The major attraction in Halle is the Art Museum that we really want to visit while in the city. That is the major reason we parked near the Moritzburg castle and it is also the first place we enter. The fact that it seems to start raining is also helping our decision to explore indoors first before braving the unpredictable weather. The museum is housed in one wing of the castle which looks like a blend of modern and medieval and we are curious about the exhits.
Entering takes a longer time than we expected with a long line at the ticket office but we make it inside and given that we have no idea of what the official route is we stop at the first floor and enter the first exhibit room.
This section seems to focus on inter-war paintings and especially Nazi era paintings. There are overall lots of enlightening panels on what was approved and what was not based on the Fuhrer preferences.
For example nudes were ok but they had to be realistic and not cubist or surrealist and to represent the ideal of the German woman.
There are also some exhibits showing items stolen from the Jews to be melted down or just to keep, again not surprising given the political climate.
Woman artists were discouraged and their art was not exhibited or accepted for competitions. Thinking about this it is quite similar to a certain country and how it is changing recently, censoring art and individual expression.
A whole section here is dedicated to women artists and workers depicting the worker class which was discouraged at the time.
We really like the fact that some of the paintings have also a tactile display for blind people describing the paintings and even providing examples to touch to get an idea of what is shown in the painting. Still it seems quite difficult to us to use that to imagine the painting, more power to however can do that.
There is also a small section focused on ceramics and furniture but it is really small compared to the extensive art collection which gives us a great idea of the evolution of German art during the early part of the 20th century.
The next section of the museum is quite different. This one seems to be in an actual part of the original palace with ornate ceilings and interesting nooks and walls. It seems we have stepped back in time and are visiting now a medieval nobleman’s building.
Given the amount of nude goddesses on the walls and ceilings we cannot help but think that this is how they were doing erotica at the time. Nudes but they are of goddesses or classical images so it is normal and accepted.
These rooms have fewer exhibits and they try to fit the theme, mostly ceramics and jewelry.
Even the paintings are older ones, probably the 19th century or imitating that style.
It is surprising how varied the ceilings can be, some are so intricate that we wonder how they were maintained. Maybe they weren’t, they were just redoing it completely whenever needed?
Some jewelry exhibits are seriously impressive and this is also where most of the visitors are stopping to oooh and aaah so it takes a bit until we can actually get close to them.
There are surprisingly many rooms in this section also mixing ceramics, furniture and classical paintings. It is an interesting section but we go faster to ensure we are not thrown out at closing time before seeing everything.
The realistic style is quite impressive with some paintings looking photo like including one of the highlights here, the Portrait of an Italian Woman.
And then we notice that you can actually walk into the cellar following an area lined with statues and porcelain and we are wondering what era is hidden down in the cellar.
Arriving in the cellar we realize that somehow we are going back in time, from first half of the 20th century through the 19th century and now to the medieval times. Here the focus is on statues and paintings from medieval times and as such the focus is on religious objects.
There are quite a few of them but we are not impressed as much by religious art so after a fast walkthrough we climb back up to see the temporary exhibits before the museum closes.
There are two temporary exhibits and both are included in our ticket so we want to explore them both. The first one focuses on Wilhelm Lehmbruck, one of the most important German sculptors of his generation that committed suicide at age 38. As such it has exhibits of some important sculptures and some of his or era adjacent painters in the same style.
The paintings reflect his eventful love life with a wife and a young actress lover that become his muse in later paintings. This, his depression and the horrors of World War I lead his to take his own life in 1919.
Some of the sculptures are actually quite impressive, they are in the same style as Rodin and Brancusi, two of his contemporaries.
The second temporary exhibit, and much more popular, is the one of Helga Paris. She made a series of photos of Halle that were supposed to be exhibited at the museum during the DDR times but at the last minute the approval was pulled back so the exhibit happened only after the DDR has fallen.
While looking through the photos we find it hard to understand what could have been so controversial. It says in the exhibit info that it is because her pictures gave publicity to the city’s misguided building policy which makes little sense to us. We see lots of portraits and the city photos do not seem in any way controversial to us. It is just a reminder that it is not good to let the politicians or even worse police make judgements about what art is permitted and what not.
From the Helga Paris exhibit we notice that there is a wing that we skipped so we have to find the right stairs to visit it. We are wondering what era we have forgotten and when we get there it makes sense, it is the DDR (German Democratic Republic) era. This is another era with lots of restrictions on what could be exhibited and danger to the artists.
Our first impression is that everything with red is permitted. Especially if it can be somehow linked to Allied bombing or communist victory or showing the way the communist way is superior to everything else.
There are surprisingly weird portraits and some otherwordly looking modernist paintings that we are not even sure if they are bellicose or friendly. Lots of guns for a friendly painting.
We continue on and are surprised at the quantity of cubist paintings, it seems that there was an overcompensation after the Nazist era, which is nice if you like that style of painting.
There are also weirder paintings that we are not sure how they align with DDR ideals but it is surprising that these were permitted while the photo exhibit was prohibited. Guess it was really in the eye of the beholder. And then it is time to exit, the museum is closing and the rain has stopped so we want to explore Halle a bit before driving to Leipzig.
