Anya Gert - 2020 Mitra Scholar

2019-20 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient Squatters and Their Street Art: How the Counterculture Undermined Sanctioned Artwork in Occupied West Berlin Anya Gert

Squatters and Their Street Art: How the Counterculture Undermined Sanctioned Artwork in Occupied West Berlin

Anya Gert 2020 Mitra Family Scholar Mentors: Ms. Amy Pelman, Mr. Damon Halback, Ms. Trish Ludovici April 15, 2020

Gert 2 In 1986, on the hundredth anniversary of New York’s installation of the Statue of Liberty, West Berliners Thierry Noir and Christophe Bouchet used stencils to spray-paint 1

forty-two Statues of Liberty on the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie. Marking the location of the 1961 United States-Soviet tank standoff, the space was the most patrolled and deadly 2

intersection between East and West Berlin. The artists created a symbolic ode to freedom in a place of constant Soviet patrol and brutality in an effort to demonstrate artistic and individual autonomy. Indeed, in the 28 years the Berlin Wall stood, between one hundred and two hundred people were killed by the Soviet border regime in the attempt to escape East Germany.

3

Figure 1. Thierry Noir and Christophe Bouchet’s Statues of Liberty spray-painted at Checkpoint Charlie (1986) ​The Guardian.

Jonathan Jones, "Graffiti in the Death Strip: The Berlin Wall's First Street Artist Tells His Story," ​The Guardian​, April 3, 2014.

1

Raymond L. Garthoff, "Berlin 1961: The Record Corrected," ​Foreign Policy​, no. 84 (1991): 142, JSTOR; Jennifer Mundy, "Lost Art: Keith Haring," Tate.

2

3

Mundy, "Lost Art," Tate.

Gert 3 Noir claims to be one of the first people to paint on the Berlin Wall, and he was one of the many artists who occupied West Berlin in the 1970s and the 1980s. In fact, certain districts of West Berlin, particularly Kreuzberg, which was surrounded on three sides by the Berlin Wall, 4

were the core of the radical anarchist scene in the city. In the 1960s, when rent prices were regulated by the West Berlin government, Kreuzberg’s deteriorating yet cheap housing attracted many artists, students, and immigrants, whose youth and cultural diversity established it as a hub 5

of cultural and political leftism.

Kreuzberg had contributed to the countercultural values that West Berlin exhibited even 6

before the Nazi era. Berlin was an ever-changing and diverse city since the prominence of the 7

Weimar Republic. In the early 1900s, throughout the occupation, and into the present day, 8

Berlin has been a melting pot of ethnicities, political ideologies, and artistic movements. It was home to Nazis and Social Democrats, to Expressionists and New Objectivists; the city's essence 9

was in its culture of opposites. This diversity allowed the counterculture to flourish. During the Cold War divide, youths and counter culturists flocked to the city to study at the Free University of Berlin, to escape West German military service and, perhaps most importantly, to partake in the free behavior that the city’s culture allowed and perpetuated.

10

4

Timothy Scott Brown, "The Sixties in the City: Avant-Gardes and Urban Rebels in New York, London, and West Berlin," ​Journal of Social History​ 46, no. 4 (2013): 820, JSTOR. ​Nicole Lampl, "Emerging from the Shadows of the Wall: Katja Ka and the Büro Berlin," ​TransScripts​ 6 (2016): 6.

5

6

West Berlin: The Political Geography," ​The Wilson Quarterly (1976-)​ 12, no. 3 (1988): 129, JSTOR.

7

Alex Ross, ​The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century​ (London: Harper Perennial, 2009), 178-179.

8

Ross, 178-179.

9

Ross, 178-179.

10

"West Berlin," 129.

Gert 4 The West Berlin counterculture was dominated by radical leftist entities, from student activist groups to experimental communes. For example, the anti-authoritarian Socialist German Students League pushed to revise the notion of Marxism, towards a more personal definition of 11

equality in society that was separate from the Stalinist Marxism of the Soviet regime. Other groups created communes, including the influential ​Kommune I,​ which practiced experimental forms of communal living, and attempted to radicalize students through public protest and 12

neo-anarchism. A group known as the “Alternatives” represented countercultural values through newspapers, created its own political party, known as “Alternative Liste,” and advocated 13

for a less materialistic society by aligning with the squatter movement.

Squatting expanded in West Berlin as a lifestyle alternative to consumer society, and it 14

was a method for youths, artists, and immigrants to live communally in abandoned buildings.

Students and other youths used squatting not only to find autonomy and advertise alternative

forms of living, but also to practice activism against capitalist West Berlin, which they believed 15

destroyed property for profit and prioritized construction companies and housing corporations.

Indeed, West Berlin experienced a housing crisis in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of ​Weißer Kreis,​ a laissez-faire program that gradually allowed markets to regulate prices, resulting in 16

increased rent prices. Thus, the squatter movement began to expand in West Berlin, particularly

11

Brown, "The Sixties," 820.

12

Brown, 820.

13

"West Berlin," 130-131.

Alexander Sedlmaier, "Urban Space: The Squatting Movement," in ​Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany​ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 208, JSTOR. 14

15

Sedlmaier, 208; Lampl, "Emerging from," 7.

16

Sedlmaier, 217.

Gert 5 in Kreuzberg, where West Berlin construction companies abandoned their plans for renovation, 17

leaving several housing units half-demolished and unoc​cupied.

West Berlin street artists such as Noir, Bouchet, Raimund Kummer, Hermann Pitz, and Fritz Rahmann, the latter three making up the artist group Büro Berlin, either lived in squats themselves or, in the case of Büro Berlin, squatted abandoned buildings for community and 18

exhibition space. For many of these artists, the Berlin Wall acted as a blank canvas, and by 19

painting on it, they created the genre of “Wall Art.” Some artists like Noir created murals, which aimed to demystify the Wall through bright colors and comical characters, while others covered it in graffiti slogans like “Would the last person out of [East Berlin] please turn the 20

lights off?” No matter the medium, the Berlin Wall and the public spaces of West Berlin became the creative stomping grounds of different artists, especially the activist squatters involved in West Berlin’s countercultural movement.

Days after Noir and Bouchet put up their Statues of Liberty mural at Checkpoint Charlie, the director of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum invited Keith Haring, the iconic American 21

graffiti artist, to paint a mural on a section of the Wall. Haring depicted a chain of red and black human figures interlinked on a yellow background, prepared by museum staff before his arrival, 22

symbolizing a reunification of the East and West peoples using the colors of the German flags.

17

Lampl, "Emerging from," 6.

18

Jones, "Graffiti in the Death"; ​Lampl, 9.

19

"West Berlin," 134.

20

"Thierry Noir," Howard Griffin Gallery, last modified 2020; "West Berlin," 134.

21

Mundy, "Lost Art," Tate.

22

Mundy.

Gert 6 23

However, Haring’s piece was painted directly atop Noir and Bouchet’s Statues of Liberty. This action highlighted the different values espoused by mainstream art curators and the activist impulses of the counterculture movement. Haring’s mural represented an attempt to Westernize the production of visual arts in West Berlin, to artificially curate ideals of American culture, neo-expressionism, and abstract expressionism.

Figure 2. Section of Keith Haring’s mural at Checkpoint Charlie (1986) Photograph by Heinz J. Kuzdas. Tate.org.uk.

Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt, the director of the museum who sponsored Haring’s work on the Wall, was himself an anti-communist activist who founded a search service for missing Soviet 24

prisoners. Hildebrandt proved himself to be not only aligned with American politics and

23

Jones, "Graffiti in the Death."

Kirsten Grieshaber, "Rainer Hildebrandt, Museum Head, 89, At Berlin Crossing," ​The New York Times,​ January 12, 2004.

24

Gert 7 anti-communist ideology, but also aligned with American visual culture, demonstrated by his advocacy for Haring’s art at his museum. He was just one example of the many curators and museum directors in West Berlin and West Germany who filled museums and galleries with works by abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning, Franz 25

Kline, and Clyfford Still. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the United States 26

Information Agency (USIA) were also involved in the spread of these art forms abroad.

Ultimately, the West Berlin squatters and street artists undermined the efforts of curators and American leadership to propagate mainstream modern art in the 1970s. By asserting autonomy over urban space, by means of both squatting and creating street art, artists brought attention to the reality of living in West Berlin during the occupation, from depicting the experience of living alongside the Wall to questioning the choices of the West Berlin government to pursue capitalist economic policy and promote Westernized aesthetics. The USIA and the MoMA represented United States cultural interests in Europe with exhibition tours of abstract expressionist artists, and West German and West Berlin curators worked to showcase these same artists and styles in their galleries. Despite these efforts, a duality existed in West Berlin, where the countercultural street life and institutionalized museum life produced two contrasting styles of visual expression. By definition, “street art” and “graffiti” explain why West Berlin provided a space where art could derive meaning from the city’s history, and thus why works of street art should be taken as seriously as the curated American arts as an authentic indicator of the arts scene in West Berlin. Street artists such as Noir, Bouchet, and the members

25

​Frank Spicer, "The New American Painting, 1959," Tate​.

