Berlin Art: Just hype created by the clubs and ruins?
By Manuel Bonik
The art boom of (London) and Berlin in the 90s led to artist becoming a dream profession, at times the one most desired by German graduates. The Art Academy professors didn't mind--it was good for business. And apparently the students at the academy were isolated and introverted enough so they could be indoctrinated with the feeling they were unique and the world was just waiting for them to depart the academy's hallowed halls.
But they didn't recognize how much the profession of artist had lost the exclusiveness that it was once supposedly possessed, and catalyzed by Berlin, had turned into a stereotype. Maybe you don't understand until you turn 30 that one can try to be an absolute individual and nonetheless a few thousand people among the eight million humans are doing something mindblowingly similar to your own creations.
At the moment in Berlin, according to official estimates, there are 5,000 professional artists. Add to those, the people that plan to be one and the ones that aren't professional--who officially defines the difference, we don't know, perhaps the tax authorities. And out there are many more thousands and all want the attention because they are just so unique. What I want to say is: the galleries and museums aren't waiting for you and the words that describe your works, using the vague language of art, are overworked. And the galleries themselves are a cliche--next week, three more open their doors.
In the meantime the mood in Berlin, although not harsh, has grown sober. That's connected to the fact that it is not possible to earn a living here as an artist since the city financially, let us say, imploded as a result of the city bank scandal. Despite all the hope and euphoria the current wealth remains at the level of the early 90s. Positive factors for art remain the cheap rents and a relaxed attitude to daily life that a paranoid New York (at the moment) doesn't have to offer (anymore). But something has gone flat--the opening of galleries or exhibitions is a stereotype that happens every day.
A crisis strengthens the upper end of the art market, because those who can invest in art want to be certain of its value, and that is to the disadvantage of the middle segment--an area that blossomed in Berlin during the past decade. Berlin's galleries, at least, have to earn their money outside the city. Yanked out of the rosy glow of the 90s, the Berlin gallery owner now looks at his small business situation with a more watchful eye, and those of his former neighbor on the Auguststrasse. It's called competition and that exists among doener sellers too.
In this lament, I think about numerous friends, artists, critics, curators (without wanting to name names), who had the luck to take part for a long time, but now have made themselves scarce. Maybe that is natural for thirty-fourty somethings, overwhelmed by a landslide of invitations and the overkill of choices. Maybe the youthful artist and gallery owners feel the euphoria that the slightly graying 90s generation used to feel. It could be you just have to walk a few blocks and all the problems talked about in this text don't exist. Otherwise art in Berlin will slowly become something for a minority, the way it was before the 90s, since the 30s. And maybe that would be a good thing.
Fashion comes, fashion goes. That doesn't answer certain aesthetic questions. I saw them treated in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung a while ago and it asked what took place in the New Berlin besides a hype over the ruins and a retro-perspective. That can only be answered by looking at individuals and their works. But generally speaking, it is hard to dismiss the impression the art scene relied on the dynamism of the club scene and the glorious squalor of a huge amount of architectural ruins. Of course, it isn't everyday that an unused and for decades ignored metropolis surfaces in the middle of Europe.
Some once hope-filled young Berlin artists have returned to Munich or Stuttgart to finally do something sensible. Maybe they have come to the late realization that 90s Berlin Art was just another Fata Morgana of the New Economy--the closer you got, the more it vanished.
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