A poem from Frankfurt

We visited the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt (the National Museum of Art was closed for renovations) and came across this very unusual sculpture by Katharina Fritsch. It haunted me so much I had to write a poem about it. Though you might not be able to tell from the photo, it is huge. All the figures are life size. And if you have any idea about what it means, please post a comment.


http://www.mmk-frankfurt.de/

Katharina Fritsch's Tischgesellschaft (Table Society), 1988  

at the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art

Sitting in Black and White

Katharina Fritsch sculpted thirty-two men

sitting at a long narrow table

covered with a red and white

print oil-cloth tablecloth

Half of the men sit on one side

half on the other,

each looking exactly alike

dressed in black

shirt, pants, shoes.

Each has black hair,

only their faces and hands

are chalk white.

They sit sort of hunched over

looking their opposite in the eye,

their hands on the table

with fingers turned inward

and slightly spread out.

And if you look

under the table

just beneath the edge of the tablecloth

you’ll see each has his knees together

his feet together

in straight, precise alignment

but not placed

quite close enough

to touch those

of his companion

on the other side.

But, no amount of looking

will tell you what

these men sitting precisely so

are doing there.

A few trip highlights

My husband and I just returned from a two-week trip to Frankfurt and Berlin Germany, Stockholm Sweden, and Oslo Norway. I'll post a few trip highlights in the next days. 


By far the most exciting sight we visited was the Jewish Museum in Berlin. 


http://www.jmberlin.de/main/EN/homepage-EN.php


There are absolutely no words to describe how I feel about it -- it is a museum like no other I've ever been - and I've been to a lot of museums. Everything about it reminds of the Jewish suffering throughout the ages. The angles, the voids, the stairways to nowhere, the zigs and zags, the orientation of the windows that provide no sense of the levels or rooms inside, the Garden of Exile on a 12-degree disorienting gradient with Russian willow oak growing on top of the forty-nine concrete pillars to symbolize hope.


Here is what the architect, Daniel Libeskind, said about the project in 1998.

"The official name of the project is 'Jewish Museum' but I have named it 'Between the Lines' because for me it is about two lines of thinking, organization and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments, the other is a tortuous line, but continuing indefinitely." 

The museum opened on September 9, 2001.

 Jewish Museum - Aerial View

Outside view

Garden of Exile