Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976) was a Berlin-based artist, most famous for chronicling life in the city during the 1920s.
Born in Berlin, she studied art in Paris and Rome and lived in France until the outbreak of World War One forced her to move. While her family relocated to Amsterdam, she chose to return to Berlin.
At first, Mammen struggled to support herself as an artist, and she took any work she could, creating artwork for movie posters, satirical magazines, books, and fashion plates.
Particularly striking are her sketches and watercolours that depict people from all walks of life with a sympathetic yet unsentimental eye. Much of her focus was on women. Some her works, which capture swinging, glittering 1920s Berlin could be mistaken for contemporary party scenes.
But in addition to these more well-known works, the retrospective at the Berlinische Gallerie also shows how the artist’s work developed over decades, with 170…
I have to confess I hadn’t heard of Sean O’Brien until recently, when I found out he’d won last year’s Forward prize for poetry. So it seemed appropriate to start with his prize-winning collection, The Drowned Book.
The blurb says that much of this collection ‘takes [its] emotional tenor and imaginative cue from [Sean O’Brien’s] acclaimed translation of Dante’s Inferno‘. Unfortunately I haven’t actually read the Inferno, so I felt like I was on a bit of a back foot from the start. That said, the opening poems – all about water, rivers, the sea – are undeniably compelling, drawing you into their dark, subterranean world. Water seems to be a place of memory, haunted by the dead – perhaps the borderlands between this world and another… I loved the dark, knowing, and, in places, comic tone of these poems.
Entstehung Mein Sinnbild von Gertrude Stein, 65 x 50 cm, Tusche auf Hahnemuehle Aquarellkarton, Collage von Susanen Haun (c) VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
Gertrude Stein war die Mutter der modernen Literatur.
Im großen von Uda Strädling herausgegebenen Gertrude Stein Lesebuch bezeichnet die Autorin die Literatin als “Sprachversucherin”, eine sehr gelungene Definition, wie ich finde. Hier eine Kostprobe ihres experimentellen Stils:
„Und worum geht es. Darum was vorgeht. Was vorgeht führt ein anderes Wort ein und das ist so gut wie ja. Gertrude Stein, »Hört doch“
Bekannt dürfte Gertrude Stein vor allem durch den Textauszug “A Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose …” sein. Die Anzahl der Rosen variiert dabei je nach Veröffentlichung. Diese simple Aussage begleitet mich schon eine geraume Zeit durch mein Leben und hat mir tatsächlich des öfteren als Weisheit in meinem Werdegang geholfen.
Die Collage von Gertrude Stein sollte eigentlich schon zur Ausstellung
This uniquely illustrated pamphlet of around 20 pages offers a brilliant summary of life in St Ives just after the War. The town’s Silver Age it might be termed. This fascinating time period is manifest in the vivid sketches by the well-known St Ives artist, Hyman Segal.https://cornwallartists.org/cornwall-artists/hyman-segal
Segal is probably best remembered for his African paintings as well as for his skill in portraying cats with sweeping economical lines. A Daily Mirror photographic frontispiece shows him, an Art Therapist at West Cornwall Hospital, helping the recovery of a young lad at Tehidy Sanatorium in Camborne. This classic photograph by Bela Zola indicates the pride in the newly created NHS.{Zola was a leading photographer who recorded later the Aberfan Disaster and the profumo Affair among other renowned assignments.) https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo/1956/28663/1/1956-Bela-Zola-GN1-(1)
The first sketch in the pamphlet is of our celebrated Town Crier, Abraham Curnow -here just 54 years old. This is accompanied by a sketch of his Father-in-Law, Ernest James Stevens, popularly known as “Jimmy Limpets”. This drawing with others by Segal now hangs in the Sloop Inn.
On the following page is an image of Thomas Tonkin Prynne who had been the manager of Lanham’s picture framing business which in previous years supplied the Royal Academy and other galleries with canvases by inter alia , Julius Olsen, Louis Grier and Moffat Linder. In addition to running an efficient business, he worked for 16 years as a member of the volunteer fire brigade, had a blue Persian cat and loved fishing.
