2019-09-16
"Don't look away."
The last words Kurt heard from his dear aunt to him as a child.
It is also a sentence that will always be repeated in his mind in the future in his life.
In 1937, when Aunt Elizabeth was 22 years old, her unbridled youth and beauty caught the world's attention. She was born with a certain penetrating insight that made herself uneasy as well as those around her. The "transition" that surpassed the times was sent to the mental hospital as "abandoned" human beings (at that time the Nazis had begun to implement "sterilization laws" in order to ensure racial superiority).
It was his aunt who led Kurt to feel what "modern art" was for the first time when he was a child. She showed him an exhibition specially held by the Nazi government as a "negative teaching material" at that time.
"Before the Nazis gained state power, there was so-called modern art in Germany." This is the narration at the beginning of the film, which is a guide to the exhibition hall who leads everyone to understand how to criticize this "degenerate" art.
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I was in Hamburg this spring and happened to see an exhibition.
The works in the exhibition are from the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) period. Looking back on history, the Weimar Republic was the period after the defeat of the German Empire in the First World War and before Hitler's Nazi Party came to power. It was a very special transition period for the whole of Germany. Exhibits are mainly paintings and photographs, high quality retrospectives. At that time, Germany, which was not open in the 1920s, had recorded pictures of gay men and lesbians. Some easel paintings, which express the geometric meaning of "industrial feeling", are very forward-looking and very good.
Or, in the "transition period" of a country, the corresponding culture and art are also being transformed - the condition is that it must be supported by a healthy government.
Obviously, history has turned a corner at this time, and those better possibilities have not happened. Not only that, but also a more heart-wrenching catastrophe for the entire human race.
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The movie doesn't make a big deal on "Misery", those fragments, whether we are far away or Kurt in the movie, seem to be watching some extremely spectacular, detached large-scale installation art scene.
On February 13, 1945, when Dresden was bombed, a dazed teenager stood in the slender aluminum foil sheets scattered by bombers in the sky in the middle of the night.
Also at that time, Aunt Elizabeth, who loved him the most and appreciated him the most, died in the gas chamber in order to practice the "great plan" of the Nazis to purify the "low-end elements" of the race. Elizabeth's two brothers, Kurt's uncles, both died in battle as German soldiers.
Just as the mentor Kurt met in West Germany as an adult said, "war" is in a sense, or it can be said that it is a huge "performance art" for human beings - such remarks, it is true that the distance is far away. Say so. But if it involves every real person who has experienced it, it is difficult to be so detached after all.
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Kurt, who had completed his postgraduate studies at the East German Academy of Fine Arts, eventually fled to West Germany.
In East Germany at that time, Picasso, like the "degenerate" exhibition he saw when he was a child, was mentioned by the professor as a "negative example" in the classroom - because Picasso's "egoism" can only bring "disaster" ". In East Germany at that time, the most correct way of expressing "communism" was the "working class".
What he later painted to support his family was the highest theme mural expressing "serving the people". In my heart, I couldn't help but face the repeated shouts of "ich, ich, ich" (German "I, I, I"), which the professors of the Academy of Fine Arts were most opposed to.
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He fled East Germany on March 13, 1961, the eve of the Berlin Wall.
Today's Germany has commemorated the remnants of the "Berlin Wall" on display.
In the 28 years (1961-1989), the two separated places grew into different worlds.
These fragments of walls that have been commemorated have been written with light words.
This is good, and shows that the most painful parts are being healed despite being commemorated.
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But history, the real history, cannot be forgotten.
To all those who have not forgotten the history, it is of great significance to both the East and the West at that time and China.
That year, the Berlin Wall fell.
That year, when history traveled to China, it turned a corner again - just as German modern art went through the Weimar Republic and turned a corner when it reached the Nazi Empire.
Can only say here.
The world of "1984", for me at this time, is not an illusion.
On that day, the live broadcast of the Berlin Wall tearing down that year was played in front of me, and behind me was a freeze-frame picture of the celebration of the whole people after the collapse of the wall.
All thoughts are mixed, just tears. . . . . .
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When he came to West Germany, he chose to study again at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, which preached "ich, ich, ich" at that time.
In a relatively free world, he began to work hard to release. But finding the way I really want to express myself is not easy.
Until the half-closed light passes through the face of the young aunt in the picture, accompanied by the rattling of leaves, and coincides with the face of the father-in-law. He finally confirmed - it was his, Kurt's real.
It was the first time a hole had been pierced through him as a child, the blue sunken eye sockets.
It's the A sound played on my aunt's piano.
Hit the head with a glass ashtray, blood and a dull sound.
It was the stagnant eyes of his father after he hanged himself.
It is the wife's first beautiful body.
It was the indifference, ruthlessness and hidden distress of the inner-firm Nazi father-in-law. . . . . .
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Unlike the previous work "The Lives of Others" (2006), the director did not express "political correctness" this time.
Cold-hearted and ruthless, the father-in-law, who did not hesitate to sterilize his own daughter in order to ensure "racial superiority", would also be moved by the "father" that young Aunt Elizabeth called him when she was at her most desperate - but he couldn't do more than It is not to perform the operation in person as originally planned, and to replace someone else. Then wipe off the girl's remaining tears on the leather shoes.
After the war, the father-in-law was captured. The Soviet general, who has always been cruel to him, changed his attitude because he allowed his dystocia wife to give birth smoothly. "If someone saves a life, he saves the whole world." The general's line is an old Jewish proverb, and it's also a line in "Schindler's List" that moved me deeply. The same sentence, at this time, just changed the completely opposite angle, feeling unspeakable irony and weirdness.
The complexity of human nature transcends politics, transcends the times, and it is difficult to say a word.
Like the West Germany shown in the movie, it seems that it should be freer and easier to express its true opinions than East Germany. In fact, when the TV station reports on Kurt's solo exhibition, it will try to avoid "controversial" pictures as much as possible, and especially choose the safest and most error-free pictures to report.
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I think the director just wants to look farther and farther to watch all this.
As Kurt said his drawings are like lottery numbers, if you don't win, it's just a bunch of meaningless numbers. If you win, it will only be of great significance to the winner.
He publicly stated to the outside world that the people on these paintings were just random to him, and he did not know them. In fact, these pictures are exactly the lottery winning numbers for him, and each of them is of great significance to him. He just chose the way he liked best to express it - like when he was a child, take his palm away, see clearly, then blur it out, see clearly again, over and over again.
In the evening after the first solo exhibition, the car horns blared in unison, and he once again relived the words of his aunt as a child: "Don't look away." In 1966, he and his aunt 29 years ago, in the sound of the A flute , the real coincidence.
Under the torrent of history, individuals are too small.
Still don't look away, even if it is far, farther.
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The film is based on the life of German avant-garde artist Gerhard Richter.
Today, I won't talk about the artists themselves, but only the works.
Personally, Gerhard Richter's real works are thousands of times more moving than the "fakes" in the movies.
There is a specialization in the surgery industry, which is never false.
Works that are truly emotional and spiritual, can be perceived no matter how far apart they are.
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