​Claudia Mesch, ​Art and Politics: A Small History of Art for Social Change since 1945​ (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014).

26

Gert 8 of Büro Berlin gave the counterculture and the squatters a voice through visual activism by means of murals and sculptures. Their works and the voices they represented contrasted the mainstream, American-sanctioned art styles in West Berlin, and even shined through this movement of cultural imperialism. In the end, even after Haring covered Noir and Bouchet’s mural with his own piece, the translucency of Haring’s yellow paint revealed the Statues of Liberty underneath. Within a matter of days, West Berlin’s artists and graffitists had covered 27

Haring’s piece, perhaps to protest the American’s overly optimistic message.

Figure 3. Section of Keith Haring’s mural at Checkpoint Charlie, covered with graffiti and flyers (1986) Photograph by Heinz J. Kuzdas. Tate.org.uk.

27

Mundy, "Lost Art," Tate.

Gert 9 Curation of American Abstract Expressionism In the 1970s, both the West Berlin countercultural art scene and sanctioned art scene began to evolve partly due to the Four Power Agreement of 1971. Supplemented by the Basic Treaty in 1972, which recognized East and West Germany as two sovereign states, the 28

negotiation had the effect of normalizing the notion of a separated Berlin. The quality of life in West Berlin improved after the treaty was passed, as travel and trade to West Berlin and West 29

Germany became easier. Alleviated tensions between the Soviets and the rest of the Allies also made West Berlin a safer place, which contributed to the economic and political stability of the 30

city. However, the Four Power Agreement also resulted in a more marginalized city, where 31

class divides became more apparent. As a result of relaxed political tensions in Berlin, Allied attention was drawn towards other international conflicts, specifically the Vietnam War, hence 32

leaving West Berlin’s growing socioeconomic divisions politically unsupervised. These divides manifested themselves in the rise of the squatter movement in districts like Kreuzberg, Wedding, and Schönberg, during which young activists occupied abandoned buildings as a critique of West 33

Berlin’s rebuilding policies and the housing crisis that they exacerbated. Thus, the Four Power

28

Briana Jennifer Smith, "Creative Alternatives: Experimental Art and Cultural Politics in Berlin, 1971-1999" (PhD diss., The University of Iowa, 2017), 50-51. ​Emily Pugh, ​Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin​ (Pittsburg.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 200, ProQuest Ebook Central.

29

30

​Pugh, 200.

31

​Pugh, 200.

32

Pugh, 200.

33

​Pugh, 201.

Gert 10 Agreement contributed to the rise of the West Berlin squatter and countercultural movements in the early 1970s.

However, the Four Power Agreement also created a sense of cultural and artistic competition between East and West Berlin. Berlin’s seclusion had resulted in its peripherality to the international art world, and in an effort to enhance their status abroad, cultural leaders on 34

both sides of the Wall used visual arts as an area of competition against their counterpart.

35

Therefore, both cities increased funding and support for art programs and institutions. Some of West Berlin’s cultural leaders even embraced the idea of funding local urban artists and their 36

experimentation. For example, future Cultural Senator Dieter Sauberzweig stated in 1973 that “culture must be removed from its allotted and at times self-selected enclosures and instead be 37

opened up to society.” The goal of these reformers was thus to develop and nurture a raw and authentic artistic environment in West Berlin..

Although there existed leaders and artist groups that promoted experimental and urban art in the city, the West Berlin Parliament was reluctant to fund initiatives for public experimental 38

art. Thus, Berlin remained a long way from recovering its previous prominence as a flourishing 39

center for avant-garde visual arts. In the so-called “Golden Twenties,” Berlin was a capital for

34

Briana Jennifer Smith, "'Culture for All!' Art and Cultural Politics in Berlin in the 1970s," Creative Alternatives, last modified 2017.

35

Smith.

36

Smith.

37

Smith.

38

Smith.

39

Smith.

Gert 11 40

innovative arts, cinema, and architecture. The push to catch West Berlin up with the rest of the art world was therefore propagated by inner-city institutions and even American art organizations.

The United States leadership practiced its influence on West Berlin art institutions 41

through the promotion of American abstract expressionism. The movement dealt with large, colorful, non-objective works, and was advertised in key exhibitions as a superior art form.

Compared to the Soviet-promoted socialist realism movement in the East, abstract expressionism 42

was brought to West Berlin and West Germany in an effort to oppose realism with abstraction.

The abstract expressionist movement symbolized American ideals of personal freedom and 43

democracy.

Previously, this style, born in the United States in the beginnings of the Cold War, was recast by American curators, politicians, and arts institutions because of its ties to Marxist 44

radicalism. However, in the early 1960s, the United States government began to embrace abstract expressionism when it started to cultivate support for the United States among the 45

moderately leftist West European elite. Founded alongside the Marshall Plan, the USIA was created to garner support from these European leftists who were critical of Stalin, and thus

40

Smith.

41

Lampl, "Emerging from," 1.

42

Lampl, 3.

43

Lampl, 3.

44

Mesch, ​Art and Politics.

45

Mesch​.

Gert 12 promoted American cultural interests abroad. In collaboration with the International Council (IC) 46

of the MoMA, the USIA began to launch traveling exhibitions into major European cities.

Starting in 1951 at the annual Berliner Festwochen festival, the United States supported an exhibition titled “American Painting: Its Origins and Present,” which featured several 47

American abstract expressionist painters, most notably Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Furthermore, in 1958, the MoMA and USIA funded the European tour of an exhibition, “New American Painting,” with works from Pollock, Rothko, Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, and 48

Clyfford Still. The exhibition traveled to many prominent European cities, including Brussels, Amsterdam, London, and Paris; when it landed in West Berlin, its paintings were displayed in the Academy of Fine Arts Berlin.

49

While these types of installations were curated and financially supported in Berlin directly through American institutions, there also existed German and Berliner curators and museum directors who were interested in promoting American Modern Art. For example, Werner Haftmann, a curator for the art exhibition Documenta in Kassel, West Germany, not only highlighted Pollock as the centerpiece of his shows, but also placed his paintings with works from German artist Willi Baumeister in an effort to create an association between the two styles.

50

Since abstract expressionists were highly acclaimed by collectors, Haftmann hoped to prove

46

Mesch​.

47

Lampl, 3.

48

​Spicer, "The New American," Tate.

49

​Spicer.

50

Mesch, ​Art and Politics.

Gert 13 51

that his native art had improved in this American direction with the help of the allied forces.

Haftmann later moved to Berlin and founded the West Berlin New National Gallery, or the ​Neue Nationalgalerie​, which he directed from 1967 to 1974. There, he continued to align the works of American artists with those of West German artists, thus emphasizing the positive cultural and economic impacts that the United States brought to Berlin and Germany.

52

Despite all of these efforts to connect Germans and Berliners to American abstract expressionism and its artists, the MoMA, USIA, and independent curators in favor of American modern art were unsuccessful in creating an authentic absorption of this movement into the arts scene in West Berlin. A British critic characterized the tour of “New American Painting” as 53

inspiring yet invasive to Europe. Additionally, support for American abstract expressionism in Allied territory appeared to stem mainly from the elite, as an estimated mere 3 percent of West 54

Germans expressed interest in American modern art. Contemporary art institutions in West Berlin and in its West German counterpart proved to be detached from the people’s preferences and tailored to the liking of the German elite. This sanctioned art form therefore coexisted with, but did not influence, the more democratic and authentic public art movement in West Berlin.

Through the political implications of their street art and graffiti, the squatters in West Berlin demonstrated the significance of their art and of their countercultural movement.

51

Lampl, "Emerging from," 4.

52

Lampl, 4.

53

Mesch, ​Art and Politics.

54

Lampl, "Emerging from," 4.

Gert 14

Defining Street Art and Graffiti, from New York to Kreuzberg The significance of street art and graffiti to the countercultural West Berlin arts scene lies in the unorthodox medium’s definitions and origins. Nicholas Riggle, a professor and author at the University of San Diego, focuses on the intersection of philosophy and aesthetics in his written work and provides theories and definitions on the topic of street art. The essence of the street arts lies in creativity, aestheticism, evanescence, and—perhaps most important to West 55

Berlin’s environment—illegality and anonymity. Because the buildings and walls of the streets are primarily owned by the city and by other people, “vandalism” is often a given when creating 56

street art. Given the art’s illegal nature, creators often use pseudonyms, tags, or distinct styles 57

of art to establish their identity over the urban space without getting caught in the act. Street art thrives in the public environment, and the aspect of its illegality provokes an ephemeral quality: 58

some art may last mere days or hours before it is erased by nature or authority. This form of art is thus characterized by rebellion and activism, since, by virtue of its intentional placement in the public and in front of the common passerby’s eyes, it requires illegality and anonymity to even temporarily publicize an idea or statement.

