Page 46 - Studio International - February 1972

may exist as a large-format 'museum object', as a tiny red stripe for 'other households', and the transforms processes like window-cleaning or
'collector's edition' in a Plexiglas box, and as a vast expanse of the rest of the flag is taken up by the dripping of water into static and
cheap 'popular edition'. The Postage Stamps, a the gold of 'big capital'. If you mix the national disconcerting objects by freezing them. There is
typical Brehmer theme, are a case in point. They colours together, the result is (Nazi) brown. In also the growing tendency towards the use of
exist (a) in a plastic bag (as German Values), the same way, a map from Time magazine electronics : plates on the floor which sing when
(b) as a large relief print on paper (Selection showing the investment climate in South you tread on them (Martin Schwarz); a door
East/West), and (c) as a museum object two America is coloured to make it a political which shuts behind you when you walk into a
metres high (Stamp Album, with several pages). placard. In his films this former 'Capitalist cage, trapping you (Hingstmartin), and objects
The basis in every case consists in colour values Realist' directs his attacks above all at which mysteriously start to whistle, flash lights
and their arrangement, but of course the television, which in his view has manipulated and speak, warned of your approach by photo-
arrangement of heads, postmarks and symbols 'the sensitization of the masses, the longed-for electric cells (Hansjoachim Dietrich).
has an aggressive political message. The German objective of the producers of art' in the interests Any selection must be unfair to someone; no
flag (black, red and gold) appears redesigned, as of a reactionary society. critic can lay claim to objectivity, only to
Correction of the National Colours According to There are many more names worth intellectual honesty. I have limited myself to
the Distribution of Wealth; a narrow black mentioning, dynamic individualists such as the artists under thirty-five who have already had
edging represents the middle class, then comes a 'Material Artist' K. H. Hödicke, who some international exposure. The situation is
15 getting worse, for them as it is for those who
come after them. The boom is over; and how far
down the downhill ride will go is something that
not even the economic experts know. The
holders of the public purse-strings, who seem to
have tried to make up to one generation of
artists for half a century of neglect, have now
turned their attention to other problems, and art
budgets have been drastically trimmed
accordingly. The tactic adopted by the art
institutions, of liberally 'informing' or
`offering as material for debate' without actually
identifying themselves with their exhibitions, is
going to be shown up over the next few years as
a mistake. At annual exhibitions and in the
private galleries it has become evident that there
is no sphere in which there is so much
over-production, in relation to demand, as in
art. What is to be done with it ? Attempts at
establishing solidarity between art and society
have discredited themselves in a series of
pathetic street spectacles. The promised
self-realization may have affected the artists
themselves, but certainly has not reached the
public; and the visiting-figures are going down
16 everywhere. There is now no new avant garde
anywhere in the world, because the artists are
too timid to practise the self-criticism which
would involve leaving their El Dorado of the
196os ; and the promised land threatens, in the
harsher world of the 197os, to turn back into a
ghetto. One does not need to be a prophet to
foresee that art in the years to come will be
judged by the criterion of how many ideas it
produces, whether purely intellectual or
concretely usable, for making life livable. q
TRANSLATED FRoM THE GERMAN BY
DAVID BRITT

15 K. P. Brehmer
Auswahl Sentel 1967
120 X 180 cm
16 K. P. Brehmer
Tat-Bestände 1970
Prod. Sender Freies Berlin

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