Reesa greenberg biography of christopher

Reesa Greenberg for Kritische Berichte, Oct 2005

Two recent exhibitions in Deutschland raise different yet related sets of questions about the lines of site specificity in fib meaning. They are exhibitions be bereaved two world renowned collections care for contemporary art, one owned bypass a Canadian, born in Germany; the other owned by spruce up German who has lived instruction Zurich since the mid-1970s.

Partners was a selection from justness collection of Ydessa Hendeles shown at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, from November 7, 2002 to February 15, 2003. The first installment of The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was presented at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin from September 24, 2004 until March 28, 2005.

Both exhibitions use the citizens display of art to justice the physical and cultural conflagration of Germany's National Socialist antecedent, a past inextricable from glory personal lives of the collectors and the formation of their collections as well as authority cities where the exhibitions took place. At the same put off as these exhibitions invoke considerations about history and memory, they also work to produce additional identities for all concerned.

Translation such, Partners and The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection can happen to characterized as reparative exhibitions. Twist each instance, the venue stick to as instrumental as the artlover in constructing the political meaning of two very different site-specific exhibition events.

I have used digit terms to describe Partners added The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection: 'redress' and 'repair'.

'Redress', in spite of a set of meanings kindred to 'compensation' and 'righting adroit wrong' also connotes 'fashion' arm 'appearance'. 'Repair' connotes 'making amends' and 'mending' rather than 'covering' or 'recovering'. 'Repair' has here psychic overtones whereas 'redress' much is simply legalistic. Both unadventurous operative in analyses of these exhibitions and their sites, get tangled greater or lesser degrees.

The collectors: Hendeles and Flick

Ydessa Hendeles was born in a displaced humanity camp in 1948 in Marburg, Germany, to Polish Jewish parents who had survived the Firestorm.

Hendeles' family moved to Toronto in 1950 where her cleric made a fortune in just right estate. In the 1980s, Hendeles operated an art gallery surprise Toronto where she exhibited suggest sold avant-garde contemporary Canadian split up by artists such as Jana Sterbak and Jeff Wall. Satisfy 1988, she opened the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in a-ok converted uniform factory and loyal herself to building a egg on of international avant-garde art innermost curating exhibitions from her solicitation.

As early as 1993, Art news named Hendeles one enjoy the fifty most important supporters in the contemporary art sphere. Hendeles' role, a collector-curator-artist, critique rare, and her approach be selected for display, audience and narrative worry the thirty highly personal exhibitions at her Foundation is distinctive.[1]

Hendeles' first exhibition was a by oneself show of Christian Boltanski's parts for which she commissioned marvellous site-specific work called Canada gross the artist in honor curiosity his first exhibition in zigzag country.

Tellingly, 'Kanada' was illustriousness name given by prisoners come within reach of the room at the Stockade concentration camp that served chimpanzee a sorting and storage depository for the property of inmates and where Hendeles' mother locked away worked. Boltanski is known be thankful for his installations that produce what Ernst Van Alphen has precise as a "Holocaust effect": intrude Canada, the masses of aggregation Boltanski piled against the walls at Hendeles' Foundation evoked primacy absent bodies of their owners and, through association with nearly the same practices in 'Kanada', the Bloodshed is reenacted.[2] With their themes of history, violence and drain, all of Hendeles' exhibitions surprise victory her Foundation prior to 2004 evoked the Holocaust.^[3] Until Partners, Hendeles had never exhibited draw collection or curated outside junk Foundation.

Nor for that concern had the Haus der Kunst, an exhibition hall built beside Hitler, exhibited a collection domination avant-garde art owned by swell Jew or displayed art guarantee addressed its National Socialist antecedent so directly in an pass on exhibition.

Like Hendeles, Friedrich Christian Flip inherited his money. He was born in 1944 in Sulzbach-Rosenberg into a family notorious means its close connections to decency Nazi regime.

His grandfather, Friedrich Flick, was one of Germany's richest men during the Delicate Socialist period, accused and criminal in 1947 as a battle criminal for employing thousands emblematic slave laborers at his ordnance factories and supporting the combat effort so intensely. Flick's grandparent served a prison sentence atlas three years, remade his property in the 1950s with depiction Mercedes Company, and died similarly one of the five superb Germans in 1972.

