ekphraseis

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Progressive Past, Conservative Present: Surpassing Art Historical Genres in a Late Medieval Book of Hours

by guest contributor Matthias Pfaller The Bedford Book of Hours, illustrated by the most capable artists of Paris of the fifteenth century, is one of the most splendid of late-medieval illuminated ...

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Art and other social media phenomena

Whether I spend too much time on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or contemporary art nowadays deals with, utilizes or simply is social media, I tend to permanently confuse the two. My first thought when looking at an artwork is: would that work on Facebook? (paradoxically, it happens most often when I'm in a museum — withdrawal symptoms, I guess). 

The concern hereby is not necessarily about how many likes a specific work could get, or about it's power as an icon in general, but about how people can imitate it, in an active, creative manner. This not-so-academic behavior struck me first on a visit with my class to the National Gallery of Modern Art in Scotland, where we discussed Douglas Gordon's List of Names on the museum's wall. The intellectual highlight after discussing the topics death, memory, relationships, etc., was of course my contribution: would people post their own lists on Facebook, not using/thereby replacing the network's friend list? Would it work like a challenge for which you nominate other people, to list as many people as possible? And from there, would anybody paint that on a wall? Would Gordon be able to promote this type of work again? 

The general fascination with the Internet is the nostalgia about the analog world. Gordon’s List would, in this context, refer to traditional values like having a good memory, thinking of your friends without push notifications, and writing something with your own hands. A kind of textual equivalent to Instagram’s retro filters. And then it can be shared and implemented into ordinary, networked life. The next step is Richard Prince exhibiting this content in a gallery and making it exclusive art again. 

In fact, there is quite a number of projects out there touching on network culture and its connection to the art world. Laura Pawela’s Reality_LP, for instance, is at the intersection of this mutual influence. The design and structure is appropriated from the computer universe of Microsoft, yet the idea lent itself for countless memes and hence returned to the network with immense creative potential. Kevin Harman’s 1 Pixel Portraits (described here), an app right away, would equally fit into social media, as a sort of add-on to enhance your profile picture, requiring nothing more than a source picture and the code. For this to become viral, however, I assume a certain hype has to precede it, as the ‘product’ reminds me of Basquiat umbrellas and Mondrian Tshirts in museum shops. Still without this exchange, these examples provide ample substance to reflect on them. 

©Laura Pawela

The paranoia induces some statements: Art works like social media. Art is a social medium, with relational aesthetics. Art was swallowed by marketing. Art can go viral. Art must go viral in an attention economy. Conceptualism works best on social media. Imitating conceptual art, making it go viral, increases activity online and deepens the relationship between user and network and network provider. 

The question is this: Can social media phenomena be art? Must there be a difference, or must this difference be overcome? —Indeed the traditional case for art as a meta-reality and means of reflection has become inadequate for works which are more like the thing to reflect on than the embodied reflection. Wochenklausur, for example (though, admittedly, thematically different), define their art thus: “the artist group WochenKlausur develops concrete proposals aimed at small, but nevertheless effective improvements to socio-political deficiencies. Proceeding even further and invariably translating these proposals into action, artistic creativity is no longer seen as a formal act but as an intervention into society.” To draw a line between art and life would be elitist in this respect. However, the intervention, or creation of contact, or the expansion of communication, is always both action and reflection.

The relation between certain artworks and social media phenomena might be so close because memes and apps can be very thought-provoking and influential. The question whether some pieces of art would work online is not as absurd as it sounds for people considering art as a monetary value which just can’t be consumed for free. Maybe memes do better than most art in that they inspire a large group of people in a direct, democratic manner. The downside of this is of course the banality in which they finally end.* As usual, quality decides over handing out the laurels of art, and it is up the artist to make a pop phenomenon last. The benefits are twofold: contemporary communication structures are thematized by artists in a slower and more profound discourse, and at the same time the result is ready to be incorporated into the original source with the relevant and eager audience, instead of remaining in the confined realms of the art world. 

In sum, there is plenty of room for more exchanges between our online vices and offline virtues. 

*whereas websites like knowyourmeme.com could be the Internet’s equivalent to “art history”. 

[johannespfaller]

The future of collecting and the future of portfolio diversification

52 masterworks will be the future of both art collecting and twenty-first century portfolio diversification. 52masterworks.com is a German startup organizing the acquisition of an artwork by a group of people who then hold shares of their common purchase, artworks in this case. It is therefore not really a gallery type platform, since multiple buyers acquire an artwork together. But neither is it a Kunstverein with a philanthropic agenda, since the acquired works will sooner or later be sold again, and, ideally, yield a higher price and hence profit for the temporary collective of collectors.

