treasures of the neues museum

Fragment: hand of Akhenaten holding a branch of olives.

I harbour a long standing passion for Egyptian Art of the 18th Dynasty. Long ago my mother purchased me a copy of Christiane Desroches Noblecourt’s Ancient Egypt: The New Kingdom and Amarna Period. (The Acanthus History of Sculpture series. The Oldbourne Press.) The image of Nefertiti on the book’s dust-jacket bewitched me from the top shelf of  the bookshop we were browsing. To this day I’m filled with boundless admiration for my mother, acquiring such an unlikely and expensive book that she can have ill-afforded, and all for a shy nine year old.  I don’t recall that I actually asked for it, though I did request it be brought down for us to look at. She must have seen that once opened I coveted what was within it and she made the decision to purchase the book unbidden. Once home with it I worked my way carefully through the text, slowly piecing together the pronunciations of unfamiliar spellings. To this day I’m filled with pleasure by the sound of such names as Ankhesanpaaton, Maket Aton and Smenkere.

I knew from the book that the Former State Museum Berlin was the repository of many Amarnan treasures (now the Neues Museum) including the famous swan-necked bust of Nefertiti. I simply don’t know why it’s taken all these years for me to get there. Together with the Koppel exhibition, the visit was the highlight for me of  our trip to Berlin. I left the Neues Museum with my mind whirling. I won’t try to explain, but here are some images… not all of them Amarnan… that set my heart racing. Some photographs of the museum too, which is staggeringly beautiful. However, you’ll find no images of that famous polychrome bust of Nefertiti here, as in her presence alone the use of cameras is forbidden. The bust of the Queen is displayed in a glass cabinet placed centrally in a spacious, semi-darkened room. She did not disappoint. What I can share with you is that no photograph I’ve ever seen has done her  beauty justice. Moreover close examination of the famous conical head-dress reveals a secret no printed image has ever captured. The sculptor mixed mica particles into the blue paint of the Queen’s crown, so it glitters!

abandoning the snows of home…

… for the snow-heaped streets of Berlin!

When first we moved to West Wales we lived for a long time as house guests of our friend Pip Koppel. While there she invited me to work temporarily in the studio of  her late husband Heinz, and for eight months I painted at his easel surrounded by his works, his books, the found-objects arranged on his shelves and the views across the valley afforded from the high, slot-like horizontal windows.

Last year an exhibition of Heinz’s work opened at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin. Peter and I weren’t able to attend the opening but promised ourselves a trip to see the show before it closed. On Friday last week we flew to Germany with our friends Dave and Philippa. I shall write more about our culture-packed three days in the city when I’ve recovered from tonight’s drive from Cardiff to Aberystwyth by the mountain rather than by the coastal route. Peter pulled off the road and into a lay-by at my suggestion so that I could take over the driving. Too late we saw our mistake as we ploughed into a deep snow-drift that submerged and trapped the car. The storm was awful, the wind tearing the air from my lungs and turning my fingers to iced sticks as I battled to shovel packed snow and ice from under the wheels. We were lucky and got out in about twenty minutes, but for a while there we thought we were in real trouble. Not the weather to be stranded in the car as the snow banks you under! Then fifteen minutes later, just as we were descending to what we hoped was safety, we got stuck in a tail-back for an hour and a half while snow-ploughs cleared the road ahead. (I suspect that if things continued the way they were, the road may be closed by now.)

Suffice to say that it’s been a long, energy-sapping journey and we’re both a little shaken. Warmth and sleep will remedy that. Bed now. More news and art tomorrow.