Page 14 - Studio International - July August 1971

What is Reality? who have misunderstood Beuys, and who make `Visitors' School'), Karlheinz Braun and Peter
Iden (Theatre, 'Experimenta'), and Ulrich
solo exhibitions of themselves instead of regard-
The theme of ing themselves as instruments of a collective Gregor, Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz (film),
endeavour. All this because the necessity of art produced an additional working paper in which
Documenta and the art business has been called into the individual categories were embodied in
question. concrete, if provisional, lists of names.
In New York the art scene is disintegrating; The first category, 'Reality of
Georg Jappe
in Europe the museums and public galleries are Representation', covers fictive reality: socialist
suffering from a malaise which gives rise to an realism, advertising, kitsch, comics, propaganda,
increasingly heated debate among curators, the 'iconography of society' from flags to
exhibition organizers and students on the social postage-stamps and banknotes, and the popular
value of art. Whole conferences and seminars art of monuments and tombstones.
are devoted to it; and for lack of a properly `Reality of the Thing Represented' is a
worked-out alternative to the traditional idea category that gives plenty of scope to the new
of quality (which is rejected by the producers of American naturalists; they share it with Gnoli,
art themselves), attitudes and demands move Klapheck and the Pop artists, who may not be
further and further away from artistic criteria. overjoyed at the prospect. The theme is extended
The alarm is sounded with the instruments that to cover portraiture (Andy Warhol and the
lie to hand: Marxist concepts. The public turns reactionary Paul Mathias Padua), 'Individual
its back on the resulting doctrinaire word- Mythologies' (Beuys, Nauman, Nitsch), and
exhibitions, and on an art which mutters specious anonymous fields such as Black Power activism,
precepts by the beard of the prophet Marx. pornography and drug experiments.
The fifth Documenta exhibition takes place In the third group, 'Identity or Non-
in Kassel from 28 June to 8 October 1972. Its Identity of Representation and Thing
Secretary-General, Harald Szeemann, a Represented', Process Art, Conceptual Art,
believer in 'replacing ownership by free actions', transformation (e.g. Oldenburg), transposition
announced a year ago that its title was to be 'The (e.g. Magritte), 'real-time' film (e.g. Warhol and
Hundred-Day Event'. Since then, his Happen- Gerry Schum's television gallery), and the art-
ing exhibition in Cologne last autumn has taught life equation, are seen in the context of 'forced
him that this would make him entirely dependent identity' (the art of children, mental patients
on the caprice, not to say the wilful eccentricity, and naive painters) and 'wish-fulfilling identity'
of participants mostly more interested in (sport and play). The examples of 'self-
advertising themselves than in enlightening presentation' should be particularly interesting;
anyone else. As a result, a new theme for they are expected to include not only artists such
Documenta 5 has just been agreed; its aim is as Gilbert and George but also art impresarios
nothing less than the redefinition of the under- such as Konrad Fischer, Pierre Restany and
standing of art. Without invalidating the Peter Ludwig.
immanent formal laws governing a work of art Thus art is placed in a context, but not
the hotly-discussed issue of value is placed firmly forced into it. Two points were emphasized
in context by the question 'How does this work repeatedly at the press conference: any work of
relate to reality ?' art that lays claim to autonomy will be shown
For the first time Documenta is not a on its own (the compartmented structure of the
judgement day, establishing world ratings, but a new Schöne Aussicht building makes this
value-free, thematic exhibition. The theme is possible); and Documenta 5 is not to be an
formulated thus : 'Questioning Reality- Image illustrated seminar, but a true exhibition that
Worlds Today'. It is divided into three large can be experienced in visual terms.
categories: (i) 'Reality of Representation', (2) The exposition of the underlying dialectic,
`Reality of the Thing Represented', and (3) and the validation of the criteria used, is to be
`Identity or Non-Identity of Representation and the province of Bazon Brock's Visitors' School.
Thing Represented'. This all sounds rather like There is to be no repetition of last time's
half-baked philosophy; and the theoretical Brock's benefit- 'a dance display by Brock, an
background paper, by Bazon Brock, is written in attempt to force people into line', as Brock
an esoteric jargon which sounds partly like a himself now describes it. Outside institutions
stock parody of professorial German, partly like are to be commissioned to report on such topics
a highly formalized autonomous work of art as the demonstrable physiological preconditions
which set out to hold art obscurely, vaguely but for visual receptivity. Another project: to
lastingly on the path of Content. demonstrate a programme, developed in
The resulting fears among members of the California, which shows how far colloquial
The less the artists actually produce, the clearer international art world that Documenta 5 is language is already a metalanguage, made up
the basic problems of the art world become. some kind of theory-crazed rampage against the of verbal and non-verbal means of expression
Unless one counts the third-rate naturalism of established Artist-Exhibitor-Collector-Public (gesture, mime, pauses, etc.), and consequently
certain American artists, there has for two years - set-up, were allayed at the first press conference how far the visual language of art has an
since Process Art-been no avant garde to keep in the course of nearly four hours of televised informational content equivalent to that of
the mechanism of distribution and consumption factual exposition and argument. The members verbal language: Documenta 5 as a refutation of
in being. There has been a deluge of of `Documenta Team 5', Jean-Christophe Wittgenstein.
retrospectives, often more remarkable for size Amann, Arnold Bode and Harald Szeemann But at the moment the Visitors' School is
than for quality: gigantic ego-trips by artists (thematic exhibition), Bazon Brock (theory, only partly provided for financially; and a
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