The startup is described by its founders as a “crowdfunding platform", through which a random group of people "create a unique art collection together with others". This does sound a little philanthropic after all. Moreover, the startup cares for this assortment, storing it and accommodating "the collection in selected national and international exhibitions". Is this a miniature version of a novel mixture of a gallery with a kunsthalle and a public collection? Is this a new form of how to deal with the art phenomenon in 2015? The startup hopes to make it possible for everybody to buy art, in case not everybody happens to be a millionaire with the adequate budget to fund his very own collection. Since the average art collector of the lower class does not have the time to keep track of the art world’s insanely fast pace, 52masterworks have their own curatorial department and a jury who decide what to offer to their clients. Currently, the focus is on “Urban Art, Pop Art, Contemporary”, which should cater to a broad target group in the early phases of the project. A quick look at the current works reveals a leaning toward colorful and flashy works, although an Ullmann and a Baselitz account for the necessary respectability and legitimacy of the selection. The Banksy picture has already convinced a group of buyers, it was purchased for 17.500€. If this will form a coherent collection is open, though, as well as the possibility to cooperate with relevant museums which would naturally look out for something that they do not yet have in their own collection. Most likely, the crowd- “funding” part of the project will prove most beneficial. As with the works by Christian Muscheid, the artist will only start realizing his project when enough supporters get together and provide the necessary funds - a commission so to speak, a reliable source of income for the artist.

The public display of the works is further complicated by the option for buyers to take the work home for a period of time if they acquire big enough a share. Pragmatically speaking, it will be difficult for the curators of the startup to plan with a collection that is subject to the will of a number of lenders. It is also worth considering the expectations of how long a work will be held by the collective before it is sold again. The startup indicates 3-5 years, with updates on the price trend after one year. The latter is an important date, only after 12 months is the profit of a sale tax free in Germany. The only remaining problem will be for the collective to find an agreement on when to cash in. In that regard, the rosy idea of building up a thematically coherent art collection is overshadowed by the short-term financial concerns of hobby art collectors.

Thinking about the theory of this endeavor, it might well be worth a try to make the gamble available to everybody (and by everybody we mean the middle class). It might indeed be the case that the artwork stands out for what it is if the buyers become anonymous due to their sheer number. However, since the startup was conceived as a mostly economical enterprise, it is hard to believe that the curatorial section can be dominant enough to make the collection meaningful. The important art collections in the world were created with a clear vision and incredible stamina. Advertising art as an investment and praising its non-financial value is simply incompatible if either one is supposed to be done right. The initiative will surely serve more than a niche, if it can be successful on a bigger scale is debatable. The same accounts for the profit margins: probably still better than for conventional middle-class investment types and safer than speculation in shares, but it’s certainly no Swiss army knife. However, this thinking is speculative as well; the ideal case would be dedicated hobby collectors with the courage to invest in art beyond “mass” taste, and a lot of these. If the administrative effort for every single purchase does not burden the collecting as a whole, indeed a number of artworks could be brought together, or created at all, and then exhibited, which would add to the art scene after all.  

[johannespfaller]

Artworks and their homes

Walk into an older museum, the ones with the moulding on the ceilings and the red wall covering, and you feel like you visit your fellows of the nobility. These museums, after all, were designed to match the environment in which the art they show would naturally appear. The avant garde with their revolutionary approach to art disturbed that tradition for a while, but that only meant that modern homes were eventually designed to look like whitecubes. The cosmic connection between artworks and their owners’ homes just can’t be broken up; if anything, the artwork will be put into the garden.

This is why I was excited to see a “baroque” hanging of Warhol works at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. The display simply does justice to the art — why so serious and hang them one by one, with 10 meters of empty space between them? The density of this display chimes with the playfulness of the works and with the sheer quantity they were intended to be produced (and sold). It looks like the room of a 14-year-old teenager, the walls plastered all over with posters of celebrities and objects of desire. The social critique that these works were said to express is reversed into what it actually is, icons of society. The hanging is more revealing than any essay on it, since it presents the artworks in their natural habitat and not isolated in the petri dish of art criticism.

Raumaufnahme EG Saal 0.5 Foto: H. Koyupinar © The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York        Sammlung Udo und Anette Brandhorst | Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Museum Brandhorst München

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Whose art is it?