Although Riggle establishes that the definitions of “street art” and “graffiti,” specifically “artistic graffiti,” somewhat overlap, he states that they indeed represent different types of visual

​Nicholas Alden Riggle, "Street Art: The Transfiguration of the Commonplaces," ​The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism​ 68, no. 3 (2010): 246, JSTOR. 55

56

​Riggle, 246.

57

Riggle, 246.

58

Riggle, 246.

Gert 15 59

expression. The artistic graffiti movement originated in New York City in the 1970s, particularly in working class neighborhoods that were struck by the breakdown of the city’s 60

public services. Pseudonymic individuals began to “tag” public surfaces, acting as an artistic 61

outlet for youth living in deprived environments. These tags eventually evolved to become more colorful, striking, and grandiose in appearance, becoming more and more of an aesthetic art 62

form through the 1980s. While Riggle argues that artistic graffiti is not street art in the sense that it is mere “public writing in a distinct style,” he recognizes that its practice has intention, and 63

can have implications in the wider artistic scene.

In contrast to artistic graffiti, “street art” is defined by Riggle as artwork whose use of the street is internal or necessary to understanding the meaning of the piece, and if the art were to be 64

moved elsewhere, it would lose its significance. To extrapolate on this notion, he emphasizes the difference between a ​general u​ se of the street and a ​specific ​use of the street, where a ​specific use would employ a particular building or a building’s feature, like a door or a certain brick, while a ​general ​use utilizes a surface because it is public and is meant to be seen by many eyes.

65

In a space like West Berlin, certain locations carry significance because of their Cold War context, the most obvious monuments being places like Checkpoint Charlie—the most patrolled

59

Riggle, 251.

​Tim Cresswell, "Heretical Geography 1: The Crucial 'Where' of Graffiti," in ​In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression​ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 31, JSTOR. 60

61

Cresswell, 32; Cresswell, 35.

62

Cresswell, 32.

63

Riggle, “Street Art,” 252-253.

64

Riggle, 246.

65

Riggle, 252.

Gert 16 intersection between the East and West and the location of the United States-Soviet tank standoff—or the Berlin Wall itself. Artists like Noir and Haring thus employed a ​specific​ use of the street when creating murals on these surfaces by incorporating the historic context of these structures into the meaning of their pieces. On the other hand, a ​general​ use of the street, or in this case, the city of West Berlin, is implemented when any artwork, from murals to sculptures to wall tags, is created on West Berlin public surfaces. Because the city in and of itself came to represent the Cold War and Allied aggression, the spaces within West Berlin acted as a platform for visual activism, both from artists who came there for the purpose of creating their art, and for native residents and youth affected by the occupation.

Even seemingly meaningless graffiti, artistic or not, added to the cultural identity of 1970s West Berlin when interpreted through Riggle’s definition of street art. Although mere graffiti did not necessarily utilize place and space to extract meaning and therefore is not always 66

street art, the beginnings of a widespread graffiti movement brings meaning to the art. It represents a reaction to a social change. The frequency of graffiti, when interpreted as a cultural movement, can serve as a macroscopic indicator for the well-being of a city and its population.

Even if a pseudonymic tag or a random phrase plastered on a wall in West Berlin is not street art

by Riggle’s definition, a ubiquitous presence of tags in West Berlin can be seen as a ​general​ use of the street, since the creators intentionally curated a citywide phenomenon of using the street for its publicity.

Traditionally, graffiti thrives in poor, urban areas where individuals wish to protest, to carve out self-identity, and to channel frustration into opportunities to make a comment or to put

66

Riggle, 252.

Gert 17 some beauty into the world. The streets of these neighborhoods become a channel for frustrated energy, because these “graffitiests” come with little social privilege, and with little position to 67

have a say in their societies. People at the roots of graffiti movements are disenfranchised for different reasons. During the 1970s New York deficit, black and Puerto Rican individuals were disproportionately affected by the city’s changes, and became the core for the New York graffiti 68

movement.

A similar phenomenon occurred in West Berlin, particularly with the squatters of the Kreuzberg district. After the end of World War II, the housing and rent in Kreuzberg was legally 69

regulated, which made real estate investments in the area undesirable. The quality of this housing deteriorated, and as a result of the decreasing prices and therefore affordable housing, 70

many artists, students, and international immigrants moved into Kreuzberg in the 1960s. Due to its young and culturally diverse population, the neighborhood became the epitome of West 71

Germany’s radical leftist scene. However, throughout the 1970s, the Ministry for Building and Construction passed orders to demolish Kreuzberg buildings and replace them with new residential units, a plan that ultimately failed because of delays in construction and costliness.

72

73

Kreuzberg was thus left with many empty and half-demolished buildings. At the same time,

67

Rolando Castellón, comp., ​Aesthetics of Graffiti​ (San Francisco, USA: Museum of Modern Art, 1978), 27.

68

Cresswell, “Heretical Geography 1,” 31.

69

Lampl, "Emerging from," 6.

70

Lampl, 6.

71

Lampl, 6.

72

Lampl, 6.

73

Lampl, 6.

Gert 18 West Berlin suffered a housing shortage in the 1970s when the parliament introduced ​Weißer Kreis,​ a program that gradually allowed the market to set real estate prices, prior to which 74

housing prices were regulated by the government through a system called ​Mietpreisbindung.​ 75

By 1985, the price of living increased by up to 200 percent. ​Weißer Kreis​ therefore exacerbated the number of individuals looking for cheap housing in West Berlin, many of whom joined the artists, youth, and immigrants in the abandoned district of Kreuzberg.

Some of the young squatters were a rambunctious group of individuals, ready to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the capitalist state of West Berlin. As a result, they were heavily involved in public protest and often clashed with the police, who were typically United States officials. The conflicts, such as annual May Day demonstrations, as depicted by news and media, often oversimplified the West Berlin squatters as a group of uncontrollable freaks, or a 76

movement of alternative and violence-seeking youths. By characterizing the squatters and their protests as nonpolitical and violent, the media depoliticized the intended activist goals of the 77

squatter movement, which were rooted in an effort to establish and occupy public space.

Because graffiti art appears most frequently in areas where individuals are socially underrepresented and yearn to establish an identity, street art and graffiti became prominent in the poorer quarters of 1970s West Berlin. Following the Four Power Agreement in 1971, the lower classes of Berlin were marginalized by housing speculation that resulted in the squatter

74

Sedlmaier, "Urban Space," 217.

75

Sedlmaier, 217.

​Carla MacDougall, "In the Shadow of the Wall: Urban Space and Everyday Life in Kreuzberg," in ​Between the Avant-garde and the Everyday: Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present​, by Lorena Anton, ed.

Timothy Brown (Berghahn Books, 2011), 154.

76

77

MacDougall, "In the Shadow," 155.

Gert 19 78

movement. The section of the Wall surrounding Kreuzberg was continuously being reinforced, and the West Berlin government continued to enact renewal policies that prioritized construction 79

companies over its own citizens. Artists living in Kreuzberg, such as the group Büro Berlin, thus began responding to this lifestyle, in which West Berlin citizens were ironically trapped in 80

an oasis of “freedom” by the Wall and Soviet army. They questioned the condition of West 81

Berlin, as well as the government’s utopian capitalist efforts and failures. By squatting and occupying abandoned buildings, they hoped to transform space to indicate the city’s architectural 82

and social changes. Creating artwork in the form of street art and graffiti was thus the Kreuzberg squatters’ parallel effort at renewal and visual activism.

Rolando Castellón, the former curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, claims that the presence of graffiti in such neighborhoods is healthy, and important for defining 83

balances of the community by granting power to both society and the visual arts tradition. It is thus essential for these underrepresented forces to be incorporated in a society, since the 84

graffiti’s assertion of individuality is integral to revolution. In 1970s West Berlin, this approach to analyzing the presence of graffiti proves that the elite and American-influenced curators within the city are not enough to define the actual artistic landscape of West Berlin. In order to

78

​Pugh, ​Architecture, Politics,​ 201.

79

Lampl, "Emerging from," 6-7.

80

Lampl, 7​; ​Lampl, 5.

81

Lampl, 7.

82

Lampl, 7.

83

​Castellón, ​Aesthetics of Graffiti​, 30.

84

​Castellón, 30.

Gert 20 complete the picture, the works that the squatter artists left on the walls of the city and on the Wall itself must be analyzed and even prioritized, taken seriously, as they often are not. Both street art and graffiti, either by deriving meaning from the internal use of the street or by indicating a wider countercultural significance, prove to act as an authentic source of art and visual activism, even if they do not exist in museums and galleries. The squatter movement produced a number of West Belin’s street artists, and the core of their urban housing movement was often undermined and depoliticized by the press as simply violent. However, the resulting street art movements and pieces represented insubordination from the squatters, fueling a strong dichotomy that existed between mainstream American abstract expressionism and street arts in West Berlin.