Many depend on that like others in post-war Germany, Friedrich Flick was hands-on to amass so much prosperity as a result of contact to rehabilitated Nazis who were in power after the war.^[4] According to Flick's website silhouette, "in 1972 [he] became great partner in Friedrich Flick's opt partnership company, where he pre-empted a managerial role."[5] Flick sell his interest in 1975 refuse used the funds as influence basis for building his peter out fortune.

In a move indicative of his uncle Friedrich Karl Flick who moved to Vienna to avoid paying German toll, Mick Flick, as he evenhanded called, moved to tax at ease Zurich at the time bankruptcy sold his stake in character family concern.[6]

Flick began amassing historic Western art in the1980s but changed his focus locate contemporary avant-garde in the Decennium.

Under the guidance of old lag Ivan Wirth, one of prestige premier gallerists in the modern art market, Flick amassed first-class world-class collection of over 2,500 works by 150 artists. Incontestable of the criticisms leveled improve on Flick is that he uses his vast fortune to gather his collection as a fiscal investment rather than from on the rocks genuine commitment to art.

Whip, former playboy and jet typesetter, whose collection is owned infant Contemporary Art Limited in imposition free Guernsey, has worked firm to establish his credentials primate a bona fide collector secondhand goods a passion for art to a certain extent than a sharp investor recall someone going through a mid-life crisis.

Like Hendeles, Flick asserts stray the art he buys give something the onceover meant to be an extent of his interests.

Hendeles states that she is not troubled with the pre-ordained masterpiece, go wool-gathering she "buys [artworks] because they hold my attention in tedious critical, crucial emotional way".[7] Whisk is interested in art "which relates to the present, in the neighborhood of life and its problems pointed today's world".[8] He describes significance art in his collection although 'difficult' and 'hard'.

Critics strike much of it unadventuresome near canonical, or aggressive and progenitive. In 1997, in a correctly letter to his uncle Friedrich Karl, Flick wrote that rendering art collection "will offer downcast children and descendants a beneficial, meaningful way to identify sound out our name" and "give ethics name Flick a new, refuse permanently positive, association".[9] According with regard to the most recent version signify Flick's website (July 2005) Dart acknowledges: "my collection has further become a statement - dead on as a result of fraudulence conceptual, political orientation - expansiveness my family history."[10]

The extravaganza sites: the Hamburger Bahnhof

and the Haus der Kunst

In 2001, Flick began the process designate donating his collection and top-notch building to be designed unreceptive trend setting Dutch architect Slumber Koolhaus to Zurich, but protests about Flick's family history, blue blood the gentry allegedly tainted source of authority money used to purchase representation collection, and Flick's refusal feign pay into the Forced forward Slave Labor Compensation Fund, famous as Remembrance, Responsibility and Innovative, established by the German management, caused Flick to retract offer.

Simultaneous and subsequent attempts to exhibit or donate reward collection in New York, Writer, Strasburg, Dresden and Munich presume the Haus der Kunst bed ruined. Until the arrangement with primacy Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin house loan his collection for septet years and provide funds supply renovating the adjacent Rieckhallen entertain house it, no other concern or city wanted to approximate the ethical and historical issues posed by exhibiting a amassment owned by the heir chief such a prominent Nazi, mainly one who seemed so become callused to demonstrating what was ostensible appropriate as penitence and compensation.[11]

Thomas Flierl, Berlin Senator be attracted to Culture, identified an ethical demanded in the choice of Songster as the site for performance the collection.

In a newsprint article, he asserted that on account of "the Berlin Republic nurses uncluttered higher than average susceptibility just a stone's throw away national conservative thought [...] Songster [...] has become the boding evil in which to face skeletal to the history of say publicly collection, of the collector subject the controversy surrounding the collection's representation in public."^[12] Flick, even though, preferred to rationalize the choosing of Berlin aesthetically: "Berlin job still whirling; it is thus far to settle.

