Tell Me a Story: Bröhan and Brá

Yesterday morning Della, Martin and I hit the Bröhan-Museum. It’s billed as Berlin's museum of art nouveau, art deco, and functionalism. What does “functionalism” mean? Art which has an additional purpose beyond being beautiful or thought provoking or just flat out disturbing OR all three at the very same time!

So yeah – a tea set, a clock, a pitcher, a vase can all be honest ta Bast art and the Bröhan has some BRILL examples.

Karl H. Bröhan (July 6, 1921–Jan. 2, 2000). A passionate collector and great connoisseur of art nouveau, art deco, and the art of the Berlin Secession, Bröhan opened a private museum in a Dahlem residence in 1973. (source)

We hit the motherfucking jackpot with this joint. While I do dearly love art deco teapots, art nouveau glassware, penguin pitchers, dragon vases and the like , the Bröhan had way more!

They’re having a show of the graphic designer Günther Kieser's concert posters right now. WOW! I was in some serious brain frying awe. Still am.

Plus, they’re doing a retrospective of Jan Toorop’s work (pics below). I’d never heard of him nor had I seen his work before. Dude was a Dutch-Indonesian painter, born in 1858 on the island of Java (back when the Dutch were big there) and schooled in the Netherlands.

Toroop explored a bunch of different styles – straight up Impressionism, Art Nouveau, and Pointillism – but seemed to totally hit his stride with Symobolism.

In terms of specific subject matter, the Symbolists combined religious mysticism, the perverse, the erotic, and the decadent. Symbolist subject matter is typically characterized by an interest in the occult, the morbid, the dream world, melancholy, evil, and death. (source)

Symbolism – the Romantics by way of some serious dark goth with side journeys down other wild paths. Cool.

Symbolism can also be seen as being at the forefront of modernism, in that it developed new and often abstract means to express psychological truth and the idea that behind the physical world lay a spiritual reality. Symbolists could take the ineffable, such as dreams and visions, and give it form. (source)

I walked around the entire museum with my gob wide open, jaw on the floor. The place was serious magic.

But....but what about yesterday's food Donna? This is your art and food vaca, right?

We had dinner at this cool Italian joint, Piazza Brá. Every damn item on the bleedin' menu called out to me. Should I have the awesome looking tagliatelle with zucchini? How about the aglio et olio con peperoncini? And then I found the menu's pizza page. Four Formaggi had mozzarella, gorgonzola, asiago AND mascarpone! Cheese heaven (and digestion hell) The Vegetarian had eggplant, zucchini, peperoncini AND spinach – so damn tempting. I went with the gorgonzola and spinach pie and, oh mein Gott, it was FABULOUS!

So ummmm, enough food orgasming *cough, 'scuse me* and back to art. Here are some examples of Toroop's awesome work: