The Blindboy Podcast - A Live tour of a Berlin Art Gallery. Exploring Modernism, German Expressionism, Fascism and Muesli, while wearing swimming shorts and hiking boots

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

This week I'm in Berlin, walking through the Neue Nationalgalerie. A tour of German expressionist paintings and 20th century history This week I'm in Berlin, walking through the Neue Nationalgalerie. A tour of German expressionist paintings and 20th century history. Thumbnail image is Potsdamer Platz by Ludwig Kirchner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings you jangly Anthony's and welcome to the Blind By Podcast. I'm recording this one live from the streets of Berlin. There's a fucking heat wave over here and I didn't prepare for it. Hold on I'm trying to avoid some children. If you're a first time listener, maybe consider going back to an earlier podcast. If you're a regular listener, you know the crack. Things might sound a little bit different this week because I'm recording this week's podcast.

Live from the streets of Berlin. Well, not live. Well, I suppose it is live. There'll be very little editing. I'm walking around Berlin because I did two gigs here at the weekend. Now it's Sunday. So, on my day off,

fuck it, let's try and record a podcast. I'm going to take you to an art museum. There's a heat wave here. I didn't plan for a fucking heat wave. I hadn't brought the right clothes So what's happened is, is I'm wearing swimming shorts

and then outdoor boats. Swimming shorts and outdoor boats, which I look like I look like an ex-priest who was defrocked for masturbating in the cinema. That's how I'm dressed. Very fucking strange stuff. Even here in Berlin

where you can wear what you want. I look odd. I look like an Australian setting. Ex-offender. Apparently actually the process of being defrocked as a Catholic priest. I need to look into it more but apparently you get thrown down a flight of stairs. I'm actually approaching a flight of stairs now. I'm outside a gaff called the Nye National Gallery, which is an art museum in Berlin with some modernist paintings inside there and I'm going to take you in and we'll look at a couple of paintings and chat about him. Father's Day today, which is... I didn't know it was gonna be fucking Father's Day when I booked this tour months ago, but here you are, it's Father's Day and I'm away from my two little children, which... That's not nice.

The hotel that I'm staying in has an aggressively brilliant breakfast selection. The Germans are very serious about breakfasts. I've never seen a more... never seen a more welcoming musley selection in my life, three or four different types of musleys, among which is Barter Musley, one of my favourite fucking Musley's, it's the original overnight oaths. I've only ever found it in Australian hotels for some reason. But they've got Barter Musley and then they have another section which is a build your own fucking musley selection. All constituent elements of Musley laid out in separate balls and it's your

job to just go nuts. So that's what I did. Built an astounding ball of musley. Chea seeds. Sunflower seeds. Peacens. Fucking pecans. Who's putting pecans on mute? Me. I'm putting pecans on musley. Oats. Few rice Krispies to be bald. And two different types of yogurts. Delicious ball of musli that I built myself. And I was so proud of this fucking bowl of musli, right? So proud of it. I'm like, I want to build this identical ball of musley tomorrow. That's what I'm going to do. Tomorrow morning, I'm making this ball of musley again. So I took a fucking photograph of it. And then I went, that's not enough. That's not enough. I'm not going to remember. So not only did it take a photograph of it, I said, I'm going to put this ball of musley on my phone as the

screensaver, just for the day. So I did. Normally the screensaver on my phone, is a photograph of my two little kids. That's usually, I love opening my phone up every time and I'm staring at my two little kids. I love that. But today I'm like, no, we're going to need to do this Musley thing so I can remember the recipe for tomorrow. So this morning I was in a shop.

This is the most mental thing I've done on this tour so far. I was in a shop, dressed the way I am. And there was a woman in front of me and she had in her arms a little two-year-old girl. And when you're away from your kids, all other kids are brilliant, because they become little versions of your own kids. I love being around children.

If I'm in a fucking restaurant, lads. If I'm in a restaurant and I see a family and they have two tiny little kids, I go out of my way to sit near them. Now mainly what that is is, A, I don't mind the sound of kids. Two, I know that that family who has the kids, they're fucking terrified.

They're terrified that one of their kids is going to flick a spoon of balanais at a stranger. So I sit next to them so that if a spoon of balanais from their little toddler should fly in the air, that it hits me. I want to be hit by that balanese and I then want to say to those parents,

don't worry about it. I know what that's like. Shower me with balanais. It's all right. So this morning anyway, I'm in a fucking cue for a show. shop and there's a woman in front of me holding a little two-year-old and I see the little child and then I get my heart starts fluttering and I'm just going to oh look at the little baby

isn't she isn't she gorgeous thinking of my own too at home so I start smiling at the baby you know and waving then the woman turns around and there's just a man dressed like a defrocked priest on his own waving at her child and in the society we live in unfortunately you have to be kind of suspicious when a stranger is smiling at your child you have to kind of go is that a good smile or not a good smile I don't know

this is the society we live in so she turned to me and there was a bit of suspicion in her eyes she wasn't sure it's a dude there standing on his own it's a man by himself and she's gone into protection mode so then I say to myself Do you know what

I'm going to ease her worries I know what she's thinking I understand why she'd be worried I'm a man standing by himself smiling at her child Of course she'd be worried So I Now bear in mind I don't speak fucking German

I don't think she speaks English So I couldn't just say to her Don't worry I'm a father I've got two of my own Don't worry Couldn't do that So I said

I'll whip out my phone I'll take my phone out and I'll show her, look at my screensaver, look at the front of my phone, it's two toddlers, don't worry. So I did it, there's not two toddlers, it's pointing at a bowl of fucking musley. So there's this woman in the shop going, why is this man smiling at my child? And I'm trying to make the situation better by showing her perfect musley? Showing her this magnificent bowl of fucking musley? So she looked very, very confused anyway, and they left. So that's the maddest thing I've done so far in this fucking trip.

