ART REVIEW : ‘CITYSCAPES’: BERLIN’S LINGERING SCARS

There may be bigger scars on the face of the Earth, but none is more indelible than the Berlin Wall. “Berlin Cityscapes,” at the Long Beach Museum of Art (through March 8), reconsiders the subject in an exhibition of paintings and drawings by 23 German artists.

The wall itself only appears in a couple of artworks--and it’s more a backdrop than an ominous presence--but the idea of the loathsome barrier is ever-present in artworks that seem obsessed with Berlin’s anguished history.

The Brandenburg Gate--once the entrance to a stately boulevard leading to the royal palace but now locked into the east side of the city--surfaces as a symbol of Berlin’s division, in paintings by Helmet Metzner and Johannes Grutzke. Metzner almost buries the gate under a gray-white sky, while Grutzke makes it spring from the chest of a red-robed figure who appears to be in the grip of heroic agony.

Among other structures that have suffered ignoble fates is the Martin Gropius Building, portrayed by Fridolin Frenzel as if isolated in a wasteland. Wolfgang Rohloff has made a high-relief construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, its bombed shell now joined to a modern addition.

Formerly proud rows of apartments sustain gaping wounds and overlook 30-year-old piles of rubble in other artworks, while G.L. Gabriel’s expressionistic “View Toward the East” uses a diptych to advantage by splitting Potsdamer Platz--and a figure standing in the middle of it--between two canvases.

And so the show goes, from one bleak view of Berlin to another. If you are looking for a cheerful travelogue, don’t go to Long Beach. If, on the other hand, you want to know how some very accomplished artists see their city, you’ll find them still fixated on the split--even though some of their number are too young to have known Berlin united.

The frantic night life and glittering shopping areas that visitors to West Berlin find so exciting are not to be seen in “Berlin Cityscapes.” Monika Sieveking’s sparkling painting of revelers celebrates a fantasy of transforming a military statue into a golden peace column, but nearby, in a painting by Barbara Quandt, we find the Berlin bear walking the wall at midnight.

A couple of rather primitive works calling attention to Berlin’s immigrant population provide the only palpable counterpoint to what is essentially a one-note exhibition.

The petulant blond rock stars in Matthias Koeppel’s hyper-real “Requiem for Luise” have the situation all figured out. All done up in their shorts and shades, they ape a famous statue of two Prussian princesses while sedate Berliners stroll behind them in the park that houses Queen Luise’s mausoleum.

The exhibition was organized by the city of West Berlin to commemorate its 750th anniversary. The message in this greeting is that life is still grim after all these years, but the artists are not defeated. Culture has assumed enormous significance in West Berlin and, according to this exhibition, it absorbs a lot of energy and frustration.