Artist Group Büro Berlin: Works and Analysis West Berlin street artists, such as Raimund Kummer and his later artist group Büro Berlin, not only came from squats, but also utilized the squatter movement’s notion of occupying abandoned urban space for their art. Through these actions, squatter artists questioned the notion that art belongs in museum and gallery spaces and undermined the idea of institutional artwork in West Berlin. In the midst of the housing crisis, abandoned buildings were utilized as residential units and alternative art spaces. Büro Berlin, formed in 1980 in Kreuzberg as a conglomerate of three individual street artists, “squatted” an abandoned factory as a community, 85

studio, and exhibition space. By taking advantage of such locations, Büro Berlin hoped to bring art into “real space,” or public locations where West Berliners could see the work in their 86

day-to-day life. This public sphere allowed them to reject the so-called “white cube” of gallery 85

Lampl, "Emerging from," 8.

86

Briana Jennifer Smith, "Action Art in Public Space," Creative Alternatives, last modified 2017.

Gert 21 87

and museum walls, inspiring alternative perspectives and contexts for their viewers. In other words, the artists worked to eliminate the middleman, or curators, in the West Berlin arts scene, thus democratizing the process of viewing art. As the actual artists, they supervised the passage of art from the creators hands into the eyes of the public audience by using their alternative 88

community to organize the making, curation, and display of their artwork. Büro Berlin worked to counter the practices of art institutions, which often controlled popular opinion of modern art 89

by choosing what was worthy of exhibiting in their galleries and what was not.

However, the artists of Büro Berlin practiced the assertion of power over abandoned urban space even before their collective was formed. As lone-wolf artists, the individuals began this movement of marking abandoned spaces. Kummer, one of the group’s three founding members, said in an interview with Marc Glöde that West Berlin was a melting pot for artistic creativity: “It was filled with doubt ... it was a sanctuary for people who felt themselves to be 90

different.” Although West Berlin was a unique space that called for unique people, the artists were brought together in their mission to bring art into the public space. Kummer began this journey independently. In his first years in West Berlin in the early 1970s, he experimented with photography, sculpture, and architecture on his own, producing a portfolio of photographs of 91

sculptures he created with city debris, such as bricks, cones, and blocks of cement. This

87

​Smith, 82.

88

Lampl, "Emerging from," 2.

89

Lampl, 2.

90

Rory MacLean, "Meet the Germans — Raimund Kummer," Goethe Institut, last modified May 2015.

91

​MacLean.

Gert 22 portfolio inspired him to create his first piece of street art in the West Berlin district of 92

Naunynstraße, utilizing a building site with jutting steel girders as his medium.

Figure 4.​ Raimund Kummer’s first street art at Naunynstraße, from his series ​Skulpturen in der Straße​. Photograph by Raimund Kummer. Goethe Institut.

Kummer stumbled upon an abandoned construction site on Naunynstraße in Kreuzberg, 93

which he found littered with massive steel girders. Deserted, half-demolished buildings like these were a common feature of Kreuzberg. By virtue of transforming these symbolic buildings and urban spaces, the Büro Berlin artist exposed both the government’s utopian aspirations and 94

its failures. The striking blatancy of the red paint among the demolished building and its debris acts as a commentary on the government’s failed capitalist efforts in urban renewal. The color red, perhaps representing revival amid decay, also creates beauty in a landscape destroyed by capitalism, thus paralleling the counterculture in West Berlin and the squatters’ activism via

92

MacLean.

93

MacLean.

94

Lampl, "Emerging from," 7.

Gert 23 alternative art and living styles. The ephemeral nature of the piece further emphasizes the dichotomy between the street arts and the mainstream arts, since placing this statement in a public place essentially takes the art out of the hands of curators.

Kummer’s pursuit of his visual activism did not stop with this portfolio though. After he founded Büro Berlin with two friends and West Berlin artists, Hermann Pitz and Fritz Rahmann, 95

the group continued to create this type of provocative art in public places. Beyond creating their work with the intention of relinquishing the arts scene from the control of museums and galleries, Büro Berlin also made subversive commentary regarding the oppressive nature of the 96

Allied occupation, touching on the topic of government surveillance in Berlin. One particular piece, ​New Staging of the Gleisdreieck,​ was especially expressive of this kind of public action. It came in the form of a cable car suspended above the populated Gleisdreieck subway station platform.

97

95

Smith, "Creative Alternatives," 178.

96

​Smith, 82; 178.

97

​Smith, "Action Art in Public," Creative Alternatives.

Gert 24

Figure 5. ​Neuinszenierung des Bahnhof Gleisdreieck (​ ​New Staging of the Train Station Gleisdreieck)​ by Büro Berlin (1980) Creative Alternatives.

By utilizing the public, urban landscape to showcase their sculpture, the artist group both challenged the public with a reminder and criticism of the Cold War’s political climate and demonstrated an alternative to the “white cube” of the museum and gallery. The Büro Berlin artists typically used their squatted spaces as alternative exhibition space that brought their art into the public sphere. The location of this piece, however, crossed the line into an even more public space, a location so closely associated with thousands of peoples’ everyday routines. The piece at this major station consists of several parts. Pitz set up a miniature cable car that ran

Gert 25 98

along a wire suspended directly over the train platform. Within the car stood a tiny plastic figurine of a man holding a camera that represented an intruder or spy overseeing the crowds of 99

West Berliners. Three real men in red uniforms were instructed to march through the station to 100

portray a scene of “maintenance” workers fixing up a tiny man’s observer station.

Finally, a

stream of water was fabricated to run through the entrance of the station, down its stairs, and into various subway platforms, thus surrounding the citizens with three components of surreal 101

infiltrations into their mundane routines.

The piece questioned the practice of government

surveillance over both East and West Berlin citizens, and intentionally reminded the passersby of 102

this notion.

Not only did Büro Berlin prompt the activation of fear in their audience, but they

did so at a random moment in an individual’s day-to-day routine. This notion of the “infiltration of the everyday” deliberately inserted a subtle yet uncomfortable reminder of surveillance and 103

privacy violation into an originally calm and mundane scene.

This piece derived its core meaning from its location, thus aligning itself with Riggle’s definition of “street art.” Riggle claims that if a work of “street art” were to be removed from the street, or its original location, and placed anywhere else, it would lose most, if not all, of its significance.

98

​Smith​.

99

​Smith​.

104

When applied to Büro Berlin’s sculpture, it is clear that the essence of the piece

100

​Smith​.

101

​Smith​.

102

​Smith​.

103

​Smith​.

104

Riggle, “Street Art,” 245.

Gert 26 lies in its appearance at this train station, a place that not only represents the limited movement of the walled-in West Berlin people, but also reminds the people of the fear they should be feeling on the day-to-day basis, even in a place as simple as a subway station.

The sculpture’s surreptitious, eerie presence at the station nudged the public into a sudden awareness about their presence in the Cold War conflict. It reminded them of the Soviet guards and their tanks near the Wall, of the hundreds of deaths these guards had caused, of the threat of both sides’ readily available nuclear weaponry, and of the palpable, uncomfortable, helpless knowledge that the harsh Soviet regime was on the other side. Moreover, the art clearly contradicted the notion of institutionalized art spaces and American abstract expressionist movements. The sculpture established itself as surreal realism, as a wake-up call to its citizens.

This art was created by the neighbors and friends of the type of people it hoped to “wake up,” and these citizens’ fear remained a concept that was underrepresented, if at all present, in the curated art world of West Berlin.

Street Artist Thierry Noir: Works and Analysis While the Büro Berlin group sought to cultivate the alternative arts scene by means of public exposure and intentional evocation of discomfort in viewers, squatter artist Thierry Noir began to paint the actual Berlin Wall. By asserting power over a public and historic space, he represented the values of the squatters and of the West Berlin counterculture, ultimately portraying an authentic view of life at the Berlin Wall. His murals came to represent the Soviet military influence on West Berlin, as well as the overwhelming presence of United States cultural and economic influence in the city. Originally from France, Noir settled in a Kreuzberg

Gert 27 105

squat and lived there for twenty years upon his arrival in West Berlin.

His squat, called the

Georg von Rauch-Haus,​ was a former hospital building, abandoned due to its proximity to the 106

border.

It stood right by the Berlin Wall, its windows facing the Death Strip, the area between

the East and West walls that was constantly patrolled by the Soviet border police.

107

Prior to

Noir’s arrival in Berlin, the founding members of his squat were involved in violence with the police in the early 1970s, during which they fought for their occupation of the hospital building.

108

The conflict continued to evolve when Noir moved to Berlin in 1982, due to the election of a 109

new West Berlin mayor in 1981 who promised in his campaign to get rid of squats in Berlin.

