Archive Newsletter No. 8.4
July 2021
The Concept of Class at Kunstverein München
Part 4: From Art as a Weapon to the Saxophone as a Weapon against Art – Early 70s and 90s
The fourth and final part of the newsletter series on the concept of class at the Kunstverein München highlights two noteworthy periods in history: the early 70s and the early 90s. There were of course later exhibitions and events that repeatedly addressed the issue of “class,” but in these two time periods, this examination was central and almost always referred to the institution itself. Their approaches to the concept bear similarities—for example, their mixture of contradiction (used in one case to critique the subject) and humor.
After the extensively documented disputes regarding the exhibition Poesie muss von allen gemacht werden! Verändert die Welt! (Poetry must be made by all! Transform the world!) [1] (1970) played out between and within the Ministry of Education and the Arts, the Kunstverein’s board, and the employees at the time under director Reiner Kallhardt, the director’s assistant, Haimo Liebich, took over creative leadership for the next few years. Accompanying the formation of collectively-operating so-called “work groups” under new leadership, a new artistic program was developed that related to this exhibition in its content. As a local update to the avant-garde movements that had exhibited there, this exhibition had invited students from the art academy to report on their protests (begun in the art historical institute of the university) against, among other things, the continued employment of Nazi teaching staff. It was closed prematurely and resulted in state grants being withdrawn from the Kunstverein, since they would subsidize “efforts to promote terror and violent overthrow with tax revenue intended for the preservation of art.” [2]
For its 150th anniversary in 1974 [3], the Kunstverein’s early documents were examined in detail for the first time in order to answer the question of whom this institution had actually served with its actions so far. The research findings are presented in the entrance area and in a publication. They come to the conclusion that, aside from its early-bourgeois, emancipatory claims, the Kunstverein has, for the longest time, been an institution in service of the few. It differentiates itself strongly “from below” and is interested in its own representation as part of the bourgeois middle-class. The working groups of the time draw the conclusion that now could be the time to change this and to reverse the direction of the Kunstverein. The fear generated by this artistic program that “the interests of a l l the members and the e n t i r e art association” [4] will no longer be represented is consciously taken into account. Rather than carrying out tasks generated through sponsorship, the Kunstverein should reach out to different groups in the city. [5] “The objective of the Kunstverein München is no longer the presentation of objects from a tightly restricted space for private consumption. It is rather to integrate information about all phenomena occurring in the fine arts with their respective socio- political contexts into circles of information and experience with the purpose of including groups that were previously excluded through a specific type of selection and presentation of objects. One could call this a reversal of the KV’s goals.” [6] Again and again there are disputes between the “activist institution” [7] and the Ministry of Culture about the anti-bourgeois program and whether or not it should be supported—in addition to exhibitions about the class struggle in various places and times [8] and the actions taking place in the art association, the staff is also viewed with suspicion. The new board members, some of whom are already active in the controversial Aktionsraum 1 (Action Area 1), are presumed to have an agenda hostile to the state. Funding is put into question due to the ostensibly clearly political motives of the association. “That was a great situation that you could only create together,” reports gallerist Barbara Gross about these years and the commitment outside of professions, “because we weren't professional back then.” [9]
The exhibition Kunst als Waffe. Die ASSO und die revolutionäre bildende Kunst der 20er Jahre (Art as a Weapon. The ASSO and the Revolutionary Visual Arts of the 20s) was created in collaboration with the DKP (German Communist Party) in 1971. This exhibition showed exactly those anti-fascist art movements that did not take place at the Munich Kunstverein at the time of their inception. Curatorial attempts are also made to create a kind of antithesis to the association’s history. The art historian Richard Hiepe presents the organization ARBKD— shaped by workers and artists, founded in 1928 and banned in 1933—as “the social revolution’s alternative to all bourgeois notions of art.” [10]
In addition to such resolute exhibitions, which also lead to the cancellation of funds, the institution also transformed into a kind of forum during this time. The Kunstverein’s development into a place where left-wing political movements gather often causes dissatisfaction. “Everything that is negotiated in the KVM rooms is uncontrolled. In any case, the rooms were never intended for overnight stays by half-mad people.” [11] The building is used for other purposes by many different groups, for example as a discussion and meeting place in advance of protests. “The women’s movement’s demonstrations at Odeonsplatz were organized and prepared here in the Kunstverein - they dressed up here, put on make-up here, and went out to Odeonsplatz from here and attacked and provoked Cardinal Döpfner and the church and, so to speak, carried women’s political discourse into the public sphere. The first German women’s congress took place here in the Kunstverein.” The Kunstverein was “not a motor, but a platform” [12], reports then-director Haimo Liebich in an interview about the time. At the Women’s meeting of the German Women’s Emancipation Groups in 1973, several hundred participants from ten cities convened to settle on possible collective strategies.
