|
Perception of that truth lay behind Osnabrück’s decision
to dedicate a new museum to Felix Nussbaum who was a native of the
town and fatal victim of Nazi persecution. Nussbaum's international
renown is relatively recent, but his works are generally considered
some of the finest examples of German Expressionism; the very existence
of the later paintings is a poignant testament to the power of the
human spirit to transcend adversity. Nussbaum was born in Osnabrück
in 1904, the son of a middle-class Jewish merchant.
During the '20s he studied art in Berlin, subsequently becoming
part of a celebrated coterie of young artists. Early paintings were
compared with Van Gogh and Rousseau, but with the rise of National
Socialism and comcomitant anti-semitism his work became increasingly
charged with uncertainty and lurking menace. From 1933 onwards he
and the artist, Felka Platek, led a fugitive existence, fleeing
through Europe to Brussels, to be finally betrayed, deported to
Auschwitz and murdered in 1944.
Most remarkably, almost until his deportation Nussbaum continued
to paint. The Nussbaum museum is part of the Cultural History Museum,
a palatial nineteenth-century building outside the town wall. It
stands opposite the Schlikker'sche Villa which, now a folk museum,
served as the local Nazi party headquarters from 1933 to 1945. Three
rectangular volumes make up the museum complex, each one given a
separate external identity. Together they form an irregular triangle
which outlines the paths of intersecting axes evolved by Libeskind
and invested with meaning.
Of these volumes, the main one is the Nussbaum Haus on an east-west
axis leading to the site of the old synagogue (burned down on Kristallnacht
in 1938). Its oak-clad exterior is cut open by the asymmetrical
patterns of windows and scored in now-familiar fashion by Libeskind's
oblique seams - conceptual leylines that are supposed to terminate
in significant places in Nussbaum's life: Berlin, Brussels, Auschwitz.
Out of the gloom
A gallery for the main collection - paintings of the 1920s and
'30s depicting family life and tranquil landscapes - occupies the
ground floor together with a lecture theatre and café. On
the mezzanine there are offices and a gallery for graphic works;
on the first floor a large gallery provides space for temporary
exhibitions. The most eerie component of the trio is a narrow horizontal
concrete monolith shooting towards the Schlikker÷sche Villa and
known as the Nussbaum Gang. At 11m high, 2m wide and 70m long it
encloses two sepulchral corridors, one on top of another and dimly
lit from above.
Out of the gloom emerge the later paintings, charnel house visions
of desolation. The remaining element of the composition, by which
the new museum is hinged off the east wing of the old, is the elevated
zinc-clad bridge. This has galleries on two levels, the lower one
for the recently discovered paintings, the upper one for temporary
exhibitions. Existing as a metaphor for connection of the past with
the present, the structure crashes through the Gang to collide with
the Haus, linking in each case with the upper levels of the building.
Revelation of the past
The complex is surrounded by and visually tied to the detritus
of history. Nussbaum Gang, slicing past the western end of Nussbaum
Haus, is itself sliced on plan by the remnants of a seventeenth-century
bridge. Revealed during excavation, it led to the ravelin protecting
the city gate. A new path raised over the vaults takes visitors
left to the museum's main entrance at the head of Nussbaum Gang,
or straight on to a dead end, the restored wall of an alleyway that
once led to the lost synagogue.
The cut through Nussbaum Gang isolates a notional fragment of it.
Forming a concrete tower for temporary installations it stands sentinel
opposite the massive front door. Like a tapestry woven around the
buildings, fragments of the old and new are part of new gardens
criss-crossed by paths. The graphic simplicity of a carpet of dwarf
sunflowers (a motif borrowed from Nussbaum's paintings), brilliant
against green grass and stone, is really delightful.
The exposure of history
More history is exposed in a litter of stone columns in a courtyard
between old and new museums. Without knowing the symbolism inherent
in the parts you can appreciate the painterly composition that has
the sculptural power of the buildings as its focus. It is the interiors
that raise difficulties. They are derived from an inevitable tension
between the architect÷s passionate desire to convey a message, almost
literally, through architecture and the fundamental purpose of a
gallery to show pictures.1 Libeskind's museum is a disconcerting
place in which to contemplate paintings. Volumes are distorted,
walls slashed by oblique window slits, and floors raked; ceilings
are scored by lighting tracks and (on the top floors) fissures of
glass.
The staircase on the south side of the Nussbaum Haus projects at
a deliberately sharp angle into the galleries to leave a triangle
of space too acute to accommodate anything much. Libeskind has set
out to convey disorientation, restlessness, the absence of rules,
so that normality no longer exists and reality is difficult to judge.
Considered simply as a building, the spaces it contains can at times
seem bleak and irritatingly confusing. Libeskind÷s subversion of
promenades architecturales has produced a circulation system so
labyrinthine as to defeat even the most determined first-time visitor.
(It is made more confusing by the fire doors obstructing passage
from one building to another.) Steel mesh panels set into floors
do allow glimpses of other rooms, above or below, but how to reach
them?
Electronic acoustic installation
On the day the museum opened, discomfort was heightened by Hans
Peter Kuhn's weird electronic acoustics reverberating around you.
Undeniably powerful with its fractured walls and challenging volumes,
the place must be a curator÷s nightmare. Admittedly on opening day
the collection was not yet in place but sight of the few paintings
on show huddled in inhospitable corners was not encouraging. Nussbaum's
paintings are intricately composed, and quiet study is required
to realize their expression of humanity and tenderness, the depths
of their desolation and despair. Of the two artists involved in
this scheme, it is the architect who seems to be striving for effect.
|