Strange old place here, Berlin. You really can't talk about Palestine. You really cannot. There's a group of people here called the Ulham Five. I'm whispering. I'm fucking whispering. A group of people here called the Ulham Five, which were activists. One of them is from Dublin. His name is Daniel Tatlow.

And they've been arrested. They've been arrested for... like the Palestine Action People, over in London, arrested for vandalising the military industrial complex, the fucking companies that are making drones, that are doing a genocide. So they went in and vandalise some equipment and now they're being tried as part of a criminal organisation

and are facing incredibly serious sentences and the German government are making an example out of them. You don't hear about it back in Ireland, I heard about it when I came here, even though one of them is an Irish citizen. But you know him back home even fucking knows about that. The United Nations has called out Germany saying, chill the fuck out.

I think there's 1,500 people arrested for protesting. Last night at my own gig and the night before where I have an audience of my podcast listeners. When I brought up the subject of Palestine, the quietness in the audience, people were terrified. You can't fucking talk. about it over here. Because of the collective guilt, I think they view, like here's the thing, right, the United Nations has said, this is a genocide. And if you look at the United Nations

Convention on Genocide, it puts a responsibility on nations to stop a genocide when it's fucking happening. So that's what makes this so legally and morally problematic is if a group of people decide, well, the UN is caught into genocide, so I'm going to go into the factory and break some shit. Are you not then adhering to the United Nations Genocide Convention where it says there's a responsibility to stop a genocide? And instead you have the UK and Germany going, you're criminals, or the UK calling them fucking terrorists?

Sort of a mad vibe here. A fucking mad vibe. And proof of that is I'm walking around a public space talking into a fucking microphone and when I say Palestine I'm whispering it and that's dark

because at least I could walk around Limerick roaring it So what I wanted to do this week is to take ye into an art gallery Look at a couple of paintings Speak about them See what the crack is

I know a thing or two about art I've got a master's degree in fine art I was a college lecturer for a year teaching fine art back in 2017 before the podcast art is something visual art is something I love and adore

because art's not necessarily about whether the art is good or bad it's cultural production so you can look at fucking paintings and it tells you something about society and that's what it's about really and I like to democratise art and democratise art galleries

because art galleries are a lot of fucking bullocks. We have this idea that art, paintings, modernist art in particular is highly impenetrable, highly intellectual. And people treat art galleries

like religious fucking spaces. Like I don't take my children to art galleries because first off you take little tiny kids to an art gallery and they go nuts, they want to touch everything. And then you have to go, Don't touch it, don't touch it. And instill a fear in them.

Because the thing they want to touch, the painting, the beautiful thing they're looking at, costs millions and millions and millions. You have to go to your kids and go, don't touch it. And then the children go, why, why, why is the art so important? And then you can't answer them.

You can't tell them why that particular work is worth millions, but you definitely can't touch it. Art galleries are very solemn places. People walk around. around in silence. Terrified. You know, staring at absolutely bizarre pieces of work. And they stare at it in silence, in terror, in case someone else figures out that we don't understand the art. So we have to go around the place rubbing our fucking chins. It's a religious

space. It's a space that there's spaces that are dominated by solemnity. A lot of them exists purely to service capitalism. Why are these paintings worth millions and millions and millions and millions? Is that their actual worth? Yes, they're very important. Yes, they're one of a kind. But the millions and millions and millions thing, it's money laundering.

It's a way for very rich people to purchase paintings and hoard wealth into them. Their investments. I mean, a Picasso is worth 160, 200 million quid. 10 years time it could be worth 300 million it's an investment it's what it is so it's ultra wealthy

to invest their money and then it's up for public display for the rest of us but just because something's worth 300 million quid doesn't mean it's an incredible piece of art also it's a way for the ultra wealthy to anyone can buy a Ferrari

anyone with money can go and purchase a Ferrari but in order to purchase the right piece of modernist art, that's an expression of education and taste. So it's a way for amongst the ultra wealthy, for some people to go, well, I'm actually cultured and educated, and I come from real money. I come from generational wealth because I know what a Digglyhani is. I know what a Picasso is. But that person over there, he just knows what a Ferrari is, because he's new money. So the art world operates like that too.

Charmany as well is very unique when it comes to modern art and the development of modernism. Late 19th century, early 20th century. Charmany was a centre of artistic expression. You had the fucking... The Bauhaus, the Dada movement, that would have been Austria too. You had expressionism. Modernism, I've said it before, right, but modernism. It's a late industrial revolution thing.

I think I might have mentioned a little bit of it last week. It's when art was confronted with technology. That's what the fuck modernism. I'm saying this in the simplest terms possible. When you hear modernism and then later post-modernism, modernism was present in everything. Music, painting, fucking writing. James Joyce is the classic writing modernist.