A few weeks ago I discussed funding for museums with my colleague over a bowl of excellent Mexican food and champaign. Not a good topic for a relaxed evening, but somewhat nearby given that the evening was paid for by the museum. Our opposing positions were these: one the one side, we have public funding for cultural institutions in Europe, with the result that culture is chronically underfunded and second rank behind economic and science issues. On the other side, we have a sophisticated donor structure in the US with a lot of flexibility for museums. As the crisis has shown, state budgets shrink while private wealth persists (and grows). 

The question, however, is whose art it is that on display in our museums. Exclusively state funded museums (although this has become rare) could claim their collection is the people's collection, hence no need to add a label "acquired with the help of the XY Fund for Art". Museums depending heavily on donations on the part of wealthy philanthropists, do need to advertise their supporters in any circumstance, be it the gallery wall, the catalogue, the label, or particularly emphasized, in oral announcements. Museums, John Berger says, are rich peoples' living rooms to where we are admitted during special opening hours. The label revealing the overly generous person whose incredible wealth bought the piece makes absolutely clear that it is not the general people's property they are looking at and admire. The elite and their companies donate art to do us good, which in their logic means that the populace should marvel at what they themselves could never own in reality, but be left in the hope they could if only they got to exploit the masses to the same extent. CUNY-Professor David Joselit sums it up:

"For upper-class elites, museums justify accumulation as democratic; for large general audiences, the museum makes wealth fascinating, and hence culturally legitimate. It is no wonder that, in an era when the division between rich and poor has never been greater worldwide, museums are proliferating wildly." After Art (Princeton University Press, 2012)

If anything, we should not be ungrateful for something we apparently receive as a gift. Yet private funding for state duties does not work; it will always be partial and biased. If we let companies extract wealth from the public system because of generous laws and expect them to give back to the public, but in their own terms, we should not be surprised that companies decide to do so only to their benefit. What about letting them give back in form of taxes, which could be divided homogeneously between different public tasks, decrease the wealth gap and make art honestly belonging to the public?

In the end, the champaign tasted just like any other champaign, but it did not take away the thought that it was paid by somebody way superior in our society, somebody for whose prestige we are working while hoping the monthly donation to our bank account will still be there next year.  

[johannespfaller]

It's Paper

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, next to presumably all other European institutions, commemorates the beginning of the First World War with an exhibition, showing portraits by soldiers and politicians making Scottish and British history (at first it seemed strange to just look at peacefully posing people when the topic is war, but after leaving the building I remembered: it’s a portrait gallery). The exhibition was extended by a room of photographs by Peter Cattrell of French and Belgian battlefields, taken between 1996 and 2000 (and not depicting people at all). To be honest, at first I was unaware that Peter Cattrell is a contemporary artist — his black and white pictures merge with the century-old material of the other room, and the ‘only hint’ is that Cattrell’s great uncle fought in the war, an information safely packed in the middle of a small board (the picture below shows the first view you get). However, the display of works showing the lasting effect of the War perfectly illustrates the exhibition’s goal, and makes the Portrait Gallery once more a place for photography lovers. 

The second reason for confusion about the age of Cattrell’s work is that his prints were not necessarily produced right after he took the picture, at least the info tags only indicate the print date, not the date Cattrell actually went there. This makes the exhibition an honest comment on how we should treat and exhibit photography. Is the photograph in museums the unique print, the auratic paper object that must be protected against its ephemerality ? — or is the photograph the content of the picture, and the print merely a means to present it ? This discussion is an established one, especially in regards to the advance of digital photography, and I personally find Boris Groys’s and Peter Osborne’s thoughts on this particularly fruitful, considering the concrete realisation of photography, whether on paper, screen or other, as it is, as a possibility, not the end (Osborne: “The identification of the process (photography) with a particular quality of experience (the photographic image) is summed up in the ideal objecthood of the photograph.” - go try to find the ideal!). 

The picture below is how one usually encounters photography, neatly framed, passepartout optional, boring arrangement. The prints were almost all made in 2000, very close to the date Cattrell travelled to France.

The the next picture features a print which was made in 2014 and mounted on a board without a frame and standing out from the red wall. The image thus hovers in the air, closer to the viewer, less fixed and therefore less appropriated by the exhibition. This looks slightly less rigid and auratic since approachable, and thereby does not conceal the nature of this print: it is not unique, it is not forbidden to approach a picture, and it is certainly not about the frame. The artist made this print this year, and he can make another one next year, and he can hang three prints of the same negative next to each other, and we always have the picture in front of us, but proven that it’s materiality is just a possibility, and it can well be different, with another effect, but always revolving around the initial image. 

