East and West reunite

By T.J. McNAMARA in Europe

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall there has been an enormous amount of construction around the Potsdamer Platz formerly sliced through by the division of the city. One of the new buildings is the Kunstforum which now contains the Gemaldegalerie Berlin - the Berlin Painting Gallery - which houses the national collection.

The approach to the gallery is a wide, sweeping ramp toward a building that is modern, minimal architecture. Not for Berlin the glittering fish curves of Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao or the big, blue bulb that is the newly opened art museum in Graz, Austria. Here, as in new galleries in Munich and Vienna, the building which houses art is severe and rectangular - post-modern but pre-Gehry.

The great significance of the Kunstforum is that it is the final rationalisation of the cultural division of the city into East and West.

When the wall came down there was two of everything in the cultural domain - including two opera houses, both of which still remain. The art that survived the chaos of war was divided, too.

The paintings that made up the former national collection could only be seen at two separate locations: the Bode Museum in the East and the Dalhem Museum in the West.

At the end of World War II some great paintings were lost in a fire that destroyed a bunker just after the surrender of Berlin. Among the losses was the Italian painter Signorelli's unique Feast of Pan, but there were many others.

A large number of paintings had been stored for safety in the Turingian salt mines where the Americans found them. After a good deal of toing-and-froing, about 1200 works ended up in the Dalhem Museum.

Dalhem is an attractive suburb of Berlin, but a long way from the centre. Its museum was designed to show Asiatic art, and having the collection there could only be a temporary measure.

In pre-war Berlin the national museums were concentrated on an island in the River Spree. It was called the Museumsinsel - the Museum Island - in East Berlin. Paintings that survived the war here were stored in the cellars of the Bode Museum and they were shown there again.

When more paintings arrived from the Soviet Union much of the collection was shifted to the Pergamon Museum, the German equivalent of the British Museum. They were housed in an annex called the Deutsche Museum.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, planning began for a museum of European painting that would bring all the work together again. The Gemaldegalerie is the result.

Visitors enter a central hall of stark simplicity that resembles a basilica with two rows of columns and a vaulted roof. Not a single painting is to be seen. A big pool in the centre of the hall contains a minimalist sculpture by the American Walter de Maria. The collection is in rooms that lead off the hall.

It is a magnificent collection rich in masterpieces. It is a comprehensive survey of European painting from the 13th century to the close of the 18th century. Among the most marvellous paintings is a Madonna by Durer. Among all the works by early German masters, it shows a clarity that comes from his special relationship with Italian art. It was done when he was visiting Venice.

A masterpiece of Flemish painting which has become almost the trademark of the gallery is a portrait of a woman by Roger van der Weyden, which not only is a fine characterisation but also shows beautifully the quantity of linen a woman of substance was expected to wear on her head in late medieval times.

Among the splendid collection of work by Rembrandt is a Moses which is grandly monumental and heroic. Among the Italian paintings, a Madonna by Mantegna stays in the mind. It has much more tenderness than you would expect from that grim Old Master.

Also from Renaissance Italy is an extraordinary work by the Venetian, Carpaccio, whose work is found almost only in his native Venice. It depicts the entombment of Christ in a unique way that manages to include macabre details as well as charming pastoral incidents.

The collection has its own Mona Lisa in a Portrait of a Lady by the Spanish painter Velasquez. Her smile is as enigmatic as the famous woman in the Louvre, but is allied to a much more forthright character.

The French are less strongly represented, but there is a night piece by Watteau showing a comedia del arte group taking a bow at the end of their performance. It matches the two great paintings by Watteau in another Berlin museum at Charlottenberg.

The riches of Berlin's collections are now readily accessible and truly splendid.