Visual arts paintings. some of the shit that we're going to be looking at. Painters were confronted with the new technology of photography and film. Film came in around in 1913. So you have this art form where people are drawing and painting on 2D surfaces and all of a sudden you've got machines that can take a photograph. And this created a sense of anxiety where painters had to respond and basically go, I'm going to paint what a camera can't.

I'm going to paint what a camera can't. So from that you get, impressionism and then you get expressionism what's expressionism I'm being real simple with this shit very very simple but what is expressionism and painting

if an expressionist what's to paint a tree they're not necessarily interested in painting the best tree that looks like a tree they're trying to paint the feeling of what it is to look at a tree or the feeling of what it is to remember

a tree to express. That's what expressionism is. Look up's painter called Mandrian, Piet Mandrian. Look at his paintings of trees and how those paintings change over ten years. He begins in an expressionistic style. Then he moves to cubism,

removing detail, removing representation, until, by 1921, fully abstract, just painting squares. German expressionist painters would have been fucking Kandinsky. Guy. Who else have we got? Otto Dix was another one, George Gross. Paul Klee. These were German. Now, German expressionism became abstract expressionism later from about the 1940s onwards, but we're not getting into that yet. Early 20th century, so I mean before World War II, before the Nazis, Germany was a centre of expressionist painters. This new way of painting. shit paintings

all right I'm conscious that I'm speaking to a lay audience here all right the type of paintings that you would walk into a gallery

and look at and say that shit my two-year-old could do that that's a piece of shit that is why is that worth millions of euro

that's a bag of dog shit that is and that's fair enough that's fair enough if you walk into a gallery and you look at an early German expression as painting

and think it's a bag of dog shit your opinion is valid, but the thing is visually, yeah, it is a bag of dog shit. That's not the point. It was about being radical. It was about

taking an art form that has existed painting, that has existed for hundreds of hundreds of years, and going, I have the freedom to be shit. Maybe this painting here isn't about representation. We've got cameras now. Go and get a camera if you want a perfect

photograph of a fucking tree. I'm trying to paint what a tree feels like, and they're just going to have to deal with that. So that's what expressionism is. A lot of these painters were Jewish. That became a problem then when Hitler comes to power. When the fucking Nazis came to power in 1933, Hitler and the Nazis decided that modernist art, German expressionism, what degenerate?

Degenerate art, it was a sign of a failing society, a sign of mental illness. it was a lot of these artists were Jewish as well was anti-Semitic, but racist because modernist painters were inspired by African American jazz music the Nazis came in and said this is degenerate art the Nazis viewed society and this again does tie into my breakfast discourse

the Germans are very serious about health food and there's a reason for that that goes back to the late 1800s right there was a movement in Germany around 1900 called Liebens reform. Musley was invented during this period by Maximilian Barcher. Remember the Barter Musley Musley Musley I mentioned earlier? A lot of things we take for granted the day. Musley bars, granola, herbal teas, fucking organic food, nuts and seeds. Goes back to the German Liebens reform movement of the late 1800s, the purification of the human body. Nothing wrong with that but the Nazis fucking jumped in it. They loved that. A lot of health food movements

start in Germany and this is why today you can see how easily far-righted ideas get absorbed by wellness influencers. The Germans viewed society as a human body. They had what they called the blood and soil movement. That Eastern Europe was basically German territory. And this was about German soil and German blood. And you could expel the Slavic people that lived there and replace the colonise them with German people.

And this is the blood and soil movement. And you must purify the body. Purify the body and keep it clean. And anything that isn't pure is going to dirty that body. And they looked at society that way too. And that was used as justification for genocide, for eradicating who Jewish people, disabled people, Roma people, whoever they didn't like.

these people were degenerate and it is our responsibility to exterminate these people because our society is a body and just like you take medicine or antibiotics that's what we're doing we're cleansing the body the society the way that we would cleanse our bodies

so they had an exhibition in 3433 called the degenerate art exhibition and a lot of the paintings I'm going to be looking at here today in this gallery I think a few of them are actually in that degenerate art exhibition. So the Nazis, they put on this huge exhibition and got all the German expressionist painters, modernist art, cubists,

and they said this art is degenerate. These paintings of trees that don't look like trees, these paintings of people that are warped and distorted, these paintings that look like the work of toddlers, they are the work. the work of adults with the brains of toddlers. This is degenerate art by degenerate people. And this art here is a stain in our society that must be eradicated. Really what they're talking about? They're trying to get rid of critical thinking. They're trying to get rid of

critical thinking. And this is where the intellectual side of abstract art and abstract painting comes in. There's a lot of thinking behind these paintings. a lot of creativity I'm simplifying it by saying I'm going to do what a camera can't but these people were reading philosophy these people were critiquing society these people were trying to hold

a lens up to society in particular after World War I another driving force of modernism was World War I right humanity had never seen industrial scale murder like that Before World War I battlefields were

there was a couple of guns there was horses there was knives there was swords but there wasn't gas there wasn't bombs being dropped from planes there wasn't machine guns that could take 100 people down and under a minute

that was very new that was World War I and the world was confronted with that level of technological death very rapidly and the modernists were also responding to that, in particular the Dada, the Dada movement, which would have started in, I think it was Austria, Vienna. So when the fucking Nazis were like, here is our degenerate