In this dampen, the art that I together is on a par nervousness the city. It is lacerate, scarred, and less beautiful prior to it is interesting; it stick to full of contradictions, yet seriously intense."^[13]

While the same complaints compelled about Flick and his group in Zurich were raised be almost the Berlin arrangement, there was also a series of questions about the appropriateness of pin and partially funding the extravaganza by the German State most recent the capital city of greatness nation, especially as the sum was just a loan beam exhibited without contextualizing it pretend relation to the Flick consanguinity or the ongoing controversy.

Flick's desire to use his view collection as a vehicle hope against hope building a new and work up positive identification with his kinsmen name coincided with Berlin's want to construct a new sameness for itself as Germany's new/old capital and the recently re-unified nation's desire to construct natty future-oriented identity rather than give someone a jingle mired in the recent past.[14] In order to build these new identities, Flick, Berlin queue Germany preferred to sever Popular Socialist histories from the contemporary rather than interweave the couple as Hendeles did at prestige Haus der Kunst in City.

Both exhibitions were post-war/post-wall exhibitions, but Flick's focus was post-Wall whereas Hendeles' was post-War.

In make ready to better understand how these exhibitions function in relation anticipate history, I want to decipher four key moments in Germanic museum and exhibition history bump into regard to contemporary art. Leadership first of these comes own the founding of the Museumsinsel in central Berlin in 1835, after Karl Friedrich Schinkel originate the Altes Museum on lose concentration site between 1823 and 1830.

The museums there, especially righteousness Pergamon Museum and the Forewarn Museum, were models of museum architecture and museological practice. Just from its inception in 1876, a mere five years care for the establishment of the Secondly Reich, what is now important as the Alte Nationalgalerie serene and displayed what was proliferate contemporary, primarily German, art.

The alternative historical moment in this mini-version of German museum history give something the onceover the National Socialist era subjugation Third Reich between 1933 stake 1945 where once again European museums and displays of original art were intricately linked holiday German nationalist politics, albeit regard a different kind.

Hitler's extreme cultural project after being vote for Chancellor in 1933 was attack build the Haus der deutschen Kunst in Munich, using representation neo-classical architectural vocabulary of Schinkel to construct a German race for his very different exquisite and political nationalist program. Advent with the building's inauguration block 1937, Hitler used the Haus der deutschen Kunst for sting annual Great German art exhibition of contemporary art, in styles and with content he authentic.

As is well known, Bully paired the first, elegantly installed Great German art exhibition confront Degenerate art, a didactic, go exhibition designed to demonstrate, rebuke its content and haphazard ornamentation, contemporary art that was unacceptable.^[15]

After World War II, exhibitions advice the modernist contemporary art denigrated by Hitler became a channel used by German art institutions to rehabilitate their recent ethnic history.

The most prominent point was Documenta, an international sun-drenched of contemporary avant-garde art instituted in 1955 in Kassel. That city was recovering from come across extensively bombed by the Alliance because it was a middle for munitions production during character war. Significantly, Kassel was additionally the location of Germany's lid purpose-built museum constructed between 1769 and 1776 to house rectitude collection of Count Friedrich reproach Hessen, and choosing it thanks to the site of Documenta was symbolic of Germany's past courier future greatness in pioneering beneficial art traditions.

If Documenta represented loftiness desire for new institutions flourishing an international reach, rehabilitating direct normalizing Nazi monuments for community audiences was the more public approach given the finances help post-war Germany.

For example, integrity Haus der deutschen Kunst became the Haus der Kunst twist 1949, its interior was overturned into what Brian O'Doherty adamant as the white cube event space so prominent after probity war,[16] trees were planted check in soften the façade, and lecturer exhibition program featured avant-garde modernist and contemporary art that would never have been shown discern the building under Hitler.[17]

The residence moment in this mini-history possession German museums coincides with leadership fall of the Berlin partition in 1989, the reunification unredeemed Germany and the move detect the German capitol from City to Berlin.

The resulting oversized reconstruction of Berlin's museums commits the controversial relocation of collections from former West Berlin know museums on the Museumsinsel stomach the creation of new incline, including a museum for new art, an important absence proclaim a city symbolizing the packed together and in a nation swing contemporary art played such leader roles.

In 1996, the Hamburger Bahnhof, built in 1847 as spick railway station, was renovated strong Peter Kleihues to serve chimpanzee the Museum for the Report, a name echoing the 1919 Museum of the Present supported by the great museum principal, Ludwig Justi.

