Kommentar von Antje Mayer
Kommentar von Antje Mayer
<Uniform histories and the globalisation of art or: how the former East Block countries are fighting for authenticity. A commentary by Antje Mayer
The symposium \"authentic structures“, organized by tranzit.cz in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art New York and the Goethe-Institut Prague, was held from the 8th to the 12th of December 2004 in the Czech capital. Art mediators theorists and artists from Western and Eastern Europe discussed whether there is a distinctive East and West art, whether and how the art scenes in Eastern Europe could follow an \"authentic path\" of their own and whether, despite the historical differences, one can nevertheless speak of a \"common cultural landscape\".
At the symposium in Prague one heard repeatedly the complaint from artists and art mediators in the new EU countries that they lack money for art, specialists and the infrastructure for a functioning art market. They also complained that they are not generally allowed to participate as partners with equal rights in the international art scene, or that, if they are allowed to take part, then it is generally in the role of something exotic. All of this, they say, is clearly revealed in the market prices for so-called \"East Art\": Joseph Backstein, principal curator of the 1st Biennale to be held in Moscow in February 2005 recalled that at the major exhibition \"Berlin-Moscow\" in the Kremlin in 2004, at which (among other things) contemporary art from Germany and Russia was shown: \"The entire collection of contemporary Russian art exhibited was only worth as much as three of four of the works there by well-known German artists.\"
\"Hope and Dialectics \" is the motto of the Biennale for Contemporary Art that will be held from 28th January to 28th February 2005 in the Russian capital. It can be safely assumed that the use of the word \"Biennale\" in the title implies a wish to attract well-off visitors and collectors to Moscow and also to create a good impression abroad. According to the Russian curator and coordinator Joseph Backstein, who is the director and founder of the Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, the goal is to revive \"the comatose art scene in Moscow\". Despite the Biennale circus that presents the same performances globally, can we perhaps look forward to something new in Moscow? No, on the contrary\", Backstein makes no attempt to hide the truth, \"this Biennale is deliberately intended to be like all other events of this kind. We want to show the world that we are professional and can match international standards.\" Doesn\'t this seem like the Prada handbag effect: i.e. it isn\'t important whether it is real or a good imitation, the main thing is that it should gleam in a global, western way like the paint finish on a Rolls Royce? With the goal outlined above in mind the programme of the Moscow Biennale therefore presents the international S-class of the contemporary art rally (with mass appeal): Damien Hirst, Maurizio Cattelan, Olafur Eliasson, Ron Mueck, Jeff Wall and Bill Viola. \"We are particularly proud of these participants,\" say the directors of the Biennale. In a tactically shrewd move the show is artistically guided by the \"curator brand names\" of the big, wide world: Daniel Birnbaum, Iara Boubnova, Nicolas Bourriaud, Rosa Martínez and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Authentic Structures?
And where in all of this is Russian art. Where is the authentic structure and strategy? Why so little self-confidence? Where does the longing for the global market come from? After all, a common artistic landscape does not inevitably mean one that is monotonously the same throughout the entire world. Does the drive towards the globalisation of art not round off the edges and corners of national characteristics, a process many former East Block countries complain about so bitterly? They maintain that the so-called art market is to blame, but is it not an imaginary construct? Surely, it no longer defines itself in terms of the \"need \" for art but only in terms of interest in art and art\'s economy of attention? Isn\'t it ultimately more important to use art and art mediation to help shape the social and political processes through which art is made, rather than making art dependent on the market?
It seems imperative to develop self-respect, to question the imposed histories, to construct individual (art) histories. As can be seen in the Balkans, art can make a serious contribution to speeding up the general process of democratisation. To speak of a homogeneous \"East Art\" is dangerous, as these different countries find themselves at present – and probably always – in very different situations as regards the processing of their (art) history and the development of democracy. Whoever rejects terms such as East and West art should refuse to allow themselves be subsumed in a uniform history that attempts to simplify the situation into art history before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a kind of then and now situation, instead they should finally start to construct their own history and to actively communicate it on the international circuit.
The Slovene artists group IRWIN are making this kind of attempt. In Prague they presented their own East Art map (www.eastartmap.org). Their motto: \"The history is not given, we have to construct it.” The IRWIN net is not woven chronologically but temporally and in a spatially three-dimensional way, not from year to year, not from institution to event, but from personality to personality creating a history of individuals.
At times in order to mediate one\'s own history and art, one must reinvent the medium. In my opinion the important thing for the former East Block countries is to resist any attempts made at \"colonising\" them and instead to develop their own intelligent strategies, just like the IRWIN group. The medium is the message. Freedom also means freedom of the means used. Art and history do not have to be taught at state academies, must not inevitably be interpreted by so-called specialists and curators, there is no absolute need for Biennale events, galleries, museums, collectors, nor is a great deal of money imperative, although naturally art must be entitled to funding. The means are extremely diverse. There are thousands of new ways of mediating and producing art, some of them have already been found, while others are waiting to be invented.