art exhibition. This is all the art that's banned. This is all the degenerate art of the degenerates. And this is going to ruin society. Really what they're shutting down is critical thinking. That's what it's about. We're shutting down the intellectuals. We're shutting down the Jewish artists that are doing this. And it wasn't just an exhibition. A lot of those artists were teachers in institutions. They all got fired, a load of them fucked off to America, Paris, places like that. And then they put on another exhibition, which I can't say it in German,

but it means the great German art exhibition. And this was all the art that the Nazi government was like, this is good German art. That's all boring as fuck. Remember Hitler didn't get into art college lads? Remember that? Hitler did not get into art. to Art College. You can see his paintings, very technically proficient drawings of buildings, but it was academic technical work. Nothing was being said in his work. There was no curiosity,

there was no ideas, there was no passion, this was not, there was no desire for artistic expression. He was rejected. Conti had skin in the game here. So when the Nazis put on this big, great German art exhibition, all propaganda art, it is a great, Here is the best drawing of a horse you've ever seen. Here are great portraits of great men. Here are some paintings of white, blue-eyed German people living in the countryside. We can all agree that these paintings are as good as photographs.

It was a demonstration of skill. Demonstration of skill, not a lot of thinking. What does this painting mean? it doesn't mean anything. It's a painting of a healthy German family who are abiding by Nazi values and working on the land.

That's what the painting is. What about that painting of a horse? It's a brilliant drawing and painting of a horse. Okay? And that there is a portrait of a great man. And isn't it so skilled? And that was the art

that the Nazis were promoting. You're seeing all this shit being echoed now by the Trump fucking regime. On Twitter, on the Twitter accounts of like the fucking White House, they're using AI to, they're using AI to repeat the visual aesthetics of Nazi propaganda art and make it about America. America had similar propaganda too. There was a painter in America called Norman Rockwell. And he used to just paint Americans sitting down eating giant dinners.

and that was their propaganda. Here in America you can buy as much photo as you want, isn't it great? Before I take you into the main space of the Nye National Gallery, I think we'll have a little ocarina pause. I don't have my... I didn't bring my ocarina with me, but I do have is... An instrument that's called a... A Jews harp.

This was given to me last night at my gig as a gift by a member of the audience, and this is... You put it in your mouth and you know the sound when you hear it. It's called a Jews harp. Now I'm becoming increasingly aware that I'm standing outside a national gallery. There's a public space. I'm wearing swimming shorts and outdoor hiking boots.

I look like a fucking lunatic. I'm ranting to myself. You know, my microphone might not be too evidence. So I'm ranting to myself about the Holocaust, modernism, musley and Palestine. So if I am being watched by the German Secret Service or whatever, you know, they can listen to you now with lasers. To the officer that's watching me right now, if you do want to have a hop off my head with a sniper rifle, you know, I'd do the same thing. I'd forgive you. I understand where you're coming from.

But if you are listening to me with lasers, I'm just making a podcast. I'm just an autistic man with a podcast, right? And I'm playing a Jew's harp now. It's sheer fucking coincidence. someone gave it to me last night. I don't even think these instruments have anything to do with Jewish people whatsoever. It's just a name that these instruments have.

So now I'm going to play this. You'll hear some fucking adverts for bullshit, all right? So this is me... Father's Day. Fah! People looking at me now. Father's Day. 2026.

Sitting outside the Nye National Gallery in Berlin. Talking to my... myself and playing the Jews harp. That's what I'm doing at my fucking life. You know that interesting, don't you? You know what to hear it. They tell you no one stares in Berlin. They do.

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And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. Listen for free. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is why I never miss a week. So that's patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast if you'd like to support this podcast directly. I'm going to fly through the gigs because I can barely fucking remember them. But 5th of July very shortly, Sheffield City Hall, at the Crest Wendell.

Festival. Go to the Blindby Podcast.e for any of these fucking gigs. Big English tour in October 2026. What have we got in there? London, Glasgow. Coventry, Brighton. Then April. 27. Australian, New Zealand. Sydney Opera House,

Pardth, Melbourne, Auckland. Go to my Instagram, Blindby Podcast. No. Blind... What the fuck is my Instagram? Blind by Boat Club with a blue tick. The Blindby Podcast. It's the all you want there. And I'll share.

some of the fucking paintings I'm going to be speaking about in this episode too. I'm entering the gallery now. That's the sound of a revolving door. I'm immediately confronted by a space that looks a bit like a hangar. I hope I don't get into fucking trouble now walking around with a microphone dressed like an Australian sex tourist. I'm going to go downstairs to the steps now to try and um, I don't have a stereo microphone this week. I'm sure you can still hear the kerfuffle of people wandering around. I'm about to enter the main exhibition space now, so this is modern art, paintings.

The interesting thing about this particular museum is it's about the conflict between propaganda art and what's considered non-propaganda art, and that's the bit that I have the issue with. You've got to remember, the exhibition starts in 1945 to 2000, but speaking about there is Cold War post World War II Berlin

where you had it divided between East and West with a fucking wall down the middle West Berlin represented the West and then East Berlin that was Soviet that was under the control of the Soviet Union Russia

so what that is it's the Cold War the Cold War and East Berlin is portrayed as being highly repressed and then West Berlin is portrayed as being completely free and this shows the art of both sides so when I walk into the exhibition now I got to be honest with you I fucking love these paintings all right but what the

first thing that's being shown on the left side is abstract expressionist paintings now abstract expressionism is that expressionism that at the start, that German expressionism that it'd be 1910, 1920. Abstract expressionism is when taking it a step further. This is your

classic abstract painting that you're talking about. A painting on a wall that's just, looks like some paint thrown on a canvas. Or just a square. That's what I'm staring at. These paintings are worth millions. Right now I'm looking at a Mark Rothko.