With the subsequent managing director Hans J. Grollmann, the Kunstverein organizes, among other things, the documentary exhibition ‘Guest Workers’ – On the Status of Foreign Workers in the FRG (1975). In the exhibition, Greek workers together with Munich academy students criticize worker exploitation by German companies and the associated catastrophic housing situation, as well as “Germany as a class society.” [13] The danger that these new subject areas could “drive into bourgeois tracks” [14] or turn into “an object of bourgeois scholarship” [15] is successfully avoided through many formal experiments, for example the invitation of a children’s theater to explain the “solidarity problem,” or the fact that the exhibition subsequently wanders out of the institution into the urban space; parts of it are shown in a Greek pub.
“But you don’t have to pay at the Munich Hofgarten.” [16]
How does the concept of class change at the Kunstverein up until the 90s? On the one hand, art no longer invites unrestricted dreaming. On the other hand, the concept of work is no longer positively charged. It slowly became clear “that aesthetic motives such as creativity, spontaneity, and originality no longer indicate a privileged area of freedom beyond constraints related to reproduction, but have themselves become such an important productive force of the capitalist economic system that they have turned into decisive social demands, which means more coercion than freedom for the individual.” [17] When Hedwig Saxenhuber, Helmut Draxler, and their milieu took over the Kunstverein in 1992, the racist pogroms in Hoyerswerda, Solingen, Rostock-Lichtenhagen, and Mölln created a newly heated nationalist initial climate to which the Kunstverein responded with an emphatically anti-racist artistic program. This program included the aforementioned “classic” exhibition, Xenophobia and the Indexical Present by Adrian Piper, whose texts and the class concept of incompatibility developed within them, fit very well with the direction of the coming years: “If what you are interested in is the pure enjoyment of art, then our interests diverge. If it is just categorization, then our interests contradict one another. If it concerns relaxation or the search for new sources of investment or edification, then our interests are incompatible.” [18] Indeed, the program is not limited to art, but seeks cooperation with autonomous, anti-racist groups, loose communities, or neighborhood initiatives with which a large part of the content and operations are developed. [19] It is not uncommon for the connections that emerged there (such as with the magazine collective Hilfe) to remain active for years. There is also overlap with intersectional Wohlfahrtsausschüsse (welfare committees), in which various actors such as Absolute Beginner, Katja Diefenbach, Diedrich Diederichsen, Die Goldenen Zitronen, or Blumfeld are involved.
Like the working groups of the early 1970s, they also take a very close look at the history, direction, and development of the Kunstverein and react to it from an updated perspective. They identify the fundamental change between the radical ideas of the 70s and their institutional present as, among other things, increased professionalization. They make this particularly clear in their research by analyzing a new renovation of the building in the mid-80s. The archival analysis of the institution in the context of the The Society of Taste by Andrea Fraser (1993) now diagnoses at least a partial diversification of the association’s membership— but also the Kunstverein’s desire to be able to compete and assert itself in an international market of institutions.