The third picture is a detail of the previous one, showing the corner of the board with its fringed edge, and we see, maybe the next mounting could yield a softer edge. Yet we also see that the picture exists physically, and that we could feel it, it is touchable and not behind an invisible barrier forbidding us to interact with it. The image is not holy, art is not unreachable for the poor souls who cannot call themselves artists. The only barrier keeping everybody from touching everything exists for the sake of conservation, and necessary for what would otherwise be lost for future generations. For a print which can be remade infinite times, though, it can well be an inch closer to us, freed from borders of black plastic. 

I apologise for the bad image quality; taking photographs - for whatever reason, in 2014 - was forbidden and made me take the pictures fast and shakily. 

For the discussion on the photo’s ontology see: 

Groys, Boris. Art Power. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008.

Osborne, Peter. Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art. London ; New York: Verso, 2013. Quote on p. 124.

PS: thinking about it once more, this leads me to the conclusion that when talking about photographs, itd be helpful to always indicate the date of the creation and the date of the print - looking more into museum practice and the history of photography, it seems fruitful to specify this for the sake of clarity, and to find out whether we are interested in the photo because of its mere age, it's technique, its actualization, or content

.

[johannespfaller]

#myRembrandt - Likes and Tweets for the Revolution of the (German) Museum

The Alte Pinakothek in Munich is going to be renovated over the course of 4 years. In 2014, the first section of the museum will be closed, and with it the possibility to have a look at Rembrandt's Selfie. This is why 7 reproductions will be sent on vacation with people otherwise visiting the museum. Instead of going to Munich, they can have the picture with them anywhere they go, and tweet and post and share and like online. Over the summer, Rembrandt's best adventures will be collected at storify.com/Pinakotheken/myrembrandt. 

Besides all strategic PR, the result of the project is of long term interest for the Pinakothek, and it is no minor interest indeed. As Kulturkonsorten Munich ("a network for art, culture, science and communication in the digital") write: "We want to demonstrate that the digital can be more than the scanned picture on a website." To underpin their ambitious vision, they actually managed to send Rembrandt to the International Space Station ISS — among all museum-related social media campaigns, this might be the most far-reaching. The museum, accordingly, is no longer the synonym for its building, but a communication and knowledge structure. It is also no longer an attribute for the conservative bourgeoisie, but reaching out to everybody (with a smartphone). The institution stops to be the endpoint of things. "Rather, the digital space will be used to extend the mediation, communication, and indeed the presentation," as Holger Simon, one of Germany's 'digital brains,' states. Moreover, computers and the network  become the fundamental technology not only for private and commercial activity, but for a society's basic needs, too, as Simon goes on: "It is not primarily about the commodification of projects and products, but about  guaranteeing a sustainable provision of culture." In Germany's traditional art scene especially, this constitutes an enormous shift, which, however, is greatly supported by leading heads of the field. Hubertus Kohle, art history professor at LMU Munich, summarizes the trend: "Who reduplicates himself in the digital survives, who refuses will be disposed." Theory and practice, it seems, flirt intensely. So what in particular does #myRembrandt do in this regard?

I had the chance to take the framed copy with me around Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester, and I posted pictures with it in front of the typical sights and more on Twitter. In between the tours, it was on my desk, immensely improving the intellectual atmosphere. My tweets were immediately retweeted by the Pinakothek and favorited by #myRembrandt-Fans. Also, I tagged the Twitter-accounts of the museums I went to, connecting online, for example, the Munich Rembrandt with the Edinburgh one:

(Rembrandt meets Rembrandt. Copy and original - who would mind. The museum invigilator even wanted to trade with my friend and colleague Kate Mothes.)

Yet also other connections seemed worth pursuing, thus bringing together different styles and epochs:

(Scottish painter Callum Innes was in for hanging it on the wall of his studio.)

In this instance, one copy caused already more traffic on- and (especially) offline than the original in the museum had for some time. But it does not even have to be a physical copy, as the digital one on the ISS shows. Furthermore, the museum was not the destination, but the inducement for the audience to become active 'users.'

In times of severe budget cuts for the arts, it is extremely important for museums to be perceived by the audience as necessary and useful (and to reap some free labour, en passant). The museum becomes obsolete when the people it is made for do not see what they have. Yet in all interactivity and visibility, the question is whether the artworks in the institutional context consist solely of likes and tweets, gaining their meaning from being shared. Concretely, is Rembrandt more than the length of its #myRembrandt tweet wall? Is it more than the self-reflective play of art historians and culture managers? Does the digital museum, to date operating with database-like websites and Facebook, extend the function of art (if there is one), and how does contemporary art respond to and benefit from that?