A Mark Rothko painting. That's it's just a lot of orange on a canvas. You know, pretty much. At the time when Rocco would have painted this, this would have been completely revolutionary. It would have shocked the art world.

1970. And Rocco was... I think Rocco was German, Jewish. I could be wrong, but he painted in New York. And these are American abstract expressionist paintings. Who else have we got here? Pierre Sounlage, again he was French but I believe he was painting out of New York and do we have a Kandinsky here? Willie Baumister. So these paintings are presented as not

propaganda. Now on the other side of the bit of the exhibition we have some paintings from East German artists, socialist realism. So these artists would have been painting within East Berlin, within the Soviet system, within a system where expression was very dangerous, you could have gotten arrested. So they might have been state-sponsored artists, and their paintings would be paintings of workers. Workers working for society. It is propaganda art.

I'm looking at a painting here from horse. Strempel and the painting is called Discussions of the Plan from 1949 and it's not photorealistic but it's it's a bunch of men gathered around some plans and they're clearly designing a factory or something like that there's women in the background but this is a piece of propaganda art the messaging is you support the state it's a good idea to support the state and it's very important that you work soviet messaging so this is classed as propaganda art. Fair enough. The American abstract expressionism that were going back to the blobs on the canvas, that's also propaganda. That American abstract expressionism that

was coming out in New York, we now know, was hugely funded by the CIA. The artist themselves might have been communists, they might have been socialists, they might have not known that they were being funded by the CIA. But this is what, the CIA was funding the The CCF, the something something fucking fund. What's the name of the cunts? The Congress for Cultural Freedom. And what the Congress for Cultural Freedom was is they organized America,

it was the cultural expert, it was the exportation of American cultural expression during the Cold War. So they would organize art exhibitions. They would fund literary journalists, conferences, concerts, that jazz music was a big thing. I think Louis Armstrong

when he was in France was being funded by the CIA and he didn't even know that that was happening. But this American abstract expressionist work is also propaganda. It's the propaganda of capitalism. What I mean by that is why are the CIA funding

giant blobs on a canvas? Why is that so important? Because you can read these paintings as the limit limitlessness of capitalism. Really, so most people, when they look at these abstract expressionist paintings, are going to go, that's a lot of shit. Look at this, look at me in a gallery.

I can't say that out loud in case I commit blasphemy. 99% of people are going to walk in here, right, and look at paintstrokes on a canvas and they're going to say, what a lot of fucking bollocks. a two-year-old could do that. What a lot of shit. The thing is, the messaging is,

isn't America so great that you can paint like a two-year-old and become a multimillionaire? That's the messaging. That is the freedom of the American dream. It's not degenerate. It's free market capitalism. Have a go at whatever the fuck you want.

Jackson Pollock. Very important. an abstract expressionist painter. Pollock used to just drink all day and then fuck paint. That canvases in bottles. He'd get washing up liquid bottles full of paint and fuck him at the canvas

and put it up and caught it art. And then this was, these exhibitions were being funded by the CIA. Before the 19... Jackson Pollock, by the way, as well, was a communist. Before the CCF,

who were receiving money from the CIA, before the... Culture... I can't remember the... name of the CCF. This is a phone call podcast, lads. I'm not checking notes in the middle of this. Before the CCF, the House of Un-American Activities, which was a government panel to identify communists in the United States, they used to think that Jackson Pollock was a communist, and they used to think that his abstract paintings, right, of dots and scribbles and splatters

were actually secret maps that were communicating with the Soviets about where the nuclear bombs were. And then they flipped and ten years later all of a sudden they're funding him. So the argument that I'm making here in this museum, it's all propaganda. Every bit of it, all of these artworks are propaganda. The East Berlin Soviet art is very explicit, deliberate propaganda. Very deliberate. The state sponsorship is out there in the open. Fucking paint about the workers, paint about the state. Whatever you paint, it must support the Soviet dream, and that is explicit, and if you don't do it, you get fucked off to the Gulek. So those rules are black and white. Same shit's happening there in the fucking US. Except it's less explicit. The artists do

not know that they are actually painting and spreading the propaganda of the capitalist state. And we're moving into a bit of postmodernism here. I'm looking at the work of Robert Rauschenberg. This fucking thing here. It's a barn door, lads. It's a barn door. Put some toilet paper on it and a lot of paint. Now I'm not...