The Czech Republic: an Example
When, in the mid-1990s, I confronted my professor at the Institute for Art History of the Freie Universität Berlin with the fact that I wanted to write my degree thesis on modern Czech architecture, he at first laughed in a condescending way and then asked me: \"But is there anything of any interest there?\" When I presented him with my work a year later, he admitted that his initial arrogance had been premature. Today, 15 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a number of people may try to suppress the fact but at that time in the West only a few experts were aware that at the beginning of the 20th century Czech art and architecture (but also philosophy and music) were in contact with the most up-to-date and pioneering international art tendencies, which inspired them and which they inspired in turn.
As an example: Only two years after Picasso had created his spectacular Cubist painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), which, with its multiple perspectives, is one of the key works of art history, Vincent Kramář acquired the gouache Harlekin by the same artist and four days later bought Picasso\'s famous bronze head of a woman dating from 1909. In his private apartment Kramář made the latest Cubist works from France accessible to young Prague artists, who were deeply impressed by them and in the years that followed translated this new style into a unique art history phenomenon: Cubist design and Cubist architecture.
Although Czech art historians were, of course, well aware of this phenomenon, like many of their colleagues in the East Block countries their isolation meant that they had no way of publishing essays on this theme in Western specialist publications. This explains why it simply did not exist in the perception of the Western art world. Ignorance or fate? Just as the Czechs had practically no access to French publications that could have enabled them to convincingly prove the connection between Cubism in France and in the Czech Republic, western art historians could rarely get access to Czech sources. Helena Königsmarková, today director of the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague, can speak volumes about the work situation in those days: \"As an art historian I had to wait until I was over forty before I could make my first trip to the West and see works in their original state. At long last I had access to important sources and literature. It was like being in paradise.\" In contrast I myself know of a colleague in Berlin who wrote his doctorate on the iconoclasm of the Hussites and who before 1989 had the greatest difficulties in gaining access to archives in what was then Czechoslovakia.
It was in fact the major exhibition \"1909-1925 Kubismus in Prag“ (Cubism in Prague) held in the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf that for the first time brought the theme of Czech Cubism to the notice of western art historians. This was at an early stage, in 1991. The fact that the other curator (alongside Tomáš Vlček) of this excellent exhibition was Jiri Svestka, who today runs the only commercially successful gallery for contemporary art in Prague, speaks volumes. This pair, together with a large team of excellent Czech experts on site, took courage and themselves catapulted a part of their art history from a state of insignificance into the West. The catalogue to the exhibition is among the best things in this field. Curiously enough, it was to take a number of years before it proved possible to set up a place to exhibit this work in Prague (the \"House of the Black Mother of God\") and to pay adequate homage to it \"on site\", so to speak.
This fact should not automatically be ascribed to arrogance and ignorance on the part of Prague institutions. 1991, the year of the Cubism exhibition, was only two years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In Czechoslovakia there were highly competent art historians but they had no skilled staff with experience in management, there was no money available and no suitable infrastructure for them to make such an exhibition. On this theme Königsmarková says: \"After 1989 we art mediators were suddenly confronted with concepts such as \"fundraising\" or \'target group analysis\'. It was to take at least until the mid-1990s before we could recover personally and until the end of the decade before we were able to apply what we had learned.\"
A Paralysed Rigidity
The typical situation in the Czech Republic that I have outlined above also applies to many other former East Block countries. Naturally, historically the scenes were integrated in international scenes and developed positions of their own, before (but also during) the Communist era. At different speeds, but generally very slowly, art history in these countries is being processed and communicated with the appropriate self-confidence, both at home and abroad. The academic basis for research into art history already exists and is often of a very high standard. But the different arts scenes are appropriating new (and at times very pragmatic) methods of mediation and processing their history only piece by piece: new libraries, archives and new forms of cultural journalism or museum education programmes. At places this appropriation by the countries themselves takes place too slow and often it is only conducted \"externally\", i.e. through exhibitions in the West (see above), through western institutions, at times, but increasingly rarely, also through western curators. Although events such as the exhibition \"Blut & Honig. Zukunft ist der Balkan“ by Harald Szeemann in the Essl Collection (2003) were heavily criticized, because they allegedly \"colonised\" a region or treated it as a piece of \"folklore\", they not only served as a launching pad for many artists but dealt for the first time with recent history, placed art in a context and in many cases provided input for a process of self-discovery.
But there must an end to this kind of event abroad. The necessary strategies must be addressed, even though the progress is very slow. Why this paralysed rigidity in front of the snake of the western art market? Is its gaze really so hypnotic? Why not slowly direct it elsewhere, towards itself, for instance?