The increasing interest in everything digital produces a myriad of new questions, answers and works every day, probably proving me wrong and giving one hundred contradicting explanations. Nevertheless, regarding MY #myRembrandt, I think that it tests the limits, expands what is possible today (not in theory), and prepares the museum itself and its audience for a new understanding of its function — which is indeed highly self-reflective, exactly what Kulturkonsorten try to achieve, and in all respects the most urgent task in the short time frame before we must the 'digital' to our fullest benefit anyway in order to "survive."

[johannespfaller]

Show It All

Staying a bit with exhibition design, but relocating from Italy to Poland, I want to mention the National Museum in Warsaw in a short note. The museum block boasts with an exquisite collection, which seems to be on display in its entirety. This might be interesting for everyone who wondered how it would look like if these museums actually filled all the space on their walls instead of hanging one picture every 10 meters. The result is less strict in appearance, but in the sense that it looks more like an attic or basement or in museum terms, like a depot. Which is probably why they made an app for the modern art wing with a detailed plan and a visiting route, in case a visitor gets lost or a visual overkill. On the other hand, it shows the simple materiality of art, actually the museum's aim in the medieval art wing with their magnificent sculptures. And since it didn't feel to harm the experience of the artwork too much (at least for me), this exhibition design has definitely some legitimation.

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The dictate of the creative

Not having gone into the Scientology building in Edinburgh in the end, I have to link to this article of the Guardian to give you some insights to the whole thing. Nevertheless, the sign says enough (and should, standing outside on the street as the only thing to attract passers-by).

Whatever you may say during the test (even if honest or not), the sign has it all sorted out right from the beginning. Judging from the guardian experience, the aim is probably to find your weak spots that Dianetics obviously can improve. The curly style of the word "Personality" on the sign, then, embodies the overarching quality: creativity. This might not be in accordance to what most people think of this bunch of believers, but even Scientology can not resist the big trends of our age. The happy "personality" suggests what we are all looking for, and what we hope to discover during the test, or, if not yet, what Dianetics can bring us. Creativity, this crazy cool hip necessity that nobody can see or touch or measure, is the big myth of job applications and self-perceptions. It is the ideological twin of individuality, equally curly and colorful and not to be forgotten in any description of whatever comes down the road. 

The quick and simple result of the test is already postulated on the sign: You are yourself (deep stuff), you are a very special person (even better), you are a genius in your own right and infinitely creative.

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http://frankieburr.com

Catalogue text about Frankie Burr's Confessional Cell and Broken Cell exhibited at ECA, Edinburgh (read more on the blog Young[____]). Scroll down on the About page.  

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Counter-Reformation

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Medium Melting Pot

The Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy is most famous for Michelangelo’s marble statue of David, which was put here in 1873 and given a copy to be left on the original site on Florence’s main plaza, the Piazza della Signoria (which preserves the unity of the work and the site it was made for, as it were). In the museum, along the corridors leading to the touristic heart of the museum, visitors see exquisite altar pieces and oil paintings, as well as unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo. So far so expected - but what is this dark room with photographs protracting the carefully planned, awestruck gaze at the David? Does anybody actually look at these bleached out photos of David in the same way? Who was allowed to put these tourist shots there that are on everybody’s phone anyway?

Turns out that these simple pictures were taken by the pioneers of photography, in different modes of technical production, in different stages of the development of photography, i.e. they have at least some historical value. Furthermore, they show the David with the rather generous ivy leaf that protected innocent souls from Michelangelo’s naturalistic rendition of the perfect man (or rather adolescent?) which is, thanks to restoration, visible again in its entirety. Yet most importantly, these photographs prove to be part of the art siblings.

The juxtaposition of Painting, Photography, and Sculpture in the venerable Galleria has the potential to revive another paragone 2.0 aka the bashing of new media, especially next to Michelangelo marbles. The carefully curated photo exhibition, however, does not only illustrate the history of the David and his companions, but also the re-interpretation of them (hence the title – “Ri-conoscere Michelangelo”). Photography does not simply show what would be much nicer to see “in the flesh,” anyway, but it reveals new angles and makes it possible to find a focus on single parts of the sculpture. The fragmentation makes it easier to understand the whole, to give it life and vigour in another medium, to render it in our changing perception, today strongly determined by photographic means. The pictures themselves, through their autonomy, enjoy more than enough justification to be neighbours with the Michelangelos. The Medici chapels – another must-see for Buonarotti adepts – work with photographs as well, yet their positioning “on the way” to the chapels undermines their equal footing to the extent that they seem to be merely room-fillers, despite their excellent quality.