The exhibition area, felt by many to be musty and associated with local insignificance, was exposed in 1985: the apparently strong-smelling carpet and the now dirty false ceiling made of steel cable and plastic tarpaulin were removed, thus emphasizing the representative, pseudo- classical elements [21] of the rooms [22]. The function of social exchange aimed at since the 1970s is being shifted in the direction of the white cube—ready to be filled with important names so as not to be left out in the competition between institutions. In the course of this, however, the “function of societal legitimization of social differences (...)” [23] is fulfilled. According to Andrea Fraser, this mechanism functions “because the competencies and dispositions reified in art objects express the culture of the professional participants in the art business as a class as they do the culture of art collectors. And the art professionals have an even greater interest in the reproduction of their values.” [24]
The Kunstverein of the early 90s positioned itself with this increased professionalism in all areas. This is reflected, for example, in the extensive renouncement of names in the program that had already been economically established, or of a corporate identity in publication design. This is also made very clear, for example, by the anti-hierarchical naming of the staff involved in the imprint and in some cases the complete eschewal of authors’ names in accompanying publications. In addition to a consistent problematization of the concept of “work” associated with “class,” there is more work on the concept and contemporary polemics against too-high hopes placed on “I” and everything “that is considered a person.” [25]
Much of what was then approached with an emancipatory reaction to the increasingly affirmative professionalization of the institution appears today, under changed conditions. According to the statements of those involved at the time, this almost certainly occurs out of compulsion (“always be careful” with these “buzzwords” [26]). At that time, however, these efforts were not the path of least resistance, but were rooted in a belief in the potential for productive change in the institution, if not in the wider art world—and it was obviously fun too. With regard to addressing the audience, the Kunstverein neither claimed to address every public equally, nor did they handle the program with exclusive specialized language. Many of the problems diagnosed back then have certainly worsened over time, which is why it is certainly worthwhile to go back to the not-too-clumsy ideas that were already formulated at the time.
Analyses of underlying colonialist assumptions in film and theory (especially Trinh T. Minh-ha 1995, in contemporary art and design (e.g. Christian Philipp Müller: Vergessene Zukunft 1993, influential feminist exhibitions Oh Boy, it's a Girl 1994, Game GRRRL 1994, deliberately unprofessional group projects such as Die Utopie des Designs (1994), which examined social demands and realities from the Olympiazentrum to Neuperlach Süd, and in the collective knowledge production initiated by Stephan Dillemuth without the constraining pressure of academic communication at the Summer Academy in 1994 anticipate much of what is happening today—often with dogged seriousness—in art. “Indirect profitability for the art world” is to be avoided and the addressed public is “no longer the universalistic art audience that assimilates every topic in an aesthetic manner, but the specific scenes and groups of the city.” [27] Many projects also deal directly in buzzwords that the Kunstverein, as a specialized milieu, delivers. One example of this is the conversation around the bourgeois family model of individual housing in Die Arena des Privaten (The Arena of the Private) (1993), whose findings also sound current: “A person is already considered political if he can state faultlessly in public that he is for good and against evil. The collapse of political consciousness has resulted in stubborn grumbling, an addiction to lawsuits, and sectionalism.” [28]
At the same time and in the course of the following four years, things are increasingly taking place in the Kunstverein that have nothing to do with art (or self-representation). “In the middle of the city, in the midst of the concrete forms of daily tedium” [29], the rooms are made available, similar to the 70s, for art-free activities, or pleasantly profaned for a table tennis tournament—in Renée Green’s contribution to the Sommerakademie, today’s archive room becomes rented for arbitrary purposes, at one point being used for saxophone lessons. Viewed from today’s perspective, the accusation of arbitrariness often levelled by the daily press must be countered by referencing the intense arguments between different positions within the Kunstverein, whose aim was not to rashly work out less-than-complex solutions, but to practice a tolerance of ambiguity. This theory, which is always very present, evidently does not exude much of a seminar-atmosphere. It lies “beyond academic specialization” [30] and, according to accounts from those involved at the time, does not constitute a commodified by-product of art. Instead, a continuous theory-activity develops, with which one can argue about terminology in a thoroughly entertaining way: “The utopia of cyborg-communism exclusively addresses the thin layer of technoscientific intelligence and neglects the ongoing reality of exploitation and stupor brought on by labor.” [31] One could also argue about work in general: “To-have-to-work (...) always comes back to the point not only to have to earn money—somehow—but also to focus your own organization or discipline on getting something clear, tidying up, not falling behind and sinking into tasks or plans that have not been completed.” [32]
The program polarized strongly—“but we had already gambled with our opponents anyway.” [33] The way the rooms were handled corresponded to the tendency to obscure the institution’s social expectations. Wherein lay the exciting indeterminacy into which the Kunstverein was transformed at the time? The Kunstverein differentiates itself from many approaches in which “discourse is ‘organized’ in such a way that it prevents thinking from taking place (...) More forms of practice, more difference, instead of poor amalgamation. It would be more about defense of one thing and another instead of defending one thing rather than another. Not art as theory, not theory as art, but art and theory.” [34] Accordingly, there were also very many truly “nice” exhibitions by Christopher Williams, Louise Lawler, or IMI Giese, among others, that didn’t make it easy to “push the whole thing into an alternative corner. The aim was to work with contrasts, i.e., to not simply set the local against the international art world or the political against the aesthetic, the activistic against the installative, but rather to create connections that were as surprising as possible. That means the audience shouldn’t know what to expect, and this work on different expectations always seemed to have something to do with how a respective class habitus could be addressed.” [35]
Text: Adrian Djukic
Translation and Editing: Annabelle Berghof and Gloria Hasnay
Many thanks to Stephan Janitzky, Ingrid Scherf, Doris Würgert, and Laura Ziegler
If you have any questions about the Martina Fuchs Archive, please contact Jonas von Lenthe via archiv@kunstverein-muenchen.de.