There's no value judgment here. I'm not here going, this is a piece of shit, whatever, this had cultural importance at the time. But I'm just being honest with you. I'm in a gallery and I'm looking at an old barn door that has splatters of paint on it. and this piece of work is so important that it's the only piece of work that's

surrounded by glass because it's so fragile and because it's so valuable I would say yeah that Rauschenberg 20 million, 25 million not a butter that's known as a ready-made ready-made was a type of art that it's about asking questions about what art can be

making a piece of art out of whatever shit you find around you. Then we walk up a little bit now and we're looking at some more Soviet East Berlin art. And this painting is from 1982. It's a painting of cosmonauts. Cosmonauts were Russian astronauts. I mean, if you dragged anyone into this gallery

and said, what do you think of that painting? Most people would go, that's a very good painting. It's highly skilled. You know, it's a well, painted painting of a bunch of happy astronauts. This is state propaganda. It's, the messaging behind this is that it's very important that we get to the moon, that there's power behind the actions of getting to the moon. It's boring. You know, it's boring. I'm not here saying that I don't give a fuck about a piece of art where it's just a really, really good drawing of

someone. Here's a head of Karl Marx here. Again, propaganda. But my thing is, I'm I'm not going to walk in here and just call any piece of... I'm not going to say that's propaganda and that's not. It's all propaganda. Standing beside two paintings. One of these I believe is an East Berlin painting and the other one is a Francis Bacon. And the first thing that strikes me is they're both stylistically similar, but with all the East German paintings in this gallery,

I could tell you what is East and what is West. not necessarily by the style but by the quality of pigment that's what's really interesting the painters in East Berlin they wouldn't have had access to the variety and quality of paints that you'd have access to underneath capitalism

and I'd imagine that a lot of these East German paintings were painted with not even artist level paints paints that would have been intended for you know painting a fucking door which is what I find so interesting about Robert Rauschenberg over there who was mentioned earlier because he is using, that was the thing with Pop Art, Warhol and the postmodernists. They were using house paint as a radical act, as a kind of a hipster radical act,

whereas the East German and Soviet artists were using housepaint because they had to. They had no choice. So now I'm in the part of the exhibition, which is by far the most interesting to me. It's the pre-World War II German expressionism. This is early modernism. Artists painting

from a perspective of genuine freedom. Genuine curiosity. They really want to test the boundaries of they're asking questions about what a painting can be. Karkner, Ernest Ludwig Kartner. It's got a painting here called Pastaammer Plats. Like I mentioned earlier, but expressionism. What makes this painting so beautiful?

It's... There's two women figures, one of them's wearing a veil. It's in Pashtammer Plats, which is here in Berlin. Some people are coming off a train. There's no perspective in this painting. There's no commitment to realism whatsoever. There's a lot of green, but not a lot of nature. This is a city.

Faces are green streets. are green. The painter isn't trying to be realistic. He's trying to paint an emotion. And I, this, this is a painting about anxiety. The anxiety of World War I is about to kick off. The greenness that's in people's faces is the greenness that people have before they're about to vomit. Some people are looking down at the ground and this is pure expressionism. It is the expression of the feeling of personal and collective anxiety. And I think that's a fun. fucking brilliant and you can walk in and you can say two-year-old could do that. They could. It's not what it's about.

That's not what it's about. This is about asking questions about what a painting could be and asking questions about an emotion, which is something that you feel. What does it look like you? Oh, I'm in the way of a painting that a guide is shouting at. The other thing too that I mentioned about modernism and expressionism in general, about modernism being a response to technology. The basic example that I give is, no invention of a camera, what are we going to do? What can we do what a camera can't?

The thing with this carcanner painting, painting of a city, it's responding to the chaos of a city itself. This is shit that's hard for me and you to grasp. We've grown up around cities. We know what cities are. Big, big cities, they're an invention of the industrial revolution. You know, obviously I had cities before that, but the ones that we know,

thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands, a million people, that's an industrial revolution invention. And modernism is responding to the anxiety of that. The anxiety of how do you live in a city? How do you have mental health in a city? How do you have mindfulness and space in an environment? where there's all that noise. I mean, I'm trying to do with it right now.

Mr. Autism. I'm surrounded by people all around me. I'm in a room of maybe 600 people. Now I'm calm and fine, and my nervous system is dealing with it perfectly because I'm looking at art. I'm not here with these people. I'm there in that fucking painting in the land of thought.

So I can chill out here without feeling nervous because I'm in flow state I'm passionate, I'm taking fucking art in and I'm using imagination and curiosity to look at this painting

this Karkner painting which you might call the scribbles of a fucking idiot or this is it I'm looking at degenerate art this is a piece of art that the Nazis would have confiscated because this is degenerate

it's far from fucking degenerate that's a painting about anxiety camera can't do that camera can take a photograph of a person who is experiencing anxiety but I can't camera can't take a photograph

of the emotion but a human can try to paint it moving on to another painting now that this one is visually beautiful it's painting of a city at night time the streets are wet there's cars there's lights it's impressionistic

not expressionistic. Now it's impressionistic because the impressionist came before the expressionists. Impressionism is this artist is trying to get a very quick impression of what it is like to exist in a very modern new city with lights and movement

and reflections and artificial light. So that's an impression of that and it's contrasted with that Karkner painting there from earlier which is an expression of that. So this con letter, ORI, he's going, I'm doing an impression of a city, whereas Karkner's going, I'm going for the expression, the feeling of the city. This ORI painting, it looks a bit more like a city, the other one doesn't. Now moving on to a very interesting painting by a fellow called Otto Nagel.

Now this painting is from 1928. There's just two paintings. One of them is called homeless people, the other one is called boys from the wedding. These are realistic paintings, more realistic than the other two I spoke about. Their paintings are poor people. I would frame this in a type of realism. They're paintings of people with not a lot of money and the lives that they live and they have emaciated faces.