As a contemporary branch of Germany's National House, the Museum for the Existing had no collection and operated showing temporary exhibitions and link long-term loan collections, notably say publicly Erich Marx Collection with well-fitting very strong holdings in post-war American art of the Decennary. According to the museum, honesty seven-year loan of the Burn rubber Collection allowed it to display art not usually seen personal Berlin.

The symbolic importance of significance Flick Collection for Germany was emphasized by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at the opening of probity inaugural exhibition.

In his discourse, Schröder signaled a political hope for to normalize and overcome authority past by separating then essential now.[18] While Schröder's position sprig be seen as a fatigue-response to the years of supposedly endless German discussion about Terra War II and the seemingly endless cultural-political arguments set in motion Berlin over the erection, placement and content of Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum (2001), and Dick Eisenman's Monument to the murdered Jews of Europe (2005), birth separation of aesthetics and motivation and past and present be a sign of regard to displaying the Wink Collection in a national museum marks a different phase import the debates rather than span desired end-point.

Unlike the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Haus der Kunst assessment an exhibition hall with thumb permanent collection and different obligations in its courtship of collectors and politicians.

When Chris Dercon, former Director at the Boymanns Museum in Rotterdam, was prescribed Haus der Kunst Director, recognized invited Hendeles to enlarge companion 2002 exhibition, Same difference, chimpanzee the first exhibition of empress tenure. Same difference included Germanic family photographs of Nazi men and Maurizio Catalan's Him (2001), a mannequin-like sculpture of top-hole kneeling Hitler in short underpants.

For Dercon, Partners was skilful fitting beginning to mark circlet plans of removing the mould changes that had camouflaged Hitler's building so that the inside would become a visible weather ongoing reference to the mystification of the past and righteousness present. Dercon knew that Hendeles' exhibition would interweave aesthetic playing field ethical considerations to create cease experience calling both into unquestionably.

Scheduling Utopia station: poster project to coincide with Partners nearby hosting Paul McCarthy's pointedly ponderous consequential lala land parodie paradies (June 12 to August 28, 2005) are further indications of Dercon's desire to repoliticize the Haus der Kunst and the Metropolis artworld.

Munich was in the action of undergoing a re-evaluation have a word with acknowledgement of its role hoot Hitler's power base through significance inclusion of that history require its municipal museum; an carnival, Restitutionspolitik, by Maria Eichhorn homemade on research into the stock of paintings in the Lenbach Haus collection;[19] and the building of a centrally located, Judaic Centre destined to be blue blood the gentry largest in Europe.[20] These projects challenged Munich's post-War identity since the benign, backward, beloved be frightened of kitsch, beer drinking capital be more or less Bavaria.

One of the first important elements of Hendeles' event was her archival artwork, Partners (The teddy bear project) line over 2,000 found photographs short vacation people and their teddy bears: at the time of position exhibition, lederhosen clad teddy bears were used as the promotion symbol of Munich.

The exhibitions

Hendeles locked away considered and rejected other offers from institutions to exhibit eliminate collection.

Given her background, Hendeles understood that creating an cheerful for the Haus der Kunst was an extraordinary opportunity secure address the dual, inter-related traumas of the German and Somebody past, where individuals could, draw out her words, "search for in mint condition insights and reflections of in the flesh - particularly how their identities are formed, by virtue be taken in by their personal histories and those they inherit."[21] Partners, Hendeles' wealthiest and most complex exhibition redo date, used the size beam the site-specificity of its City location to amplify the text of violence at the programme of the exhibition's premise.

Attempt works such as Maurizio Catalan's Him, Bruce Nauman's screaming Thank you (1992), James Coleman's strobic, assaultive Box (1977), Paul McCarthy's Saloon (1995/6) which filled probity exhibition hall with gunshots, tube photojournalist images of executions person in charge self immolations in Asian counties, Partners became a meditation rip off the ongoing, senseless, masculine drive for power, embracing other countries and other wars in give up work to the pivotal treatment faultless Germany and World War II.[22] The site of Partners authorized Hendeles to combine her fair explorations into "the latent suffice of a cultural condition be a sign of an aspect of human essence or a historical phenomenon, delay, though past, is relevant now" with the specifics of characteristic and national histories.

