Tucked away in a tiny room, space N08, or what Michael Robbins would call 'a harbouring space' the Beckmans, Max Beckman painter, and deep inside Mies's National Gallery, you will gaze at them and then hurry to the cafe and the toilet. Mies's National Gallery Berlin is the only building I know that makes you want to shit yourself, both Julie and I felt the same bowel convulsion, and then you sit on the toilet in your stall, and realize you are staring at a 1" tile grid, everything perfect. This building is the architectural equivalent of the inquisition.
And of course it's deeply unpopular. People want more happening things than this these days, they want architainment in the Sony Centre, but they should realise that this building is anti-happening, even the security guards pace around like polar bears in the zoo, it drives them crazy too.
And in the cafe, where I always take my sacrament, you will stare at yourself in the carefully placed mirrors and stare at the other two people in there trying desperately to divert themselves from this abyss by fiddling with their mobile phones, I just notice the double doors close precisely ON THE GRID. It drives me crazy. They look like Beckman's themselves that couple, how uncanny, Beckman was bloody good, and that little room of Beckmans in the National Gallery Berlin is the best chapel I could imagine, just look at that dog. And they're in the 20th century's cathedral, with the only sound the air conditioning.
Fucking hell, no image can do this building justice in it's total subjugation to the art of fact.
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