These are working people. What's interesting is, if you look at on the wall it says these will require, these paintings, even though they're from the 20s, were acquired by East Berlin. And that's interesting. It means that these paintings, even though they're pre-East Berlin, the Soviets considered these to align with their message because they're paintings of the working class people. So you have the expressionists. They're concerned with the feeling of alienation. an inner experience. The alienation there is,

what is it that a city is doing to your mind? How is it in a city of, how is it when you're in a city of a million people who feel more lonely than ever? Those are the questions that the expressionists were asking. And then you've got the impressionists, we're going, well, I'm fascinated by the sensory nature of this city. I like it when it's raining and a car goes past

and I can see the trail of those lights. I want to paint an impression of that. Now we're moving on to a painting Beautiful fucking painting This one is mad looking Again this would have been Is what you'd call degenerate art Heinrich Emson

This painting is from 1925 It's called In the Madhouse And it is an incredibly grotesque Expressionist half Impressionist half expressionist painting of A lot of shell-shocked soldiers maybe Mentally ill people

In an institution maybe some disabled people it's a painting that looks like everyone looks like Shrek it's that use of green the use of green we saw in the Karkner painting a lot of lads that look like Shrek with green faces they look like augurs

and I can't don't know whether this is expressionistic or impressionistic or even there's realism too it's a very well curated fucking exhibition because this painting here has elements from the previous three that I spoke about. This has the painting style of impressionism, the attempt at expressing emotions or feelings. Now here's the thing. These don't look like human beings.

They look like augurs. So what's being painted here is ableism. What's being painted is the feeling of disgust and distance that human beings have about people who are sent to a madhouse. about World War I soldiers who are shell shocked or people with Down syndrome or people who were autistic. So what's being painted here by making the Mugli is society's feeling of disgust toward these people. And then the third thing, there's realism here, there's social realism. The artist is painting subjects that society would like to forget about people who are sent to madhouses. Look at a wonderful painting here now, very, very colorful. A lot of people gathered around this painting because it's

visually stunning and what's the word to use? This would appeal to a mass audience because of the beautiful bright colors that are being used. It reminds me of the paintings of Paul Gogan, who was a cunt. Paul Gogan, who a friend of Van Gogh, just a fucking prick, he went off to Tahiti and thinking he personally introduced syphilis to the indigenous population and abused a bunch of as well, fucking prick. But this George Tappert painting is certainly in the style of Paul Gorgannon. It's a painting

of a sex worker. It represents Berlin. The Interwar... Berlin before World War I when it was a metropolitan city. A city full of entertainment and theater and sex work

and burlesque and vice. very open city. I mean it's where you get that shit today. Every hipster in the world moves to fucking Berlin, that's not new. But the last painting on a look at it in this exhibition is called Evening Over Potsdam, painted by Lotte Latter-Lasserstein. Gotta point out, this is the only painting that I'm speaking about here that was painted by a woman because, as but all fucking art exhibitions, women aren't represented, not represented today and not represented at the time for a woman to paint.

Women were just excluded from this shit. Okay, and there were women artists, but they weren't getting shown in galleries. So ingrained in this whole thing is that misogyny. You know what I mean? So we do have a painting here by a woman called Lottie Lazerstein. This is a highly realistic painting. So if you were here in this exhibition

and painting isn't your thing, you're going to stare at this for a long time and marvel at how brilliant it is. It's just a very well-brightly excellent. painting but what makes it fantastic is that this is called new objectivity that's the that's the movement that this is this painting is like the writing of Ernest Hemingway yes it's this is a realistic painting it's a bunch of young people it evokes fucking the famous oh god why can't I remember I can think I

can speak about all these fucking paintings but I can't remember one of the most famous paintings in the word you know the Last Supper You know the fucking Last Supper. Is that a Da Vinci painting? Is that Leonardo da Vinci? But you know what I'm talking about. The fucking Last Supper. One of the most famous paintings of the world,

Christ giving out bread doll as pals. This painting evokes that. It's a bunch of young people on a fucking balcony. The German city behind them. On the table is beer, pears, bread, a knife. There's a German shepherd there on the ground. Also, everyone looks unbelievably sad and worried. They're burdened by something great.

The thing they're burdened by is the economic collapse of Germany. The economic collapse of Germany and the rise of fascism. Something bad is about to happen and it's not fucking good. And that's what this painting is. And the beauty of it is, it's very skillfully painted. It's very, it's this, it's pre-Soviet, but it's very Soviet. It looks like Soviet realism. It has the depth of emotion.

depth of emotion that expressionism has. This is a painting about worry. This is a painting about worry. There's one girl right in the middle, and she is where Jesus is. Like, this is deliberately evoking the Last Supper, for real, that this, I can tell by the way the tablecloth is painted, this is evoking the last supper.

See, if a woman in the middle wearing a yellow tank top with a seriously worried looking for, face and she's looking off into the distance and something is fucking looming and then there's a lad beside who's looking off into the distance everyone's looking in different directions there's one lady in black on the far left and she's looking off into the city then on the far right there you've got someone pouring a bit of milk she's the only person who's doing something because everyone else is worried even the poor old german shepherd there on the ground and this is a beautiful painting I don't think this painting was as important as it was at the time.