There is also a magnificent sketch of Alistair St Clair Harrison, like Churchill, an old Harovian who had been a fighter pilot during the Second World War. It was Harrison who broadcst for the BBC about the rescue of HMS Wave in September 1952 and also about his interest in Antartic whaling. It was with his Norwegian wife that he established “The Gay Viking”;almost as famous for its colourful clientele as its innovative continental cuisine. ( Gay Viking was incidentally one of eight vessels that were ordered by the Turkish Navy, but were requisitioned by the Royal Navy to serve with Coastal Forces during the Second World War)
Alistair St Clair Harrison by Hyman Segal
Frank Edward Endell Mitchell, appropriately portrayed with bow-tie, fashionable in the 1950s, was known as “Micheal” and was the tenant of the Castle Inn. His friendship with Dylan Thomas must have been firmly established in the bohemian atmosphere of the bar there, then opposite Lanham’s and the Scala Cinema (presently Boots). Mitchell who was the brother, I believe of the eminent sculptor, Denis Mitchell, offered the Castle lounge for the display of art works and in his spare time, he himself did pastels and was occupied in breeding Boxer dogs.
The donation of this little pamphlet to the Morrab Archive offers members the opportunity to recreate for themselves the ambience of the Fifties through “The Familiar Faces of St Ives”.
200 years ago, on December 30, 1819, Theodor Fontane, one of the best-known 19th century German authors, was born. He grew up in Neuruppin, a small town in the Mark Brandenburg north of Berlin. He trained and worked as a pharmacist before embarking on a literary career, starting as a journalist before becoming one of the most prolific novelists of the 19th century.
The 200th anniversary of his birth is being celebrated throughout this year with numerous exhibitions and events in the Brandenburg region (more details here). The main exhibition is being held in Neuruppin from March 30 to December 30 and aims to give an insight into Fontane’s authorial practice. This exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue which the library has acquired (C202.b.3557).
Mark Mazower, the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University, is one of contemporary America’s most eminent historians of modern Europe, the author of several books on Greek and Balkan history, along with others on 20th century Europe generally. Born in Britain in 1958, Mazower grew up in the Golders Green neighborhood of North London. His home environment bordered on bland: it was thoroughly stable if unflashy, but most assuredly not a place where his parents dwelled upon the family’s past. Before writing this affecting family memoir, What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home, Mazower probably did not realize the extent to which his family background, at least on his father’s side, was anything but bland.
Schon steht die nächste Ausstellungseröffnung vor der Tür:
Unter dem Motto: „Mein Wedding6“ gibt es auch 2019 an der Müllerstraße eine temporäre Ausstellung.
Bereits zum 6. Mal findet diese Kunstaktion statt und lädt euch ein, 12 Kunstwerke auf dem Mittelstreifen der Müllerstraße zu bestaunen.
Dieses Jahr werden zwei meiner Zeichnungen zu sehen sein. Regelmäßige Leserinnen und Leser meines Blogs werden sich vielleicht erinnern, dass ich schon 2017 mit meiner Zeichnung Leopoldplatz bei Mein Wedding 5 (siehe hier) dabei war. Letztes Jahr saß ich selber in der Jury und reichte deshalb keine eigenen Bilder ein.
Fotoshooting im Schillerpark, 20 x 30 cm, Marker auf Hahnemühle Layoutpapier, Zeichnung von Susanne Haun, verkleinert (c) VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019
“Bunte und vielfältige Kunstwerke warten darauf von Ihnen im Kiez entdeckt zu werden! Nehmen Sie sich Ihr Lieblingsbild als Postkarte mit. Die Karten werden in der Zeit der Ausstellung in…
Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976) was a Berlin-based artist, most famous for chronicling life in the city during the 1920s.
But in addition to these more well-known works, the retrospective at the Berlinische Gallerie also shows how the artist’s work developed over decades, with 170…
penwithlit 