Noir was thus immersed in this radical, leftist environment upon his arrival in West Berlin. This lifestyle by the Wall, connections to police conflicts, and existence in the young countercultural movement proved especially conducive to revolutionary artistic thought.

105

“​Interview: Thierry Noir," Street Art London, last modified February 28, 2013.

106

​"Interview: Thierry."

107

​"Berlin Wall Photo Essay," Thierry Noir, accessed April 13, 2020.

108

​"Interview: Thierry," Street Art London.

109

​"Interview: Thierry."

Gert 28

Figure 6. The view from Noir’s window in the ​Georg von Rauch-Haus​, Soviet guards patrolling the Death Strip. Photograph by Thierry Noir. ​The Guardian.​ The mental pressure of living at the Wall, combined with the inherent dangers of painting on it or even stepping near it, developed both the visual style and message of Noir’s murals. He described his location at the Wall as both “melancholic” and “aggressive,” and a couple of years into his stay at the squat, he spontaneously began to paint the Wall as a means of relieving the 110

stress of living there.

Noir created colorful murals, composed of images of mutated people and

freakish animals with simple and abstract shapes. His adaption of this style, which he calls “The 111

Fast Form Manifesto,” resulted from the dangerous nature of his practice.

Because the Wall

stood three meters into the East German border, Soviet soldiers could arrest any individual

110

​"Interview: Thierry."

111

​"Berlin Wall," Thierry Noir.

Gert 29 standing near it.

112

As a result, Noir had to work quickly, using two visual ideas and three colors

per mural to produce a fast piece, avoiding confrontations from Soviet guards and interruptions 113

from questioning passersby.

Figure 7. Thierry Noir’s Berlin Wall mural, an example of his “Fast Form Manifesto” (1985) ​The Guardian.​ The essence of Noir’s paintings was in his desire to both demystify the Berlin Wall and to show that people and artists had the potential to change or even destroy it by painting it. Adding paint to the Wall consistently and quickly over time demonstrated the ability of political art to thrive in public spaces rather than in museums or galleries, especially when created on structures that carried significant historic weight. Noir claims that his style of quick color coverage allowed 114

him to express that “this mythical wall was not built for ever and could be changed.”

Thus, his

vision was rooted in political visual activism, and when asked, as he often was, if he was being paid to make the Berlin Wall beautiful, he reasoned that he could with no amount of paint make this wall beautiful, as its significance as a destructive political boundary outweighed any color or

112

​"Thierry Noir," Howard Griffin Gallery.

113

​"Berlin Wall," Thierry Noir.

114

​Jones, "Graffiti in the Death."

Gert 30 joy he could bring to it.

115

Rather, Noir worked not only to comprehend the sadness of the Wall, 116

but to destroy it by making it ridiculous.

Finished in 1985, on the twenty-fourth anniversary of

the construction of the Berlin Wall, Noir’s ​Red Dope on Rabbits​ represented one of his especially politically striking pieces.

Figure 8. ​Red Dope on Rabbits​ by Thierry Noir (1985) ​The Guardian​.

This mural was made in collaboration with Christophe Bouchet, Noir’s friend and fellow squatter artist. They created two murals side by side, together assembling a twist on the famous fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare.”

117

Bouchet’s mural depicts a roadway on which hares are

molesting and beating the tortoises with road signs. Noir’s mural, directly to the left of Bouchet’s, depicts a classic Noir piece: a simple color scheme, a series of distorted figures, and an underlying political message. The image presents a configuration of creatures, originally

115

​"Interview: Thierry," Street Art London.

116

​"Thierry Noir," Howard Griffin Gallery.

117

​"Berlin Wall," Thierry Noir.

Gert 31 rabbits, that have evolved and mutated to take on other forms. In Berlin, rabbits came to represent the Wall, or rather, the obscure relationship that it created between the East and West halves of the city. This metaphor arose from the vast population of rabbits in the Death Strip, a fenced-off area where the rabbits could reproduce with no natural predators. In general, mutated and misshapen figures in Noir’s murals symbolized a “mutation of culture,” and the concept of 118

painting the Berlin Wall emphasized the mutation of the city and the Wall itself.

Noir’s rabbits

likewise represented the evolution and mutation of West Berliners, who lived side by side with the Wall, just like the physical rabbits in the death strip. Bouchet’s mural represented a relationship between a party of underdogs and a second, dominating party, perhaps symbolizing Berlin citizens dominated by the Allied powers through the separation of the East and West, or even symbolizing the ongoing conflict between West Berlin squatters and the police and the city’s housing policies. The pessimistic mural indicated that in Noir and Bouchet’s interpretation 119

of “The Tortoise and the Hare” fable, the hare wins anyway, with no hope for the underdog.

Overall, the unique circumstances of West Berlin, combined with the formation of a polarized lower class and squatter culture, inspired the thought behind Noir’s murals on the Wall. This was an authentic form of visual expression, whose content was blatantly placed in the public sphere and by virtue of it being street art, refused to be filtered by private institutional art spaces.

118

Jones, "Graffiti in the Death."

119

​"Berlin Wall," Thierry Noir.

Gert 32

Figure 9. Women taking photos in front of Christophe Bouchet’s ​Hommage A La Fontaine​, side by side with Thierry Noir’s ​Red Dope on Rabbits​ (1985) ​The Guardian​.

Noir is a prime example of a squatter whose use of space, particularly his assertion over the Berlin Wall, brought light to the squatters’ political and artistic countercultural efforts. His contributions to the West Berlin art scene stand for Riggle’s definition of street art. Noir created murals whose imagery derived meaning from their location on the Wall. The bluntness and discomforting nature of his images aligned him with Büro Berlin, as the artists politicized the public works they created. Combined with Bouchet’s pessimistic mural regarding the inevitable suppression of the underdogs, Noir and his “Red Dope on Rabbits” authentically depicted life at the Berlin Wall.

Gert 33 Another work by Noir, also in collaboration with Bouchet, resulted in an interaction between the work of the squatters and the work of Keith Haring, an iconic American graffiti artist. It came to symbolize not only curator efforts to popularize American art in West Berlin, but also the negative reaction that these efforts evoked. Noir and Bouchet’s mural commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty: on the Fourth of July, the artists created a two-meter stencil of the statue and used spray paints to replicate the image 120

forty-two times on the Wall along Checkpoint Charlie (see fig. 1).

Checkpoint Charlie was the

most patrolled intersection between East and West Berlin, with an armed border guard 121

watchtower and Soviet crew that ensured the Wall was only being crossed by officials.

It was

also the location of the United States-Soviet tank standoff in 1961, the year the Wall was built.

122

Painting the Wall at Checkpoint Charlie came to represent the artists’ antagonism with East 123

German guards and a protest against the Wall.

Recognizing the symbolic role of the Wall and checkpoint, the director of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (now the Mauer Museum), Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt, invited the famous American graffiti artist Keith Haring to create a painting on the Wall in 1986, just days after Noir 124

and Bouchet painted their mural.

Hildebrandt himself was a human rights and anti-communist 125

activist, an individual who founded a search service for missing Soviet prisoners.

120

Jones, "Graffiti in the Death."

121

Mundy, "Lost Art," Tate.

122

​Garthoff, "Berlin 1961," 142.

123

​Mundy, "Lost Art," Tate..

124

​Mundy.

125

​Grieshaber, "Rainer Hildebrandt."

His

Gert 34 anti-communism aligned him with the political interests of the United States, but his sanctioning of Haring’s art at his museum further proved his interests in advocating the display of American visual culture in West Berlin.

Haring requested that his designated wall section be painted yellow by the museum officials, and after arriving in Berlin the following day, he completed the mural.

126

In four to six

hours, Haring painted a chain of humans in the colors of the German flag, representing a desire for the reunification of the German people (see fig. 2).

127

However, the mural had been painted

directly over Noir and Bouchet’s Statues of Liberty, and the inadvertent transparency of the 128

yellow backdrop exposed the original squatter piece.

The interaction between the museum’s organized artwork and Noir and Bouchet’s illegal graffiti serves as a symbol for the coexistence of institutionalized support of American art and the countercultural street art movements in West Berlin. Even with Haring’s seemingly empathic message, the authentic West Berlin desire for political and artistic liberty shined through.

Perhaps upset with the American’s overly optimistic message, locals and graffiti artists were 129

quick to write and paint directly over sections of Haring’s wall (see fig. 3).

The resulting wall

segment thus represented a long term Berliner and squatter assertion over their space and art. The works and the voices of the West Berlin squatters therefore contrasted the mainstream,

126

Mundy, "Lost Art," Tate.

127

Mundy.

128

Jones, "Graffiti in the Death."

129

Mundy, "Lost Art," Tate.

Gert 35 American-sanctioned art styles in West Berlin, and even shine through this movement of cultural imperialism.

