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| Ⓒ Neue Nationalgalerie, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Reinhard Friedrich, 1968. |
I love Mies. My colleagues may not love Mies, but I love Mies. I love Mies' architecture. The Berlin Museum without a doubt. David, the only other time I had an architectural experience - when I came into Berlin, my soul looked up at the cantilever of the Mies National Museum, the black building made of black steel - was when I was a kid and I went to Italy with Gloria for the first time and we went down to Paestum. When we arrived and saw the Paestum Temples, we looked up and we saw the capital, the column and the lintel, and it was a religious experience. Not too many religious experiences in one's life, and I had two or three of them. But the other one was when I went into Berlin and saw the Berlin Museum at night. There is something about Berlin's air. I want to make this point. To see a black building in the Berlin night, which is blue of the night, the dark blue of the night. The blue of the night is crystal. The air is crystal because Berlin is surrounded by water, Berlin, all kinds of water. So it's a different kind of air that forms an atmosphere which is crystalline, black-blue, you had the black steel that's Berlin.
JOHN HEJDUK in conversation with David Shapiro (1991)