“I just love the grey”
Interesting art, quiet and you can ride a bike: Why to Cora Cohen the city of Cologne feels like her second home
Manfred Engeser: Cora, do you like Kölsch?
Cora Cohen: The beer that’s brewed in Cologne? Oh yes. Although I’m not a passionate beer drinker, I like the taste of Kölsch. It is refreshing and not too malty. But the local beer of course is not the first thing that comes into my mind when I think of Cologne.
ME: What then?
CC: Cologne is sweet, quiet, and you can ride a bike.
ME: Being serious? If you ask people from Cologne about the city‘s image and daily life here, rather the opposite would be the result – dirty, loud, and a car first traffic policy.
CC: Maybe – but at least the drivers stop when you try to cross a street on a crosswalk. Different from Berlin, for example, which I experienced as a much rougher place. I spent only a few weeks there to install a show and the harshness of the city and its people reminded me of New York. I preferred Cologne right away.
ME: Do you remember your first visit?
CC: Yes. It must have been sometime in the Mid Eighties. I had met a young woman from Cologne, a friend of my then boyfriend in New York. She was an architect, as were her parents. We became friends quickly and she invited me to visit her in Cologne and stay with her. I was comfortable with her and liked her. And it was an opportunity for
ME: I was interested in visiting Germany, I guess because it was so important culturally in relation to art of the past, and because in contemporary art, especially painting, there seemed a freedom and licence to be and do whatever one wanted, like Polke, Richter – painting on records and photographs. They seemed to proffer an anti-formalist approach.
ME: What was your first impression of Cologne?
CC: I didn’t expect too much but I just liked Cologne right away. Somehow, it reminded me of Paris.
ME: Cologne, as beautiful as Paris?
CC: Not beautiful of course. But I loved Cologne’s contemporary style and still do. Cologne has a kind of delicacy I discover in the visual aesthetics of the streets or the things that are shown in the shops. It’s not conventionally beautiful as the city was rebuilt very fast after the war. But if you look at people’s window boxes it’s the effort everyone is investing that makes it beautiful to me. Cologne offers you an opening to make something – anything. It is basic, plain, unembellished, neutral. You can keep everything simple there. It is possible to manage your daily life, even as an older person – walking, shopping, medicine, at least compared to New York. Although my sense of orientation is not good, I manage to explore Cologne by bus and subway or walking. I love Cologne’s Rhine based character instead of the grid-based structure of New York, with its noise, the mess of the subways. I just love the grey of Cologne. That it’s not sunny – because I don’t like the sun. I prefer a damp misty climate. It might sound weird but being in Cologne is good for my mental health. I really miss it when I can’t come.
ME: When you came to Cologne in the Eighties, was it your first visit to Germany at all?
CC: To Germany? Yes. In the Fifties, when I was a child, I travelled to England, France and Italy with my parents. But although my parents were very much involved with music whose global history as is well known and is very much influenced by Germans, my father refused to visit the country – because of the war.
ME: Easily comprehensible in relation to the Jewish background of both your father’s and your mother’s family. Could you relate to your father’s thoughts and feelings against a visit to Germany?
CC: To be honest: no. I didn’t feel my father’s idea. Maybe I was too naive or even stupid, or simply just young, uneducated – or another generation – but to me it didn’t feel like anyone had persecuted me. Also you must realize – so far as I knew – neither of my grandparents nor any other relatives were from Germany. There were none in my family so far as I knew, who had been rounded up in the Holocaust. Of course I knew about all the horror that had happened. But when I came to Germany, to me, that was then and I was here living now. The big deal I knew about, so far as the persecution of Jews, was the pogroms in Eastern Europe.
ME: In the Seventies and also the Eighties, New York and Cologne were supposed to be the two hotspots for contemporary art worldwide. No wonder you wanted to come.
CC: Without the art I wouldn’t have come. Initially I went because I knew Germany was a major player so far as post-WWII contemporary art. I wanted to see the work of Wols and Fautrier or European Abstraction in general which was not possible in the States. I came to visit all these wonderful places not only in or nearby Cologne, but all over Germany: Not necessarily established institutions like Cologne’s Museum Ludwig, but wonderful small museums dedicated to one single artist, like the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl. And then there’s a place like Insel Hombroich, that former NATO base between Dusseldorf and Cologne. A weird location that I visited early in my years of going to Cologne. I eventually had the opportunity to work there in 2011. I was provided with a studio in a former hangar on this small island. I lived and slept there for two months, during a rather cold summer. I could even use what they were growing in their garden. I was talking to the gardener a lot, but generally I was there on my own. Working, walking around or cruising on a bike I could use. A great experience in an amazing place. Everything seemed part of nature even though it was ostensibly culture, a cultivated wilderness in the middle of nowhere. There were buildings one could visit that had great art. I was most interested in Fautrier, and seeing art without doors, locks, and people. This all together seemed to show how Germany in general and particularly the Cologne/Düsseldorf region values the field of art: People like their art there. And I like that reinforcement, the seriousness of people, their quiet determination that is not too aggressive. More than other places in Germany Cologne is acceptable and accepting at the same time. And this is an attitude that you don’t find in America. Not even in New York.