Finally, the works by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth reflect on the whole museal aspect (which people in the art scene love). A photo of the exhibition exhibited in the exhibition? Success guaranteed. It would have been nice, though, to hang the Struth photograph directly behind the David, as an exact mirror – or would critics find this too flat then? In this case the photographs appear sandwiched between the marbles and would have deserved more space on their own, and definitely claim their right to be among the old masters.

http://www.uffizi.firenze.it/en/mostre/mostra.php?t=52f3b49cf1c3bc6802000000

http://www.cappellemedicee.it/

[johannespfaller]

Romanticism in Ruins

I’m against the romanticisation of modern day ruins. I’m probably too preoccupied to enjoy the aesthetics of decline. I am too young to accept the destruction of a world that I live in and am going to for several more decades. 

I see why people travel to indulge in the beauty of ancient temple ruins in Greece or medieval castles in Germany, Austria, etc. The temporal distance has levelled preoccupations for the economic state of past times. Stripped off of every political context and direct affect, deprived of their original function, these “buildings” are ultimately left to be admired by today’s tourists. Even images of destroyed Berlin 1945 develop an aesthetic value that is greater than the consternation our parents must feel. For pictures of Hiroshima, it is going to be the same. 

Even though I am not a citizen of the US and therefore widely untouched by local issues (and thus maybe prone to this kind of aesthetics of the “other”), I refuse the upcoming tourism to the so-called “ghost town” of Detroit (lately portrayed in, tellingly, the vampire movie Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch, 2013). As Christian Saehrendt, a German art historian and journalist, pointed out during a talk on Romanticism in contemporary art held at the University of Edinburgh in autumn 2013, it has become fashionable to stroll around ruins and lose oneself in romantic dreams. According to Saehrendt, people long for feelings again, after an emotionally detached period dominated by postmodern irony. As an example, he mentioned dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel (2012) with its extensive focus on nature, symbolised by Song Dong‘s immensely popular Doing Nothing Garden (consistent with Romantic faineance). 

Susan Sontag posits, in the context of architecture and photography being “subject to the same inexorable promotion through the passage of time,” that “many buildings, and not only the Parthenon, probably look better as ruins” (79). Transferring this to the case of Detroit, one should congratulate the city for its aesthetic enhancement through destruction. But as harmless as it is to dream about ancient ruins, as wrong it is to glorify present day decay. One must not forget that people once lived and probably wish to still live in the houses they had to leave, that the economic structures which caused this decline continue to work in the same destructive way and that every ruin expresses the disfunction of our society, which eventually concerns everybody. It is just not possible to imagine Arcadia while the downfall lasts. This is why I oppose this feature of the blossoming New Romanticism of our age.

However, Romanticism also always means departure, or “dawn.” When there are ruins, they should not be relished as the seduction of decadence, nor to decry past glory. They are a calling and material to restart. How this is possible can be seen in the restructuring of the Ruhr district in Germany. Once the driving economic force due to its steel production, the whole area saw a massive decline as the industry went down. Yet many of the sites that lay waste were rebuilt as monuments of national history and museums for the region’s industrial history and culture, and now even host an acclaimed biennial. Instead of dwelling on stagnation, the city decided to give these ruins a new function to improve the living quality of the people in this area, and, in economically terms, invested to make use of the existing sites.

© Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre

The photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre documented the ruins of Detroit to get a hold of “this ephemeral state,” and to think about “the permanence of things.” This approach is far from being a ruse, since its nature is dynamic and permits thoughts on decay without insisting on it. The photographs are aesthetically pleasing, to use this phrase, and sincere, a strategy to avoid kitsch and ignite reflexion.  

  Works cited:

Christian Saehrendt, “Ruinen Und Wälder, Revoluzzer Und Edle Wilde Wie Romantisch Ist Die Gegenwartskunst?,” in Rheinmainromantik - Gartenkunst, Regensburg, 2013.

Susan Sontag, On Photography, Penguin Classics, 2008.

http://www.ruhrbiennale.de/

http://www.marchandmeffre.com/statement/index.html

[johannespfaller]

Houellebecq's muses I

Michel Houellebecq's award-winning (the Prix Goncourt, to be precise) novel "La Carte et le Territoire," published in 2010, tells the fictional story of Jed Martin, a French photographer and painter, whose œuvre is extensively described in the book (which makes the novel a case in point for contemporary ekphrasis). At some point, Jed becomes friends with a writer conveniently called Michel Houellebecq. A good deal of the book is then dedicated to discussions about art, architecture, philosophers, and society, which brings into play references to real people and works, in addition to Jed's fictional art. 