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Footnotes:
[1] For example, in the context of the talk show on Telling Histories, 2003 (accessed July 20, 2021).
[2] BayHStA, Ministry of Culture (MK) 51577, letter from the press department dated August 28, 1970.
[3] The first exhibition activities after the foundation in 1823 did not take place until 1824.
[4] BayHStA, Ministry of Culture (MK) 51577, invitation to the general meeting, July 28, 1970.
[5] According to the then deputy chairman Frank Thomas Gaulin in the television report “Grenzland Kunstetat” of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, November 24, 1971.
[6] Kunstverein München e.V.: 150 Jahre Kunstverein München. Dokumentation zur Frühgeschichte des Kunstvereins. Jahresgaben des Kunstvereins 1826 bis 1973/74 (Munich: Kunstverein München, 1974), p. 12.
[7] Such a designation for the Kunstverein in: Kunstverein München e.V.: Andrea Fraser: A Society of Taste, Munich 1993.
[8] E.g. Arte Povera (1971), Eduardo Arroyo (1971) or Renato Guttuso (1972).
[9] “Interview with Barbara Gross,” in: Maria Lind et al. (eds.): Spring Fall 02 - 04, gesammelte Drucksachen, collected newsletters / Kunstverein München (Frankfurt: Revolver, 2005), pp. 181-185, here: p. 185.
[10] Kunstverein München e.V.: Die ASSO und die revolutionäre bildende Kunst der 20er Jahre, (Munich: Kunstverein München, 1971), p.11.
[11] BayHStA, Ministry of Culture (MK) 51577, letter Baldwin dated February 2, 1971.
[12] Conversation with Haimo Liebich at the Kunstverein on November 3, 2020.
[13] Karl Stankiewitz: “Heile Welt - triste Welt. Bilder und Dokumente über Gastarbeiter im Münchner Kunstverein,” Münchner Merkur 150, July 4, 1975.
[14] Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch (ed.): Riten der Selbstauflösung, (Munich: Matthes & Seitz, 1982), p. 22.
[15] “Ein Gespräch zwischen Harun Farocki, Georges Didi-Huberman und Ludger Schwarte im Schaulager Basel, 2008.
Dispersion und Montage,” textezurkunst.de/articles/interview-schwarte-farocki-huberman (accessed June 28, 2021).
[16] Thus the Landshuter Zeitung of February 14, 1995 on the exhibition No Hesitation, No Repetition, No Deviation by Cathy Skene and Christoph Schäfer, in which visitors could choose pieces of clothing if they left something in return.
[17] Juliane Rebentisch: The Art of Freedom: On the Dialectics of Democratic Existence, (Polity: Milton, 2016), p. 12.
[18] Adrian Piper: “Some Thoughts on the Political Character of this Situation”, in: Sabine Breitwieser (ed.): Adrian Piper seit 1965: Metakunst und Kunstkritik, (Cologne: Walther König, 2002), pp. 227-228, here: S. 228.
[19] Besides the first European solo exhibition of Adrian Piper in 1992 presented in the Archive Newsletter No.2, for example, FF REW Film - Films of the Black Diaspora in Great Britain 1975-1989 (1995), but also numerous events, among others the Agentur Bilwet (February 11, 1994) or as part of the Summer Academy (1994).