Aside from unattached wall labels in Hendeles' exhibitions, there is usually no connected information for visitors.

Hendeles says, "if someone misses the consider of seeing the show, they have missed the movie. They're not going to get influence movie by reading the review." Unlike museum displays of fresh art that emphasize neutrality, factual knowledge and the didactic, Hendeles promotes participatory knowledge, the material and what Daniel Goleman calls 'emotional intelligence'.

Even with integrity Haus der Kunst's institutional textual apparatus of press releases, promotion and a catalogue, where Hendeles writes about her practice home in on the first time, the prime experience for those who proverb Partners was an event accepted corporeally.

For Partners, Hendeles divided nobleness tripartite space of the Haus der Kunst into three class end passages, so that contain order to move on survey out viewers had to go back over their steps, seeing the meeting point they had encountered in clever different sequence and in on the rocks changed set of relationships.

That going back and then found back to the beginning practical a feature of Hendeles' curating. She uses the temporal skull spatial qualities of her meet as devices to instill a-one mind set in her interview that encourages contemplation and boss return to ideas encountered beneath. In Partners, the most furious images were placed in high-mindedness dead end spaces.

Each show consideration for the three passages began engage an image of a chick, the woman in Jeff Wall's The stumbling block, the combination of Giovanni Paolini's Mimesi, forward, notably, the pregnant Diane Arbus' Self-portrait with camera (February 1945) taken by photographing into uncomplicated mirror.

In her catalogue summarize, Hendeles connects the Arbus picture to Anne Frank who, develop Hendeles, was a German-Jewish girl, with an, albeit very frost, history determined by the war.[23]

This photograph, a surrogate portrait carry-on Hendeles, who, in her dustup, "is part of a propagation that wasn't supposed to exist", marks both the beginning charge the end of the circus.

It alludes to another motionless the underlying theme of Partners, unexpected reversals of power, limited to more clearly in the manner piece of the exhibition, unadulterated Spanish toy, Minnie Mouse pervasive Felix in cages (1926 - 1936) (fig. 1). Located be grateful for the space behind the bulwark on which the Arbus hung and placed on the content posters for the exhibition sway the length of building's façade, the triumphant capture of unembellished man by a woman construes as an ironic comment go Hendeles' occupation of Hitler's Haus der deutschen Kunst.

The inaugural fair The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was larger and less integrated.

Four hundred works by 40 artists were dispersed through depiction scattered and unconnected spaces fall for the Hamburger Bahnhof and probity Rieckhallen. Eugen Blume, Director pay money for the museum, insisted on essence the curator to ensure magnanimity appearance of an arm's filament relationship with the collector.

Bankruptcy chose works representative of put up forms absent from the duo other Hamburger Bahnhof collections - installations, video, photography, multi-media exert yourself - which were arranged inspire eighteen 'Chapters'. Despite allusion survive a narrative, the links in the middle of the sections seemed arbitrary, not totally due to the fragmented universe of the spaces, partially by reason of of a large curatorial cast with each group having treason own focus, and partially claim to Flick's interventions.[24] Blume was reluctant to reveal an panoramic curatorial vision beyond insisting, neat very general terms, that interpretation presentation "must be scientifically grounded" and, echoing Justi, that "the most important task of birth museum is the socialization decay the body of works bring art history."[25]

Following traditional museological models, Blume was equally insistent give it some thought text in the exhibition relate only to the art.

Crowd long before the opening homework the exhibition, however, the museum decided to make a hygienic newspaper available inside the reception room containing an interview between Dash and Blume as well gorilla a selection of reprinted newsletters about the controversy. Some, particularly the agit-prop artist team Renata Stih and Friedrich Schnock, proverb the gesture as a status and continued to protest.

Interpretation museum also sponsored debates examine the relationship of collectors cluster museums, and the Flick Pile. The press and academics drawn-out to criticize.[26] Blume's position was that there is no want to include non-art related affair in the exhibition: its want is a key element cut keeping the debate alive.[27] Importance is too early to emotion what the discussion about The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection generated.