Um, 1930, so the Nazis were a thing, but they would have been, by 1930 they would have been quite fringe, wasn't looking serious yet, the Great Depression is about to happen economically. I think this is a painting that has retrospective value. Everything that we now know has happened since, especially the outbreak of world, of our tour fascism and Nazism. You can now look back at this painting and go, fucking hell, this person had their finger on the pulse. Apologies for all those beeps, lads,

what's happening is it's a Sunday. So there's people coming to galleries who don't usually come to galleries. And if you get too close to a painting, that noise goes off. So I'm now exiting the gallery. I hope I'm able to use that recording and I wasn't just annoyingly loud.

There was a lot of background noise there. There was even a fucking tour. But the thing is with me and being in a space where I'm completely locked in. I'm not autistic when I'm in an art gallery. When I'm in an art gallery, I could be surrounded by, I was surrounded by a lot of people. Don't give a fuck. Don't give a fuck because I'm like a laser beam. And the paintings and thinking.

And I'm in my own little world. and I may not have noticed how much noise was there in the background so hopefully the recording is usable that exhibition was ideal well was it ideological it's an exhibition

it's about Germany asking questions about what Germany is it's fucking complicated history whether it be the fucking World War I whether it be the Nazis whether it be the segregation of East and West there's a lot of

warnings throughout the exhibition about fascism. Where it falls on its fucking face though is, you've got all this shit about the horrors of what once was. The horrors of how did this happen? How did we become fascist? How did Hitler come to power? It means fuck all. It means fuck all right now.

When there's an ongoing genocide, when you have the German police, arresting people for protesting. When you have them framing, protesting against what the UN calls a genocide, framing that is anti-Semitic. The German head is stuck up its arse. And that's what that exhibition is about.

I couldn't feel shit inside there. How am I supposed to rub my chin and look at the dangers of looming fascism when it's happening right now? When you have people like the Ulm 5 who are facing fucking jail for smashing up a couple of drones or a printer or something

don't even think they got to the drones just vandalism there's a car there in front of me if I decide to go kicking that am I a terrorist am I so with this podcast I don't know if I'll even put it out I'm not sure but I'd rather make use of my time

when I'm here I want to keep it fucking experimental I want to keep changing things I'm not gonna not record the podcast in the gallery because I'm afraid it won't work. I'm going to record it and see if it does work. I'm also testing a new mic. I got a new wireless microphone

and I quite like the sound of it, even though it's not stereo. But it does a nice little job. It captures the environment. Not a stereo environment, but it does capture the environment. Sometimes with my other podcasts that I've done outside where I've got a stereo signal left and right

that throws people off a bit very realistic sounds of cars approaching and shit in stereo can create a sense of depth you don't want that because I've got people going for walks listening in cities and then imagining that a car is about to hit them you're not going to get that when it's a mono I'd love to make art documentaries

I really would enjoy that but they don't give art documentaries to people who wear plastic bags on their heads. I've tried. And the reason they don't is the way that fine art needs to exist alongside solemnity. Very interesting bell.

Sounds like a large metal bird. I'm just thinking of that Hitler Eagle. Can't go roaring that cunt's name around the streets of Berlin, can you? I'd love to make an art documentary, but they don't give art documentaries to people who wear plastic bags on their heads. Because the thing is, with fine art, Which I adore. Oh, is that a building full of fucking butterholes, is it?

Is that a building bull of fucking bullet holes? Look at that. Fuck me. I'll have to find out about that later now. I don't know where the fuck I am. I'm at the side of the Nye Museum where I just was. They've stopped mowing the borders between streets. They're letting everything go wild, which is great.

Yeah, that's a building full of fucking butterholes. Someone had a grand owl hop at that building. World War II shit. Looks like a teenager's face. Fuck me. It's at the side of another fucking art museum here, and this art museum is full of older paintings, Renaissance, shit like that.

I didn't want to do that this time. Have a crack at the modern art. It's more challenging. It's more challenging. Yeah, they don't give art documentaries to people who are plastic bags in their heads because fine art is very serious and very solemn. which is part of the bollocks and part of the bullshit of it.

I like democratising things. I want to walk into a gallery of expressionist paintings and speak about them in a way that anybody can understand and let you know these have value, these are important. But you don't need to have a fucking PhD to understand what's going on.

Art is obfuscated. Fine art is often obfuscated in unnecessarily verbose language and it's a way to keep people out and if you've got a painting in the wall and someone just fucked a tin of paint at a canvas if you can use big enough words

you can make it feel like magic and a lot of that shit exists just to support capitalism because quite a lot of fine art like I said you're staring at investments you're staring at the investment property of a multi-millionaire. It's a way to...

Not launder money is the wrong word, but there's a return on investment when it comes to fine art if someone can afford that type of shit. Listen here, you droopy, hool-ahens. I think that's all we have time for this week. I've been promising you an art gallery tour. For eight years, I'd say, and I haven't done it.

I don't know if you like this or not, but I'm going up my gut I'd rather do something new that challenges me that's a bit rougher on the edges than not do it because I was scared it wouldn't succeed sometimes you just gotta wear the hiking boats

with the swimming shorts lads I catch you next week with a hot take in the meantime rub a dog genuflect to a swan wink at a warm say a prayer for a badger dog bless

that woman thinks I'm blowing kisses at her no I wasn't.