ME: Do you really see Cologne on eye height with New York City in terms of art?
CC: With its museums and galleries, of course New York has a lot to offer. But on the other hand, I often experienced people in Cologne generally much more open and interested in art: Once I was carrying a painting across a parking lot somewhere in Cologne to put it into a car of a friend. And suddenly a stranger started talking to me and asked me to have a look at this painting – no one would do that in the States. It’s a more visual culture in Germany. Even the resolution of the TV is better than in the States. And I liked Cologne because it called to mind Cambridge, Massachusetts.
ME: Cambridge? That’s even more in need of explanation than Paris.
CC: I had spent some time there – the home of Harvard and also MIT. To me Cologne seemed like a sort of very elitist world but for art: a nice, quiet place with art high up in the hierarchy. The museums, of course, but also people like that Father Mennekes, the Catholic priest who showed art in his church. I met him at openings and talked to him a lot. I really wanted to understand things here.
ME: Apart from Father Mennekes, how did you get your foot into the Cologne art scene?
CC: I never did. I guess a lot of what I liked about Cologne was that there were not a lot of people trying to get their foot in the door. (Or maybe I was naive and oblivious and a dumb American.) I mean, it seemed as if there was stasis. I did not know if I could fit in at all. I’ve usually been a sort of loner, not part of any group yet not ostracized. Through friends I got to know other artists, and also met gallerists and collectors who eventually became involved with my work and bought some paintings. It’s always interesting when you come in from the outside, when you’re not part of the established situation. I found it interesting – it opened up the opportunity to discard my way of behaving. In Cologne I took the chance to take on the persona of the friendly American and engage with people. On the one hand it was also that being in Germany, I felt my Americanness. And I came to understand some of the positive things about being American. On the other hand, I expanded my sense of self which was fun. For example, that I could be friendly. Something today one would call a growth experience.
ME: Was learning German also part of your growth experience?
CC: I did learn a bit, at first, and the idea is still in my mind, but it’s a difficult language – and many Germans love speaking English. I can understand more than I can speak. Over time, I cut back my ambition. Now rather than aspiring to read Walter Benjamin in German, I hope to get along in restaurants and generally try to improve my German so I can have a conversation with people on the street. It’s a sign of respect. And it helps me to discover even more interesting spots of the city.
ME: Which are your favorite places in Cologne?
CC: There are many places I like: the tacky corners at the train station, the galleries in the North, the elitist character of the Belgian quarter but also the hominess of the Southern districts, with its old hippies. When I first came and was younger, I thought if I died and went to heaven that’s what it would look like – the Südstadt. And there are other parts with an ethnically very diverse population which made me feel like home. I simply was falling in love with this city. Cologne began to feel like my second home.
ME: How does Cologne inspire and influence your work?
CC: To be honest, to me Cologne isn’t a really inspiring place – at least not visually. But it has a certain neutrality other cities in Germany don’t have. And this neutrality allowed me to change and grow. In Cologne it doesn’t feel like you have to conform. I appreciate that – and in that sense Cologne inspiring. Maybe similar to Queens a neighborhood much cheaper and with less pressure compared to Manhattan or Brooklyn, or Philadelphia when you compare it to New York or Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both in Queens and Philadelphia the atmosphere is not all packed or striving, you don’t have to live up to anything. In that sense also in Cologne anything is possible. It’s not as rough as Berlin and less regimented than Munich where every single square meter seems to have a purpose. Cologne doesn’t feel like that. It is still an open, relaxed, rather low pressure environment, a little sleepy even, with a lot of room for other things. I’m definitely rather a city rather than a countryside person. Cologne is a city, but still small and manageable, it does privilege art, and, still, it is culturally, totally different for me compared to New York. I used to take a lot of photographs here in Cologne. With the pandemic I feel very constrained. But I will come back.