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Berlin Wall Panorama by Yadegar Asisi is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

Extinct Artform

The Daily Pic: With his new, life-size panoramas, Yadegar Asisi shows us worlds that have disappeared.

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(Courtesy Asisi Panorama International)
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We all know that the panorama was one of the great popular art forms of the 19th century, long since extinct – except that this new one, of a city divided, is up in Berlin now and is attracting crowds. It's by the German-Persian artist Yadegar Asisi, and it's just the latest of the several panoramas that he's made, and that have been equally popular. He says he can't keep up with demand. They aren't great art – Asisi's use of photography is a bit klutzy – but they seem to fill some kind of hole in our visual culture. Maybe we still long to sink our eyes into a world that stands still, when the real thing flies by so fast.

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