I found it a neat game to have a look at Jed's art and think like a critic about it (can I act like an art critic on "(visual) art" that exists in textual form?), or to think of real artists who made similar things. As my latest point of interest, I took Jed's last works, several hours long videos that he takes in the forest around his house, and photos and objects that he leaves to natural decay:

"Il utilisait en tout cas presque à chaque fois des focales très élevées, se concentrant parfois sur une branche de hêtre agitée par le vent, parfois sur une touffe d'herbe, le sommet d'un buisson d'orties, ou une surface de terre meuble et détrempée entre deux flaques." (408)

"Vers la même époque, il commença à filmer des photographies de toutes les personnes qu'il avait pu connaître (...). Il les assujettisait sur une toile imperméable gris neutre, tendue sur un cadre métallique, et les filmait juste devant chez lui, laissant cette fois opérer la dégradation naturelle. Soumises aux alternances de pluie et de lumière solaire, les photographies se gondolaient, pourrissaient par places, puis se décomposaient en fragments, et étaient totalement détruites en l'espace de quelques semaines." (411f)

These passages are less extensive in their 'visual content' than others in the novel, i.e. they tell us more how it was made, less how it looks, in contrast to passages on Jed's paintings that boast with colors and composition (although, one could argue, there is well a visual impression of decay). For this reason, they admit more associations with real artworks that share the same genesis.

Hiroshi Sugimoto's Time Exposed works, for example, experienced the impact of the sun and weather. The photographs are dated according to the length of exposure (in a second sense, now), since the change in materiality also changes the image. Sugimoto thus shifts the boundaries of the medium, as curator Armin Zweite interprets it. Interestingly, the photos' original subject matter is a long-exposure image of seascapes, which relates to Jed's overarching theme of nature: just as Sugimoto's seas merge dramatically with the sky, so do Jed's plants grow to an indistinguishable jungle.

In terms of vegetal video, one could think of Gillian Wearing's Crowd (2012) — actually a quote of Albrecht Dürer's Great Piece of Turf (1503) — which shows turf over several hours, slowly moving, yet only ascertainable, in the long run, by nature itself. 

Houellebecq's vision of a France completely de-industrialized and specialized in regional tourism from 2020 onwards is to be seen in a wider, historically distanced perspective. It is a predictable development in economic terms, and inevitable in natural terms. Nature will always have the last say, just as it is ever-lasting in Wearing's video. Sugimoto, on the contrary, goes back in time to trace the feeling that the first man of earth must have had as he first caught sight of the sea. Through Jed's artwork, this prevalent topic enters his biography and offers a glance beyond it, a frequent means in Houellebecq's narratives (cf. La possibilité d'une île).

Gillian Wearing's Crowd (filmstills)

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Works cited:

Michel Houellebecq, La carte et le territoire, Flammarion, 2010.

Bernhart Schwenk (ed.), Gillian Wearing, Walther König, 2012.

Armin Zweite (ed.), Hiroshi Sugimoto. Revolution, HatjeCantz, 2012.

(The novel is incredibly rich in references and original thoughts on art and society, and provides work for many years to come for literary critics. This is only a little thought, probably some more will follow.)

[johannespfaller]

From Private to Public: 354 New Classics For Art History

Is it justifiable to publish a man’s private art collection? This questions appears ridiculous considering the accusations against Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of an art collector responsible for the “degenerate art” program in the Nazi regime. More than 350 works are supposed to be stolen or disseized from Jewish collectors in the 1930s and are still awaiting their restitution, for which publishing is essential. 

The rest, however, is paintings and drawings by Gurlitt’s great-grandfather, or, still delicate but legal, works that were ‘cleansed’ from German museums for not matching Nazi aesthetics. To include them these works in the case infringes on Gurlitt’s privacy — which right does the public have to know of them?

Journalists found the apartment in which he stored these paintings and published photos of it. If he gets the works back that are doubtless his own, he will have to face high insurance rates. Furthermore, the renowned TV show “Kulturzeit” on 3sat introduced a special part of their show dedicated to present these works that were hidden from the public. They called it “Gurlitt’s treasure chest”, which makes me think of something like MTV’s “Cribs”, but without even asking the host; “treasure chest” lets one think of a legendary pirate that has only survived in tales, which is why his private property became public domain. 

