In the beautiful New National Gallery by Mies van der Rohe, in Berlin just south east of the Tiergarten, and west of the new Potsdamer Platz, is a remarkable extensive exhibition of "Art in the German Democratic Republic". It runs to October 26th.
I am no expert in evaluating art, and knew nothing of the different groups, but the overall effect is impressive for its breadth and variety out of a population of 17 million. Of course there may be selection factors, but the various reviews I have seen do not suggest that the organisers are guilty of gross bias. My impression is that soon after the fall of the Nazi regime, there was little appetite for heroic modernist style socialist realist art, which after all had some similarities with Nazi art. There were no obvious signs of a sudden period of repression, as there were, if I recall correctly, in the range of postwar Hungarian modern art (that goes through a period of triviality after 1956). The Berlin programme seems fair in saying that the varieties of contributions are more complex than a division into art that was for the regime and art that was against it. The art however gives me an impression of an active civil society, often varying from one city to another. As the decades went on there seems to be a tendency to focus on self-doubt and boredom, but perhaps I am reading something into this. No utopia, and no doubt some suffered for their political leanings. But it is more of a mixed picture, in various art forms, than I first expected. And many of the pieces were a mixture of the attractive, ingenious, and demanding, that is perhaps a feature of art rather than of mere representation. Chris Burford London