[20] The editorial team consisted of Katja Diefenbach, Helmut Draxler, Stephan Gregory, Reinhard Jellen, Pia Lanzinger, Ingrid Scherf, Jürgen Söder, Jan Strzelczyk, and Hartwig Tesar, among others. More on this: material-verlag.hfbk-hamburg.de/material/423-die-arbeitinfo (accessed July 16, 2021). Also to be mentioned here are, among others, minimal club (Berlin/Munich), the magazine collective Die Beute, or the group BüroBert (Düsseldorf).
[21] Jochen Becker: “Vorstädter Raus”, taz, March 3, 1993.
[22] Interview with Helmut Draxler in: Fareed Armaly: Parts: Volume 1. arcades / entrance. (Munich: Kunstverein München, 1997), o.p. The premises were additionally “enriched with a fascistoid aesthetic.”
[23] Helmut Draxler: “The Cultural Capital of the Kunstverein,” in: Andrea Fraser: A Society of Taste, pp. 4-22, here: p. 20.
[24] Andrea Fraser: “It is art when I say it is, or...,” in: Texte zur Kunst No.20, November 1995, pp. 35-40, here: p. 37.
[25] Press announcement on Game GRRRL (1994).
[26] “Gabi Czöppan und Maribel Königer im Gespräch mit Helmut Draxler: ‘Der Kunstverein wird zum Hörsaal, aber er verkommt dabei nicht...’”, in: Kunstforum No.115, pp. 386c389, here: p. 387.
[27] Helmut Draxler, Hedwig Saxenhuber: “(Re-)Politisierung und kuratorische Produktion,” in: Bernd Miller, Heike Munder (eds.): Tatort Kunstverein - eine kritische Überprüfung eines Vermittlungsmodells, (Nuremberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2001), pp. 39-46, here: p. 46.
[28] Television report on Die Arena des Privaten on Bayerischer Rundfunk, April 14, 1993.
[29] Bilwet Agency: “Ursprüngliches Besetzen. Nachrichten aus einer autonomen Wirklichkeit,” in: Martin Hoffmann (ed.): SubversionsReader. Texte zu Politik und Kultur. 10 Jahre ID Verlag, (Berlin: Edition IDcArchiv, 1998), pp. 11-27, here: p. 12.
[30] “Kunst und Techno. Performance im Kunstverein,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 11, 1994.
[31] “Kommunismus für Eliten - Toni Negri's fröhlicher Operaismus,” Vierte Hilfe. Illustrierte Theorie für das Dienstleistungsproletariat, Winter 1997, pp. 39-41.
[32] “Auto*matik – Arbeit, Nicht-Arbeit, Ersatz, happy oder unhappy Lebensunterhalt,” ibid., pp. 42-45, here: p. 42.
[33] Tatort Kunstverein, p. 42.
[34] “21 Jahre nach dem Erscheinen von ‘Zum Zusammenhang’ in Team Compendium spricht MUSS STERBEN mit JULIANE REBENTISCH über ihren Text und was sich seit damals verändert hat,” Europa Muss Sterben #5 2017, o.p.
[35] Conversation with Helmut Draxler, July 9, 2021.
Fig.:
[1] Frauentreffen der deutschen Frauenemanzipationsgruppen, Kunstverein München, 1973. Foto: Margarete von Diringshofen. COurtesy Stadtarchiv München (FS-NL-DIR-10).
[2] "tz-Rose" für die Abwahl des konservativen Vorstandes 20.09.1970
[3] Jannis Karydakis: Abb. aus "Gastabeiter" - zur Lage ausländische Arbeiter in der BRD. Ausstellungskatalog, Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V., 1975.
[4] Installationsansicht: One Person Repressed Past Is Another Persons Life in: Cathy Skene & Christoph Schäfer: No Hesitation, No repitation, Do Deviation. Kunstverein München, 1995. Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V.; Foto: Wilfried Petzi.
[5] Fundstück aus dem Archiv (Sommerakademie, 1994)
[6] Installationsansicht: Group Material, Market, Kunstverein München, Infoscreen U-Bahn München, 1995. Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V.; Foto: Wilfried Petzi.
[7] Katalog-Cover: Kunst als Waffe. Die ASSO und die revolutionäre bildende Kunst der 20er Jahre, 1971. Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V.
[8] Installationsansicht: 15 Jahre 1980, Kunstverein München, 1995. Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V., Foto: Ingrid Scherf.