I don’t go to the museum much, but when I heard there was a Werner Baumann exhibition coming to the MOMA, I absolutely had to go. His “Moon over Dresden” ranks high on my favorite paintings ever – his use of colors to evoke both the sleeping city with its streets featuring dabs of faint streetlights below and the exuberantly luminous yellow and gold moon above never fails to take my breath away. A poster of “Moon Over Dresden” adorned my dorm room wall never failed to lift my spirits.Unfortunately, life being as it tends to be I didn’t get an opportunity to go until the week before the exhibition ended. They’re open late one day a week, and Sarah agreed to go with me. I figured the line for the exhibit would belong, and the long snaking line of people didn’t disappoint! Fortunately, the line moved faster than I expected, and between the people watching and gabbing with Sarah, we found ourselves ushered into the first room of the exhibit with “Werner Baumann: From Surrealism to Late Modernism in Post War Germany” projected on a wall with an blown up detail of “Moon Over Dresden”.
“Oh my God, Sarah!” I excitedly tapped her on the shoulder.
“Right, girl?!” she beamed back.
Entering the exhibit I was struck suddenly by how little I actually knew of Baumann, especially looking at his earlier, more surrealist works.
We stood in front of a painting I hadn’t seen before of a garishly colored airplane that looked like both a biplane on one side and a more modern single-wing fighter on the other. Both Sarah and I fiddled with our little read audio tour devices. “Jenna, what’s the number for this one?” Sarah asked.
I craned my neck to read the small print on placard next to the painting. “5-4-0-7,” I read.
“I wouldn’t bother, ladies,” a voice came from behind us. “Baumann eschewed much of his earlier work. This painting in particular he called ‘obvious’ and ‘amateurish’. It’s only here because the Ernst museum overpaid for it at auction and insisted it be part of this traveling exhibit to try to boost it’s worth,” she gave a little scoff, “good luck with that!”
We turned to see a woman in all black, the palette the museum docents wore. Her dark hair was up in a tight bun under a jaunty beret which stood out because none of the other docents wore hats. She didn’t have a name tag, but saw our quizzical looks and quickly added, “Good evening, ladies.” Putting a hand to her chest she introduced herself, “Greta. And put those dreadful things away,” she waved at the audio tour devices. “I’ll take you around.”
Sarah and I looked at each other. “Are you sure?” Sarah asked. “It’s pretty crowded. Is it okay for you to just take us around?” she added emphasis on “us” because, well, we weren’t the fanciest (read: hoity-toity-est) dressed around.
“Absolutely! Please, let’s step over here to ‘Nude #12’ which Baumann remained proud of throughout his life. Pay particular attention to the line detail in the body of the model and contrast that with the more rough lines in the face…”
We drank it in. Greta didn’t stop at every painting, but waved off some as “lesser” and went on at length for some time on others. And like with the airplane painting, she provided backstories for many of the pieces. “Werner kept this on display in his house when he was living in Berlin,” she explained in front of one landscape. “Dealers practically hammered down his door trying to buy it off the wall, but he loved this painting. These are the rolling hills outside of Mainburg where his family grew hops. He loved that area tremendously,” she smiled as if recalling a memory. She snapped out of her reverie and started, “Pay no attention to this next painting – just a commission,” resuming her tour.
It took us a good hour to get through the majority of the exhibition. Ocasionally I noticed the side-long looks of other patrons, but I chalked it up to envy – no one else had a docent for just their party. More surprisingly, though, no one tried to eavesdrop on our tour. I’ll admit I’ve been known to position myself near enough to be within earshot of a tour guide giving an explanation in a museum, but not so close that I’d have to actually join the group. Blissfully, Greta was all ours!
The currator clearly wanted to save Baumann’s most famous work – “Moon over Dresden” – until near the end, and when we came into the room my breath caught audibly as I saw the painting I’d adored for so long alone and perfectly lit on the far wall. “You’re never quite ready for it, are you?” Greta said. “I could go on for hours about this one, but I’ll just let you enjoy it.” She said standing back and letting me openly gape. After a long time – though no period of time could have been enough – I tore myself away and rejoined Greta and Sarah and we started into the last room of the exhibition.
Sensing the end, I said “Greta, thank you so much for this tour!”
“Yes,” Sarah added, “This has been an invaluable wealth of information. Thank you!”
“Oh,” Greta dismissed us with a hand wave, “I’m passionate about Werner Baumann, and I’m happy to share my knowledge! Come, there are a few more you have to see!”
And there were! The last room represented the late years of Baumann’s career, and the surrealistic nihilism had given way to vibrant, rich colors and scenes that clearly grew out of the meteoric success of “Moon over Dresden. Greta had finished describing the influences behind a still life, and we regarded it with rapt attention for a few long minutes. When we didn’t hear Greta insisting we move on to another painting, I turned and gasped.
“What?” Sarah said and turned. “Oh my god.”
Greta stood behind us, but not in person. The final painting in the exhibition perfectly captured her unmistakable features, her hair in a bun under a beret, her black outfit. In the painting she sat reclined on a red sofa, a wry smile on her face, her eyes staring directly at the viewer as if having shared a joke – or an anecdote. We cautiously approached the painting. Sarah and I traded looks and we both fumbled for the red audio tour. “Number?!” Sarah asked hurriedly.
“5-4-7-3,” I said.
A moment later we had the earphones on and a short melody played before a man with a deep voice began, “Baumann only painted longtime companion, Greta Holzer, once despite the many years the two spent together. An American, the two met after the war during one of Baumann’s infrequent trips to the United states. Married at the time, Baumann kept in correspondence with Holzer, an up and coming artist in her own right. After his wife died, in 1962, Holzer moved to Berlin and the two were inseparable, though they never married. Following his death, Baumann championed his work until her death in 1975. Many of the works here are from the Holzer family private collection.”
We turned in our audio tour devices in an utter daze.
“Did you enjoy the exhibit?” the smiling woman receiving the devices asked.
“It was… unbelievable,” Sarah said.
“You have amazing tour guides,” I said, leaving the woman to trade a quizzical look with the man cleaning the headsets.
