Barbara Welzel
Visual notes of a city walker
Matthias Beckmann´s drawings
Let us simply give it a try. Let us stroll the Hellweg in Dortmund as a flaneur – as a city walker with a wandering, inquisitive view, to search for the sound of this city, the stories it tells, the pictures it has in store for the observer. The flaneurs had emigrated. Their laboratories, the metropolises of the beginning 20th century, have gone down in the middle of the extreme century. The completely changed cities after the Second World War, after the expulsion of the Jews and the un-mixing of cultural diversity, after the destructions of war, after a reconstruction that has put, at least in the old Federal Republic, numerous faceless pedestrian areas in the place of pulsating life, they were no place for flaneurs, for the storytellers of urban life.
It is only in recent years that there are new flaneurs, that citywalkers roam the cities again. They do not follow touristic paths, they do not pursue sightseeing, are not out on business and do not rush to an appointment. They slow down their steps, for instance when Matthias Beckmann does not produce the camera but collects impressions with paper and pen. In his visual notes he takes us along on just a few square metres of the Hellweg: the shopping area with the chairs of a street café that look marooned, with the giant publicity ice-cream wafer. The display window of the arms shop, the department store decoration for the end of season sale, the mannequins in lingerie, the non-places of the city with the overflowing rubbish bins, the market stalls and the jacked-up car for a lottery, the Curry and French Fries Stand in front of the windows of St. Petri Church.
And on entering the church Matthias Beckmann keeps exactly this way of looking: for the duration of the renovation works on the underfloor heating the pulpit is wrapped in plastic sheet, there is work being done on the lamps and cables stick out from openings in the floor. For quite some time the monumental wood-carved altar „GoldenesWunder“ (Golden Wonder) – since 1521 one of the most important works of art in the former Hanse city Dortmund – is being climatically protected by a provisional partition. From the scaffolding Beckmann makes drawings of the sculptures, flaneurlike views into the relief boxes of the medieval treasure. These casual and also undiscriminating views may be unexpected, but in his own way Beckmann brings the altar work back into the city.
Barbara Welzel
Visual notes of a city walker
Matthias Beckmann´s drawings
Let us simply give it a try. Let us stroll the Hellweg in Dortmund as a flaneur – as a city walker with a wandering, inquisitive view, to search for the sound of this city, the stories it tells, the pictures it has in store for the observer. The flaneurs had emigrated. Their laboratories, the metropolises of the beginning 20thcentury, have gone down in the middle of the extreme century. The completely changed cities after the Second World War, after the expulsion of the Jews and the un-mixing of cultural diversity, after the destructions of war, after a reconstruction that has put, at least in the old Federal Republic, numerous faceless pedestrian areas in the place of pulsating life, they were no place for flaneurs, for the storytellers of urban life.
It is only in recent years that there are new flaneurs, that citywalkers roam the cities again. They do not follow touristic paths, they do not pursue sightseeing, are not out on business and do notrush to an appointment. They slow down their steps, for instance when Matthias Beckmann does not produce the camera but collects impressions with paper and pen. In his visual notes he takes us along on just a few square metres of the Hellweg: the shopping area with the chairs of a street café that look marooned,with the giant publicity ice-cream wafer. The display window of the arms shop, the department store decoration for the end ofseason sale, the mannequins in lingerie, the non-places of the city with the overflowing rubbish bins, the market stalls and the jacked-up car for a lottery, the Curry and French Fries Stand in front of the windows of St. Petri Church.
And on entering the church Matthias Beckmann keeps exactly this way of looking: for the duration of the renovation works on the underfloor heating the pulpit is wrapped in plastic sheet, there is work being done on the lamps and cables stick out from openings in the floor. For quite some time the monumental wood-carved altar „GoldenesWunder“ (Golden Wonder) – since 1521 one of the most important works of art in the former Hanse city Dortmund – is being climatically protected by a provisional partition. From the scaffolding Beckmann makes drawings of the sculptures, flaneurlike views into the relief boxes of the medieval treasure. These casual and also undiscriminating views may be unexpected, but in his own way Beckmann brings the altar work back into the city.