Apparently, everybody — not only experts and those looking for their family’s lost art — has the right to see what a man had in his apartment. In times of total surveillance, we got used to the loss of privacy, or, in euphemistic terms, to the total availability of information. 

However, focusing on those works that had to be publicised, what the public gains is the access to 354 (ongoing) works of art that were believed to be lost or totally unknown. Art historians working on such diverse fields like the Northern Renaissance, Realism or Neue Sachlichkeit find new material in the paintings and drawings by Dürer, Courbet or Dix. For art history and the dispossessed (and according to Jerry Saltz, http://newday.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/06/unknown-matisse-chagall-and-dix-artworks-found-in-nazi-looted-haul/, also lawyers), what has begun as an investigation on tax fraud has turned into an auspicious discovery.

Artworks publicised by the “task force” (a team consisting of renowned researchers and officials for restitution) can be found on http://www.lostart.de/Webs/DE/Datenbank/KunstfundMuenchen.html.

[johannespfaller]

Restitution to the Thief?

        The news of 1406 paintings found in a Munich apartment expectedly caused great furore in the German media, but also worldwide. Among the ‘treasure,’ as it is called, are pieces unknown or believed to be lost by first rank artists like Picasso, Dürer and Dix, with an overall value estimated to be around one billion Euros. Sums and names like these are quickly worth a note, however, the catch of the whole story was their origin. It is assumed that the artworks were taken from Jews during Hitler’s art raid through Europe in the 1930s. 

During that time, Hitler and his officials collected classic art from museums all over Europe to decorate their palaces or to build up nazi-conform museums. Moreover, they banned all art from existing museums which did not match nazi aesthetics. This ‘degenerate art’ was shown in a large-scale travelling exhibition to show people the abnormality of artists that were otherwise regarded as avant-garde. In the end, their works were sold abroad to finance the regime. 

The question now is whether Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a collaborating Jewish art collector, has to give back his ‘treasure.’ The Central Council of Jews in Germany immediately attacked German authorities for their slow action when it came out that the finding already took place in February 2012. For the rightful owners, the Council argues, every minute counts, given the age of the survivors. And indeed, the German government does not push on restitution cases like this. The laws to give back stolen art are less precise than those in Austria for example, and museums are not obliged to search their stock for artworks with unclear provenance. 

Yet the prosecutor’s decision to publish some works online on lostart.de to appease the Jewish community is also critiqued for being indiscriminate against Gurlitt’s privacy. The case officially investigates tax fraud (Gurlitt supposedly made a living from occasionally selling works) and does not support confiscation of private property, nor the public display of it. Furthermore, about one-third of the paintings were made by his great-grandfather and hence are legally his own, and about 380 more stem from the clearing of German museums under his father, which accords to the law, as well. 

Apparently Gurlitt is about to get back the paintings that are not considered stolen art by a so-called ‘task-force.’ Still, it is unclear where he could store them safely after journalists publicised photographs of his apartment. Although the value of his ‘treasure’ is, reasonably estimated, much less than one billion Euros, insurances could nevertheless become unaffordable.  

The scandal is twofold: First, the laws for the restitution of stolen art in Germany but also elsewhere is far from appropriate, given that disappropriated artworks were bought by museums in the US and other countries in the 1930s, but are not considered for restitution. In this case, however, as the accusations are less founded but hyped, the second reason to raise the public voice is the right for privacy in times of illegal espionage and legal data retention.

[johannespfaller]

Art to go

Recently, on the Open Day at Edinburgh Uni's College of Art, I picked up a DIN A5 sheet with a drawing of Stonehenge on it. The box in the foyer explicitly said "Take one of my drawings!", and in the box lay a considerable staple of little sheets. 

The title is obviously STONEHENGE, the subtitle says THE BEST FUCKING HENGE IN THE WORLD. Written with a black marker, it seems to have been added after the ball-pen henge was drafted. 

It was made for this very occasion — spread your art, your name, let those students have a taste of what they can expect. And this idea is brilliant. People like free stuff, people will pick it up, show it around (I assume the other sheets had a fun message, too), and maybe throw it away. It is not about the value of art, or if this sheet is art, or the question what art actually is, but once mentioned: the paper is cheap, but the idea is priceless, in that it engages us with little thoughts (isn't Stonehenge a great henge?), a little aesthetics, a little democracy and self-determination, and communication.

I would like to give this sheet a digital life, to transfer the analogue real-paper giveaway meme into a real Internet one. And I coloured it, because that's what happens when you get art to go.