Page 54 - Studio International - July August 1968

Left, Kaspar Thomas Lenk (foreground) Structure 36b 1967-8
aluminium, 226½ x 159½ x 59 in. (background) Structure 55b 1967-8
aluminium, 89¾ x 179 x 23½ in. Galerie Muller, Stuttgart
Below, Erich Hauser Space-column 7/68 1968. steel, 123 x 319 x 99f in.
Galerie Muller, Stuttgart

The discipline and objectivity of Fruhtrunk's work reveals a tradition anywhere in the field of painting. Andre Breton has put his imagina-
of German art that is especially strongly represented at the Docu- tion at his service and stated that he is an exorcist with the ability to
menta by Erwin Heerich (born 1922) : Bauhaus Constructivism. make a snake 'dance under a whole chandelier of singing birds'.
Within this pattern Heerich achieves a particular domination of Klapheck, Lenk, Hauser, Mavignier, Uecker, Graubner, Geiger,
material which is characteristic of the metaphysical bases of the Brüning and Beuys are clearly the only artists of the seventeen-strong
Bauhaus but which today has an overtly emotional rather than an German team at the Documenta IV who need not fear international
ascetic effect, for Erwin Heerich's block shapes are presented in the comparisons. The other entrants reveal considerable defects,
cloak of an amorphous material— pasteboard. The artist thus forms especially if the avowed intention of Documenta IV—to show con-
an extreme opposite pole to the material enthusiasm with which temporary movements since 1964—is to be taken seriously. There is
Erich Hauser (born 1930) raises his monumental steel sculptures. considerable doubt if in fact such tendencies exist at present in
His Space-column 7168 deserves special attention by virtue of the fact Germany, if one takes the present selection as representative. A
that the artist has here freed himself for the first time from the basic group of more or less pronounced individual personalities is presen-
monadic form and made a foray into open country. Two other ted, but the history of the effect of particular concepts has hardly
artists—Kaspar Thomas Lenk (born 1933) and Rüdiger Utz Kamp- been taken into account. Klapheck's contribution could for example
mann (born 1935) —aim at a middle position between these two easily have been supplemented by showing the work of a number of
possibilities—suppression or evocation of sculpture's physical presence younger artists working in a similar direction: and the colour-
(cf. Studio International, Jan. 1968). The two monumental sculptures painting of Graubner and Geiger would in particular have benefited
which Lenk is showing at the Documenta witness to an attempt to do by being shown together with the work of others of the same ten-
away with the constricting playfulness inherent in his disc-type dency. The fact that something like a hard-edge school has established
element, by using larger forms than can be manipulated by hand. itself in the South seems to have escaped the jury's notice altogether.
If one regards the sculptors Hauser and Heerich as exponents of In conclusion one should not overlook the fact that any criticism of
expressive and constructive trends in German art, then the same the Documenta is bound to be met with a horde of exoneratory
classification can be adopted in the field of figurative painting for the explanations. Documenta IV is certainly better than it threatened
work of Horst Antes (born 1936) and Konrad Klapheck (born 1935). to be: but it is, equally, just as weak as the position of modern art in
Antes' work is on the one hand influenced by Picasso and on the other Germany in general. The Federal Republic did wonders after the
by New Expressionism, which has centred in the last decade in South war in respect of economic and social achievement, but not a thought
Germany around the Karlsruhe Art Academy. Although this ten- was wasted on curing cultural ills. The events of recent months have
dency is at present considerably over-valued, simply because it served most painfully to show what a great gap has arisen between
confirms international expectations in respect of German painting, the political establishment and the universities, as centres of intel-
the finesse with which Antes presents his psychologically-laden lectual life. The estrangement of art and politics is no less great. In
symbolism still deserves respect. Far more convincing is the way in spite of the world-wide importance it has gained, the structure of the
which Konrad Klapheck, dispensing with symbolism altogether, Documenta has remained what it was when it began: the private
allows the radiation of objects themselves to conduct the argument: undertaking of a circle of friends, with Professor Arnold Bode at its
`I do not use things as symbols, but I paint them as well as I can, and centre. No sort of interaction between the Documenta council and
let what they have to say surprise me'. Clothes-irons, shoe trees, official artistic policy has ever taken place, although the exhibition
typewriters and sewing machines all develop under Klapheck's has received generous subsidies from the State. The only basic change,
scrupulous treatment a banal magic, which finds its counterpart in spite of all the publicity and expense, has been in the composition
rather in the writing of Francis Ponge or Alain Robbe-Grillet than of the 'circle of friends'. q
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