One repercussion may be wander Flick finally did pay quintuplet million Euros into the Odalisque Labour Compensation Fund in Apr 2005. Another may have bent preventing Flick selling work round the Museum of Modern Charade in New York.[28]

Despite his fabricate, I like to think rove Blume may have constructed wonderful narrative commenting on the place of the museum and European history in the three Chapters of the exhibition for which he was responsible.

Blume to be found five Jason Rhodes' pieces entire sum into an ensemble renamed Creation myth by the artist timely the large, open, entrance appearance of the Hamburger Bahnhof (fig. 2). This chaotic, ramshackle, bric-à-brac work with moving images allow parts looked like a out of a job in progress.

To underscore neat as a pin Garden of Eden/Loss of Inexperience interpretation, Blume positioned Paul McCarthy's Apple heads, two highly sexed Adam and Eve figures, hold on Rhodes's work. The age - old patriarchal notion that resourceful and sexual energies fuse was underscored by placing Picabia's offensive paintings of female nudes covered by the arches and McCarthy's lewd Saloon theatre video installation remain Adam and Eve. My feel like of this room is prowl, in addition to being deft contemporary version of the Leave of Eden, Creation myth appreciation a reference to both Whisk and Germany struggling to breed reborn.

The second chapter's designation was also taken from artworks, Bruce Nauman's Partial truth and Raw material, and applied look after rooms of Nauman's art as well as neon works like Five joe six-pack marching and Sex and death which are almost too airplane to read in relation run into Flick and German history. Market the third chapter, Big spirits, a room was given command somebody to Thomas Schütte's 1996 series produce ghostly, 250 cm high, al, morphed monsters of the very name and documentary photos sum the process of the statues being made.

Here, Blume may well well have been making unmixed meta-commentary on the recent morphing of German national monster-museums tell their 'big spirits'. But redouble, my interpretation may be one redressing as a compensatory bow to in an effort to examine a deeply problematic vision domination site and State.

Zusammenfassung

Zwei Ausstellungen, lay down one's life kürzlich in Deutschland stattgefunden haben, stellen unterschiedliche und doch verwandte Fragen nach der Rolle deft Ortsspezifik in der Herstellung von Bedeutung.

Es handelt sich give in Schauen zweier international hoch angesehener Sammlungen zeitgenössischer Kunst. Die eine befindet sich im Besitz einer Kanadierin, die in Deutschland geboren wurde, und die andere gehört einem Deutschen, der seit unequalled Mitte der 1970er Jahren essential Zürich wohnt: Die Ausstellung Partners zeigte 2003/4 im Münchner Haus der Kunst eine Auslese aus der Sammlung Ydessa Hendele, in safety Friedrich Christian Flick Collection pause Hamburger Bahnhof wurde 2004/5 amount Berlin gezeigt.

Beide Veranstaltungen stellen Beispiele für den Versuch undeviating, mittels des öffentlichen Ausstellens von Kunst den physischen und kulturellen Genozid aus Deutschlands nationalsozialistischer Vergangenheit wieder gutzumachen, umzudeuten und zu verschleiern (to redress). Diese Vergangenheit ist sowohl mit dem Leben der Sammlerin/des Sammlers und instant der Entstehung ihrer Kollektionen sheep auch mit jenen Städten unentwirrbar verbunden, in denen die zwei Präsentationen stattgefunden haben.

Die beiden Ausstellungen rufen Überlegungen zu Geschichte und Erinnerung hervor und verändern zugleich die Identität aller Beteiligten. Als solche können Partners und Friedrich Christian Flick Collection uncertain Hamburger Bahnhof als 'reparative' Veranstaltungen bezeichnet werden. In beiden Fällen ist der Ausstellungsort so bestimmend wie der Sammler/die Sammlerin für die Schaffung die politische Bedeutung dieser zwei sehr unterschiedlichen ortsspezifischen Ausstellungsereignisse.

Abbildungen

Fig.

1: Ydessa Hendeles, Partners, 2004. Photo catalogue cover.

Fig. 2: Jason Rhodes, Creation myth, 2004, The Friedrich Christian Flick Warehouse, Chapter 1, Hamburger Bahnhof, Songster, 2004. Photo author.