influences of history and locale.
- Botero: I lived 15 years in New York, but my art still remained very Latin American. Even when I lived in Paris I felt Colombian - I don’t agree that if you move somewhere that your art has to change. The beauty of art is to do the same thing in different ways: take the depiction of horses in cave art as compared to horses in Picasso.
- Ju Ming: Changing the material brings out very different elements - you need to be faithful to the material. Subject matter is just a pretext to begin sculpture.
- Botero: I do my work by adding to something, he does so by removing.
- Botero: There’s not much point in realism.

- Ju Ming: it’s a mistake to think that, that’s the function of a newspaper.

- Ju Ming: One needs to look at a lot of art, needs to learn technique. But the idea of learning from books doesn’t help, because those aren’t your own ideas. You must have a searching, discarding attitude, not a studying one, and throw away others’ influence, to get back the original you.
- Botero: But remember, nothing comes from nothing. You cannot escape art history, and at some level people should assimilate

- Botero: Everything I do is an extension of volume, creaing an effect of sensuality.

- Botero: in response, we created a 2nd bird, 3m away from the original. (Picture of the two birds)