The Berlin Wall in Los Angeles. Image copyright 2016 by Anna Boudinot
Where is the longest segment of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany? LA!
If you’ve ever been to LACMA you have probably either posed for selfies against the backdrop of “Urban Light” by Chris Burden or you have rolled your eyes at those posing for selfies there. Either way, you were probably too preoccupied with the symmetrical rows of artfully-placed streetlights to glance across Wilshire Boulevard and wonder why a chunky concrete wall covered in graffiti was sitting in front of a nondescript office building. That concrete is a none other than the Berlin Wall.
When the Wall came down in 1989 I was a child. I was too young to understand that Berlin and all of Germany had been divided for forty years and that people had died trying to escape from the Communist East to the Democratic West. I had not yet been born when John F. Kennedy famously declared “Ich Bin ein Berliner” and denounced Communism. I was too little to understand what Ronald Reagan meant when he demanded, ''Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' What I do remember is watching the news footage of jubilant East German throngs breaking through the wall with sledgehammers and pickaxes and celebrating with the West Germans greeting them on the other side.
Work by Herkakut (left) at Retna on the East German side of the wall. Photo copyright 2016 by Anna Boudinot
I watched that footage again when doing research for this blog post, and found myself trying to imagine what it would be like to be trapped behind a wall with my loved ones on the other side. We live in an era where those kinds of walls are not entirely in our past.
In 2009, the Wende Museum of the Cold War arranged for a 40-foot portion of the Berlin Wall to be brought to Los Angeles. The ten-panel concrete segment was installed in front of 5900 Wilshire along with a temporary foam wall that had been erected across Wilshire Boulevard. Both walls were covered with paintings by established and emerging artists as part of the Wende’s “Wall Project.”
The foam wall was decorated by artists including Shepard Fairey, Jennifer Puno, Junichi Tsuneoka, and Vyal, many of whom were inspired by other divided regions such as North and South Korea and the US-Mexico border. On November 9, 2009, the twenty-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Wende Museum founder Justinian Jampol declared to a jubilant crowd that the project was intended to “reflect the diversity of discourse in Berlin and indeed, throughout the entire world, all influenced by the fall of a wall.” Both walls were unveiled and the foam wall was pulled down in celebration.
Looking at the concrete wall on Wilshire today, some of its historical references are more obvious than others. Kent Twitchell, a Los Angeles artist known for portraits, depicted Kennedy and Reagan in a single section of the wall and Nelson Mandela on another. The bright orange face by Thierry Noir is more than just cheerful decoration: Noir was one of the very first muralists to paint on the Wall in Berlin. He “painted the wall to show people it was a mythical entity that would not exist forever,” and even developed a style called “fast form manifest” that allowed him to paint quickly before being noticed by guards. Some of the original graffiti from Berlin remains on the Wilshire-facing portion of the wall as well.
D*Face’s contribution to the Berlin Wall art. Photo copyright 2016 by Anna Boudinot
In 2011, prominent street artists Retna, D*Face, and Herakut were invited to use the wall as a canvas too. They painted murals on the portion of the wall that faces the building, which also happens to be the side that had been facing the East German “death strip” and had never been painted before. D*Face painted a figure that looked to be the love child of Captain America and Skeletor, shown bursting through the wall with fast food restaurants behind him. Retna deployed his usual mesmerizing hieroglyphics in black and gold on a bright red background. Herakut, a duo of German painters, created a compelling image of pregnant women who twirl around each other in an almost-yin yang formation. Another panel by Herakut shows a little boy in a military school uniform with the caption “We are all just kids, right?”
Conversations – and in many cases, arguments – about walls have been a common theme in this year’s political discourse, with both sides impassioned by their fears. One side fears a country without walls, one side fears a country with walls. No matter which side you are on, it’s a poignant exercise to visit the wall on a quiet afternoon, stand before it, and envision a wall like that dividing your own hometown. This particular wall now radiates vibrantly with beautiful art, but the art cannot hide the crushing magnitude of the wall’s original purpose.
While in the neighborhood, visit LACMA, The Petersen Museum, and/or the LaBrea Tar Pits.