Significance and Modern Legacy Throughout the final two decades of the existence of Allied-occupied Berlin, the West Berlin countercultural scene developed not only in terms of the squatter and urban space movement, but also in terms of how the notion of occupying space resulted in a surge of public, political street art. Meanwhile, the time period also gave rise to the introduction of American styles of art, such as abstract expressionism and Haring’s neo-expressionism, into the West Berlin institutional artworld. While the USIA and the MoMA, both United States-affiliated organizations, arranged European exhibition tours of American abstract expressionist artists, internal museum curators and directors further propagated the movement by showcasing these artists in their own galleries. Riggle’s definitions of “street art” and “graffiti” explain that these art forms demonstrated an artist’s connection to a certain space or city. In the case of West Berlin, the historical context of the occupation, as well as graffiti as an indicator of illegal activity and protest in a city, gave street art and graffiti the artistic authenticity that curated American art in West Berlin could not attain. The artist group Büro Berlin, a collective that squatted abandoned buildings as community and exhibition spaces, demonstrated this authenticity through their use of public location and thematic motif of fear and surveillance.

Similarly, squatter muralists Noir and Bouchet showed the importance of place and space in art by painting directly on the Berlin Wall, the practice of which authentically addressed how the Wall, border guard brutality, and separation of the people played into the life of an ordinary West

Gert 36 Berliner through motifs of pessimism, abstraction, and mutation. Overall, West Berlin’s art world housed the duality of curated and underground arts, in which the alternative squatter movement practiced visual activism against West Berlin’s capitalist housing policies, the Allied pressure over Berlin citizens, and the cultural imperialism practiced by West Berlin curators and American traveling exhibitions. The existence of the squatter artists undermined the notion of selectivity and exclusiveness in the institutional artworld, and demonstrated a holistic depiction of what life in West Berlin was truly like in the 1970s and 1980s.

Thirty years after the fall of the Wall, the post-Wall period in Berlin continues to exhibit a prominent artistic culture. The street art, though it has changed in form, still carries a connection not only to the legacy of the Cold War occupation, but also to Berlin’s modern issues with housing and gentrification. It revealed the continuing relationship between public art and artists’ assertion over urban space. Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin suffered a loss of population as a result of job shortages, leaving the city with a high vacancy rate and an ambiguous scenario of ownership of much urban property.

130

131

practice of graffiti and public art became more tolerated.

With increased vacancy, the

While the typographic form of

graffiti and its pseudonymic tags remain illegal and controversial, bigger street art pieces and large murals are now relatively well-received, often becoming tourist attractions and legally commissioned works.

132

However, since 2004, as the city rebuilds and people move back in,

property prices have more than doubled, and Berlin is losing its reputation as an inexpensive hub

​Klaus Lüber and Martin Gegenheimer, "Graffiti and Street Art — Berlin Not for Sale," Goethe Institut, last modified February 2017.

130

131

​Lüber and Gegenheimer.

132

​Lüber and Gegenheimer.

Gert 37 for youth and artists.

133

The most prominent murals are now being created by international artists

who travel to Berlin to create their art, rather than Berlin-based artists.

Modern street art in Berlin actually contributes to the exacerbation of this housing crisis, and evolves with Berlin as a form of visual activism. Blu, an Italian street artist who hides his true identity, created two side by side murals that demonstrate anti-capitalist ideology and recognize the legacy of the East and West Berlin separation. Created by Blu and French street artist JR, the mural was located on ​Senatsreservespeicher​, a building in Kreuzberg that acted as a West Berlin emergency ration storehouse during the Cold War.

134

The first piece depicted two 135

figures unmasking one another, holding up the gang signs for “East'' and “West.”

The works

were finalized in 2008 when the artists added a mural on an adjacent building: an upper body of 136

a businessman, his wrists chained together by his golden watches.

Blu often incorporates

anti-capitalist messages into his work, but this piece’s location in West Berlin, a historic symbol for an island of capitalism surrounded by the communist East German regime, further emphasized the complexities of reunification and its impact on the people and the economy.

​Elisabeth Zerofsky, "The Causes and Consequences of Berlin's Rapid Gentrification," ​The New Yorker​, July 12, 2019.

133

​Lutz Henke, "Kill Your Darlings: The Auto-Iconoclasm of Blu's Iconic Murals in Berlin," ​Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization​ 15, no. 1 (2015): 292.

134

135

​Henke, 292.

136

​Henke, 292.

Gert 38

Figure 10. Photograph of the initial mural at ​Senatsreservespeicher​ by Blu (2007) ​Ephemera​.

Figure 11. Photograph post-renovation, including added figure of businessman (2008) Ephemera​.

However, on a December night in 2014, the artists destroyed their own work, covering 137

the murals with black paint.

137

​Henke, 291.

These pieces of street art had become attractions in Berlin,

Gert 39 resulting in tourism and even marketing campaigns for travel to the city.

138

The neighborhood

was experiencing increased rent costs from the city’s gentrification, and such public art 139

exacerbated the situation.

The reality was that as Blu’s murals had become landmarks in the

city, real estate companies used the art to sell surrounding apartments at higher prices. Perhaps in awareness that his own art perpetuated the capitalist ideals that he was battling in the piece, Blu protested the city development policies by destroying his own work.

Figure 12. Photograph of blacked-out walls (2014) Photograph by Mischa Leinkauf. ​Ephemera.

Another piece, created by the Orangotango Collective, directly demonstrated a similar conflict over gentrification in Kreuzberg. The wall painting depicts a Monopoly game board, presenting in each tile a different method of resistance against privatization of property, 140

including squatting and rent protests and demonstrations.

138

​Henke, 293.

139

​Henke, 293.

140

​Lüber and Gegenheimer, "Graffiti and Street," Goethe Institut.

The piece’s blatant political activism

Gert 40 reveals continuities in Berlin in terms of countercultural values regarding urban space, such as politically leftist public art and the tradition of squatting and occupying urban space as a form of activism.

Figure 13. ​Berlin Not for Sale​ by the Orangotango Collective (2014) Photograph by Karo Krämer. Goethe Institut.

Today’s Berlin further proves its attachment to preserving its visual arts scene through the existence of the East-Side Gallery. The East-Side Gallery is undeniably the best-known 141

remnant of the Berlin Wall.

In 1991, the city of Berlin placed the work of 118 artists, each of

whom painted a wall segment to commemorate the end of the Cold War and the reunification of 142

the city, under monumental protection.

Ironically, the practice of street art and graffiti was

now protected and sanctioned by Berlin.

​Dirk Verheyen, ​United City, Divided Memories?: Cold War Legacies in Contemporary Berlin​ (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010), 249.

141

142

​Verheyen, 249.

Gert 41

Figure 14. A photograph of a section of the East-Side Gallery, featuring a 1990 painting of Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing, titled ​My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.​ Lonely Planet.

As time passed, the paintings naturally deteriorated and were even covered in further 143

graffiti and vandalism.

After several rejected propositions to repair and maintain the site

throughout the 1990s, an association of companies repainted and varnished the East-Side Gallery 144

murals.

It remains today as a heritage-protected landmark. Other remaining graffiti-covered

sections of the Berlin Wall have been distributed to various institutions around the world, and some of Noir’s murals from the Wall are displayed by museums in Los Angeles, New York City, and in the East-Side Gallery. Eventually, this underground genre of visual arts became sanctioned and protected by institutions, even though it was seen as mere graffiti or vandalism during the years of the Allied occupation. Nevertheless, the works of street art in today’s Berlin resonate with the squatter’s public art and visual activism, as well as their perpetual struggle over urban space.

143

​Verheyen, 249.

144

​Verheyen, 249.

Gert 42 Bibliography "Berlin Wall Photo Essay." Thierry Noir. Accessed April 13, 2020. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5gwlGLq03d0J:https://thierrynoi r.com/berlin-wall/photo-history/&lr=lang_fr%7Clang_en&hl=en&gl=us&tbs=lr:lang_1fr %7Clang_1en&strip=0&vwsrc=0.

This page is a cached section of Thierry Noir's art website, on which he publishes his current works as well as his older content from the Berlin Wall, accompanied by first-hand accounts of his life in a West Berlin squat. Noir incorporates photographs of his art with his stories, and explains the spontaneity and psychological and political inspirations behind his Berlin Wall murals, specifically how his life and art were influenced by life at the Wall.

Brown, Timothy Scott. "The Sixties in the City: Avant-Gardes and Urban Rebels in New York, London, and West Berlin." ​Journal of Social History​ 46, no. 4 (2013): 817-42. JSTOR. Timothy Scott Brown is a professor of history at Northeastern University and an author of several books about 1960s counterculture, avantgarde movements, and political radicalism and protest. In the section of the article that addresses the West Berlin countercultural movement, he described the different ways in which these values manifested, such as the Socialist German Students League and the notion of alternative and communal housing. Focusing on Kreuzberg as a hub for the West Berlin radical leftist scene, Brown connects the foundations of this movement's political thought to how it expressed itself in student organizations and squatter communities.

