Berlin Wall given a facelift as freedom painters return
The concrete has been scrubbed, the graffiti removed, the metal de-rusted and now Thierry Noir, the first artist to paint on the Berlin Wall, is set to start all over again.
Noir, a Frenchman who risked his life in 1984 to paint the first major works of art on the barrier that then separated the communist east from the capitalist west of Germany's capital, is now organising the restoration of his paintings as well as those of around 120 other artists. Noir's giant naive art images were immortalised in Wim Wenders's 1987 film Wings of Desire where Noir, playing himself on a ladder propped against the wall with his paintbrushes in hand, waves to an angel played by Bruno Ganz.
This summer the surviving 1,300 metres of the wall is to be scrubbed clean and then repainted by the same artists who turned it into a giant work of art in the heady weeks after Berliners flooded across border posts in November 1989, rendering the wall, built in 1961 as a "protective barrier against fascism", redundant.
"We need to restore it to protect it for future generations," Noir said. "The wall will never be a thing of beauty, and nor should it. Too many people died because of it. It is there to remind a future generation of what happened."
Noir, who says he personally painted about three miles of the wall with his trademark figures, has devoted years to tracking down lumps taken by people as mementos or sold by dealers. "I found two big blocks being used as urinals in a Las Vegas casino. It's disgusting. The wall is a work of art and a historical monument."
The artists - from 21 different countries - who painted the wall 20 years ago have been painstakingly traced and paid to return to Berlin to re-create their works once the wall, badly damaged by years of vandalism, exhaust fumes, harsh weather and souvenir hunters, has been resurfaced...
Read entire article at Observer (UK)
Noir, a Frenchman who risked his life in 1984 to paint the first major works of art on the barrier that then separated the communist east from the capitalist west of Germany's capital, is now organising the restoration of his paintings as well as those of around 120 other artists. Noir's giant naive art images were immortalised in Wim Wenders's 1987 film Wings of Desire where Noir, playing himself on a ladder propped against the wall with his paintbrushes in hand, waves to an angel played by Bruno Ganz.
This summer the surviving 1,300 metres of the wall is to be scrubbed clean and then repainted by the same artists who turned it into a giant work of art in the heady weeks after Berliners flooded across border posts in November 1989, rendering the wall, built in 1961 as a "protective barrier against fascism", redundant.
"We need to restore it to protect it for future generations," Noir said. "The wall will never be a thing of beauty, and nor should it. Too many people died because of it. It is there to remind a future generation of what happened."
Noir, who says he personally painted about three miles of the wall with his trademark figures, has devoted years to tracking down lumps taken by people as mementos or sold by dealers. "I found two big blocks being used as urinals in a Las Vegas casino. It's disgusting. The wall is a work of art and a historical monument."
The artists - from 21 different countries - who painted the wall 20 years ago have been painstakingly traced and paid to return to Berlin to re-create their works once the wall, badly damaged by years of vandalism, exhaust fumes, harsh weather and souvenir hunters, has been resurfaced...