Occasionally an escort gets an excitingly bizarre request, one could even say challenging. Working for Herr F is always such an occasion. Last week was one of my strangest gigs yet. I was to be an invisible escort to Herr F as he and his wife escorted his out-of-town brother at the running exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Modern Times: The Collection. 1900-1945. This was not the first time Herr F had asked me to roam some public space as he accompanied some friend or relative, just so he could see me and I could see him in the light of day; in other words, Invisible Escorting.
I figure Herr F is so turned on to this because he must have had to erotize a lifetime (or rather a double lifetime) of hiding his sexuality and passing as straight. More importantly, to feel as if all this doubling was under his control, nothing more than an exciting board game rather than a life of fear, lying and oppression.
Things take an unexpected turn in the Neue Nationalgalerie when Herr F approaches me and instructs me to proceed to the bookshop in a few minutes where we shall “coincidentally” meet. In the bookshop he introduces me to his brother and suspicious looking wife, “He’s an artist, we met at an exhibition a few months back.” I am exhausted and hung over and speaking strenuous German to a bunch of rich old fogies about modernist paintings is the last thing I desire However, we saunter through an impressive collection spanning 1900 to 1945, two World Wars and the making and breaking of entire nations. The suspicious Frau F takes a liking to me, or just wants to show off, thus becoming my Frührerin, and a brilliant one at that. Highlights of the exhibition include a beautiful painting of Berlin’s, Wedding,1926, by Gustav Wunderwald and Lovis Corinth’s Ecce Homo, 1925. Frau F tells me of the artists who knew of war and hunger, who were persecuted and labeled degenerate. She believes that one can see this in their paintings, even if they happen to be of nothing more than a plate of food.
Before I know it the whole awkward experience is over and we make our even more awkward good byes, everyone knowing that something is slightly askew, and I am left standing alone in front of the last painting of the Munch Freeze gallery, Oskar Kokoschka’s Stillleben mit Ananas (Still-life with Pineapple), 1909. The rollercoaster tour this overly energetic women who was orphaned by the Second World War, who told me to try hard to imagine these painting in their historical contexts, meeting Herr F’s wife and brother, and the overwhelming weight of modernist painting, all coalescing on this painting of a pineapple and two bananas that looked more like fishes.
chapeau!
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