Butler, Alex. "Berlin's Famous East Side Gallery Is Here to Stay." Lonely Planet. Last modified November 27, 2018. https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/berlin-east-side-gallery-protection.

Lonely Planet is a travel book publishing company that also runs an online travel publication. This site provides a photograph of the East-Side Gallery, featuring one of its most iconic pieces, ​My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love​, an image of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker in an embrace.

Castellón, Rolando, comp. ​Aesthetics of Graffiti​. San Francisco, USA: Museum of Modern Art, 1978. ​Aesthetics of Graffiti​ is a document composed by curator Rolando Castellón, who was the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art when it hosted an exhibition on graffiti in 1978. His statement both defines what the show is about, and then continues to suggest that graffiti should not be regarded as an informal practice, and should rather be analyzed as an indicator of the well-being of society and suppressed individuality. In the context of street art in West Berlin, the article proves that the allied occupation and marginalization are internal to the presence of graffiti on the Wall.

Cresswell, Tim. "Heretical Geography 1: The Crucial 'Where' of Graffiti." In ​In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression,​ 31-61. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. JSTOR.

Gert 43 Tim Cresswell is the Chair of Geography at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to being the author of six books about the role of place in cultural life, Cresswell also works as the managing editor of a journal called "Geohumanities." This chapter from one of his books discusses graffiti and its association with its location, specifically examining the graffiti scene in New York City in the 1970s and the types of communities that it thrived in. The associations he creates between disenfranchised communities, suppressed frustration, and the resulting artwork parallel the situation in West Berlin in the following years and serve as proof of a similar process occurring in the occupied city.

Garthoff, Raymond L. "Berlin 1961: The Record Corrected." ​Foreign Policy​, no. 84 (1991): 142-56. JSTOR. Raymond L. Garthoff, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a former United States ambassador to Bulgaria, and a former analyst for the CIA, has written several books and articles on the Cold War, arms control, and the former Soviet Union. This article focuses on the Soviet Union and their military weaponry and occupation practices in Berlin during the Cold War, specifically focused on 1961, the year the Soviet Union assembled the Berlin Wall. The piece details the specifics of the US-Soviet tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie, which became a significant historical marker for the checkpoint, a location of the Wall that would later become a center for dangerous and illegal graffiti and street art practices.

Grieshaber, Kirsten. "Rainer Hildebrandt, Museum Head, 89, At Berlin Crossing." ​The New York Times,​ January 12, 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/12/world/rainer-hildebrandt-museum-head-89-at-berli n-crossing.html.

Kirsten Grieshaber, a German politics correspondent for the New York Times, composed this article to commemorate the death of Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt, the Cold War figure who opened the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and commissioned Keith Haring's painting on the Berlin Wall. The article discusses his career success and life mission, which involved assisting Soviet prisoners and general anti-communist activism. Grieshaber's piece draws a connection between Dr. Hildebrandt's political and artistic beliefs, which mirror those of the United States and allies.

Henke, Lutz. "Kill Your Darlings: The Auto-Iconoclasm of Blu's Iconic Murals in Berlin."

Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization​ 15, no. 1 (2015): 291-95. http://www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/contribution/15-1henke.pdf.

Lutz Henke is a cultural scientist and curator for several museums and institutions, including the Guggenheim museum. Specializing in public art, Henke composed this article as a response to the self-imposed destruction of Berlin's most famous modern murals by street artist Blu. He explains context for the initial creation of the side by side murals, one of which symbolizes the restrictiveness of a capitalist lifestyle while the other represents the post-Cold War reunification of Berlin. He proceeds to discuss the reasons for Blu's destruction of his own art, revealing that the motivation to do so was rooted in resentment for the rent crisis in Berlin and how his own public art seemed to ironically contribute to the capitalist state he criticized.

Gert 44

"Interview: Thierry Noir." Street Art London. Last modified February 28, 2013. https://streetartlondon.co.uk/blog/2013/02/interview-thierry-noir/.

"Street Art London'' was formed as a site to document and discuss the history of artists that were featured in renowned museum exhibitions around the United Kingdom. This specific article contains an interview with artist Thierry Noir, who claims to be the first artist to paint on the Berlin Wall. In a question and answer format, the article delves deep into Noir's background as both a Kreuzberg squatter and a street artist, and further exposes his philosophical approach to painting the Wall: painting it to destroy it. In the context of the squatter movement and the West Berliner lower class morale during the occupation, the article presents a concrete example of an artist who not only gained fame for his art on the Wall, but also helped start this subcultural artistic movement.

Jones, Jonathan. "Graffiti in the Death Strip: The Berlin Wall's First Street Artist Tells His Story." ​The Guardian,​ April 3, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/apr/03/thierry-noir-graffiti-berli n-wall.

Jonathan Jones, a Cambridge art critic who has been writing for The Guardian since 1999, is a published author of several recognized art and history books. In this article, Jones composes an account of Thierry Noir's experience of painting on the Berlin Wall in the late 1970s. Along with providing Noir's personal photographs of his work, the piece documents the artist's personal insight into his move to Berlin, the squat he lived in, and the process of painting while managing to avoid the GDR soldiers in the Death Strip.

These qualities flow into an analysis of both the Soviet East's impact on the evolution of West Berlin art and the emerging subculture of street art and graffiti in the West.

Lampl, Nicole. "Emerging from the Shadows of the Wall: Katja Ka and the Büro Berlin."

TransScripts​ 6 (2016). http://sites.uci.edu/transscripts/files/2016/06/Lampl_PUBLISH63016.pdf.

After conducting research for her MA at Freie Universität Berlin, Nicole Lampl composed this piece as part of Tulane University's art history graduate program, later getting it published in UC Irvine's social sciences journal. She then worked at the New Orleans Museum of Art as a curatorial fellow. This article concentrates on the artist group Büro Berlin and their collaboration with female street artist Katja Ka, focusing on Büro Berlin's practice of squatting of abandoned buildings for community and exhibition space and the foundations of the squatter movement in Kreuzberg. She also discusses the American Abstract Expressionism movement, which was supported in West Berlin galleries and art institutions by German and American organizations. Lampl effectively establishes a relationship between the sanctioned art scene and the countercultural art scene in this period, especially how the squatters reacted to this spread of American art ideals.

Lüber, Klaus, and Martin Gegenheimer. "Graffiti and Street Art — Berlin Not for Sale." Goethe Institut. Last modified February 2017. https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/mol/20930664.html?forceDesktop=1.

Gert 45 Klaus Lüber, a culture and media scholar who works as a freelance author for several German newspapers, and Martin Gegenheimer, a coordinator at the Archive of Youth Cultures, composed this article for the Goethe Institut, an international German culture organization. It focuses on ten different large-scale pieces of street art, analyzing each individually for context and content. They describe how the Berlin arts scene has evolved in the period between the fall of the Wall and today, concentrating on the city's previous high vacancy rate and the evolving acceptance of street art, as well as Berlin's current issues with gentrification and the resulting Kreuzberg ​Berlin Not For Sale​ mural.

MacDougall, Carla. "In the Shadow of the Wall: Urban Space and Everyday Life in Kreuzberg."

In ​Between the Avant-garde and the Everyday: Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present,​ by Lorena Anton, edited by Timothy Brown, 154-76. Berghahn Books, 2011. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Between_the_Avant_garde_and_the_Everyday/co JyW7Ez3LIC?hl=en&gbpv=0.

Carla MacDougall received her PhD in History from Rutgers University with a thesis on Berlin history. She now publishes many essays and contributes to larger works regarding political protest and art in Germany. Her piece analyzes the architectural movements in 1970s West Berlin, such as the IBA, that were funded by the Berlin government and intended to modernize and Westernize Berlin's urban landscape. Her reasoning that the 1970s squatter movement and its visual and physical protests were depoliticized by media coverage platforms aligns with the notion that the squatter movement was indeed an activist movement, and its apolitical public image resulted in further aggressive political and artistic action.

MacLean, Rory. "Meet the Germans — Raimund Kummer." Goethe Institut. Last modified May 2015. http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lp/prj/mtg/men/kun/kum/en14340868.htm.

Rory Maclean is a historian, writer, and traveler, who has published several books on the subject of the Cold War Soviet Union and the Berlin occupation. In collaboration with the Goethe Institut, an international German culture association, Maclean composed this article on the subject of Raimund Kummer, a 1970s West Berlin street artist who was part of the artist group Büro Berlin. Kummer discusses his story as a Berliner, the significance of the city in regards to his artwork, and the evolution of his art as a photographer and sculptor. Overall, the article allows Kummer to connect his artwork to the state of West Berlin, emphasizing the importance of undefined and abandoned spaces to street artists, on which Kummer started to create his sculptures.

Mesch, Claudia. ​Art and Politics: A Small History of Art for Social Change since 1945​. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Art_and_Politics/YraODwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbp v=0.

