East Side Gallery

• Post by: bitcamtx
• January 27, 2017
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The Berlin Wall, put up in a single night in 1961, introduced a new and cruel reality: anyone trying to flee to the West risked being shot. The concrete part of the 160-kilometre Berlin Wall ran to 112 kilometres, of which the East Side Gallery is a 1.3-kilometre-long section on the Friedrichshain side of the River Spree. Over 100 artists from all over the world painted images on the Wall in the wake of its declassification, and in a city bursting with graffiti, this stretch is an oddity, being officially sanctioned. A colourful memorial to freedom and the outburst of jubilation of that period, it is fading fast, facing the effects of anything from weather to vandalism, and controversy reigns as to its restoration, with certain artists objecting to copies being painted over their originals. This memorial is a focus for the new tensions that have emerged in the post-Wall era, between ideas of ownership, officialdom and memory.