Claudia Mesch, a professor of art history at Arizona State University, writes about contemporary art and the cultural exchanges and engagement with politics that it facilitates. Her book examines the role of state-sponsored art during the Cold War, discussing the efforts of the United States and its organizations, specifically the Museum

Gert 46 of Modern Art and the United States Information Agency, to display and advertise the American Abstract Expressionism movement throughout Europe, especially Germany.

On top of providing an examination of the MoMA and USIA's tours of these artworks, Mesch explains how German curators and museum directors ultimately incorporated these visual arts ideals into their own galleries, as well as the types of audiences that they attracted.

Mundy, Jennifer. "Lost Art: Keith Haring." Tate. Accessed April 13, 2020. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/graffiti-art/lost-art-keith-haring.

Jennifer Mundy was the Head of Art Historical Research for Tate, a network that houses, in four different museums, the UK's collection of British art. She now works as a freelance author and curator, and continues to write about twentieth century art. In this article, Mundy tells the story of Keith Haring's visit to West Berlin, during which the Checkpoint Charlie museum commissioned him to paint a mural on a nearby section of the Berlin Wall. Beyond her description of the mural, Mundy reveals that Haring's piece faced local censorship when the West Berlin graffiti artists rebelled against his overly enthusiastic message by covering the painting with tags and gray paint.

Pugh, Emily. ​Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin.​ Pittsburgh.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Emily Pugh, the Digital Humanities Specialist at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, has her PhD in Art History from CUNY and oversees digital art history projects at GRI. ​Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin​ analyzes the architecture and visual culture in both East and West Berlin, applying this knowledge of the urban environment to better understand the political and social identity of Berlin individuals.

Chapters 5 and 6 specifically deal with counterculture and squatter movements in West Berlin in the 1970s, and describe the relationship between squatters and West Berlin's urban renewal policies. Pugh traces the impact of the Four Power Agreement on the formation of the squatter movement in Kreuzberg.

Riggle, Nicholas Alden. "Street Art: The Transfiguration of the Commonplaces." ​The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism​ 68, no. 3 (2010): 243-57. JSTOR. The author of this article, Nicholas Riggle, is a writer and a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego. His writing is focused on the relationship between art and life, particularly when the line between the two is blurred. The article essentially defines what constitutes as street art and interprets the cultural significance of the practice of street art and graffiti. Riggle claims that to be considered street art, a piece's location must be internal to its significance. His definitions can be applied to analyze the beginnings of squatter street art in West Berlin in the context of the Cold War. Ross, Alex. ​The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.​ London: Harper Perennial, 2009.

Alex Ross is a professional music critic for the New Yorker, and a musician and author himself. In his first book, he discusses the effects of classical music on modern music of the twentieth century, in which he heavily touches on many genres of the arts, which

Gert 47 overlap through music and visual arts, and overlap in Eastern Europe and specifically Germany. As a result of Berlin's heavy musical contributions to the 20th century, Ross discusses the cultural climate of Berlin during the occupation, which naturally lends its way to production of both counterculture music and visual art.

Sedlmaier, Alexander. "Urban Space: The Squatting Movement." In ​Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany​, 205-32. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. JSTOR. Alexander Sedlmaier is a modern history professor at Bangor University in Wales, focusing especially on modern German history and social movements. Published in Alexander Sedlmaier's book, Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany, Chapter 6 discusses the origins of the squatting movement and the emerging relationship between poor West Berliners and their surrounding urban environment. Not only does the chapter outline the economic and historical causes for the squatting phenomenon, but it also identifies that the cause of the squatter movement is rooted in the city's housing and rent policies.

Smith, Briana Jennifer. "Action Art in Public Space." Creative Alternatives. Last modified 2017. https://creativealternatives.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/show/experimental-art-scenes-in-eas/ac tion-art-in-public-space.

Another section of the digital version of Briana J. Smith's thesis from the University of Iowa, this article describes three pieces of alternative, sculptural art forms that manifest the idea of visual activism in West Berlin. The first work it features is Büro Berlin's ​New Staging of the Gleisdreieck,​ a suspended cable car structure that was placed at a popular train station in West Berlin. Her analysis proves that the work of Büro Berlin aligns with the squatter's underlying activist goals in their art and occupation of urban space, as the piece touches on important political topics of privacy and surveillance.

———. "Creative Alternatives: Experimental Art and Cultural Politics in Berlin, 1971-1999."

PhD diss., The University of Iowa, 2017.

Earning her PhD in history from the University of Iowa in 2017, Briana J. Smith now works at Harvard as a lecturer in History and Literature, focusing especially on modern German history. Her dissertation covers the Berlin artistic counterculture, specifically the experimental arts movement, from the 1970s to the 2000s. She focuses on spontaneous art actions and sculptural installation art, discussing the artist group Büro Berlin and their initiatives and well as the factors that contributed to the rise of the countercultural squatter movement in West Berlin, such as the Four Power Agreement of 1971. She effectively connects the experimental arts movement in West Berlin to the political activism they represent.

———. "'Culture for All!' Art and Cultural Politics in Berlin in the 1970s." Creative Alternatives. Last modified 2017. https://creativealternatives.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/show/experimental-art-scenes-in-eas/ne wculturalpolitics.

Gert 48 This page is a section of a digital version of Briana J. Smith's paper, published as a website by the University of Iowa. The content on this page discusses the motivation for and manifestation of the experimental arts scenes in Berlin, highlighting public art pieces from West Berlin and works of Socialist Realism from East Germany. The piece also connects the surge of experimental art with the normalization of two separate German states, as well as the political voices behind the push to compete against East Berlin in terms of visual culture.

Spicer, Frank. "The New American Painting, 1959." Tate. Accessed April 13, 2020. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/modern-american-art-at-tate/essays/new-a merican-painting.

Frank Spicer was a writer for the Tate Gallery's coverage of the international art tour, ​The New American Painting​, which was organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a cultural bridge between European and American contemporary arts. The essay provides a first-hand account of the artists on the tour and the countries and cities it traveled to, as the Tate Gallery was one of the stops of the tour. The piece creates a tie between the American political goal of promoting Abstract Expressionism abroad and how it actually manifested itself in European countries, eventually stopping in locations in West Germany and West Berlin.

"Thierry Noir." Howard Griffin Gallery. Last modified 2020. http://howardgriffingallery.com/artists/thierry-noir.

This website is provided by the Howard Griffin Gallery, a London and Los Angeles-based exhibition space focused on contemporary art and installations. Both the London and Los Angeles locations displayed Thierry Noir's shows in 2014 and 2015.

Their description of Noir, one of the most prominent street artists from West Berlin, features the artworks he has created in the past few years, as well as explains his artistic beginnings at the Berlin Wall. The article not only describes the stylistic qualities of Noir's previous and modern work, but also draws connections between his artistic origins and Keith Haring's artistic origins, whose art eventually collided with Noir's at Checkpoint Charlie.

Verheyen, Dirk. ​United City, Divided Memories?: Cold War Legacies in Contemporary Berlin​.

Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010.

Dirk Verheyen is a former professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University and has been a program coordinator for the Freie Universität since 2000. He is also an author and specializes in transatlantic, European, and German affairs. This book discusses the contemporary urban structures and memorials that are reminiscent of the occupation period in Berlin, and discusses the establishment of the East-Side Gallery near the end of the work. He emphasizes the efforts of the city to maintain and care for the East-Side gallery, thus proving an ironic relationship between graffiti and the city of Berlin both before and after the collapse of the Wall.

"West Berlin: The Political Geography." ​The Wilson Quarterly (1976-)​ 12, no. 3 (1988): 128-37.

JSTOR.

Gert 49 Published by the Wilson Quarterly, a magazine that covers culture, literature, and politics, produced this article to discuss the foundations of West Berlin and specifically the Kreuzberg counterculture, forming even before World War II and continuing throughout the 1980s. It describes the economic and ideological reasons for why young people and counter culturists initially began to flock to the city, the "Alternatives'' movement that they established, and even the genre of "Wall Art" that was established during this time period. Overall, the piece gives context on the foundations of the squatter and countercultural movement in West Berlin and connects them to the resulting visual arts scene.

Zerofsky, Elisabeth. "The Causes and Consequences of Berlin's Rapid Gentrification." ​The New Yorker,​ July 12, 2019. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-causes-and-consequences-of-berlins-rapi d-gentrification.

Elisabeth Zerofsky, who has written for several publications about European politics and society, approaches the modern gentrification issue in Berlin through the lens of her own personal experience. Focusing on the changing rent regulations and prices in Berlin in the past couple of decades, Zerofsky addresses the impact this rent crisis has on the arts scene in Berlin, emphasizing that the inability to obtain inexpensive rent in Berlin drives artists and creators out of the city.

The Harker School | 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose CA 95129 OofC: 3/25/20 (RM)