Art – the other of politics?

With Gegen den Strich, Die Kunst und ihre politischen Formen (Against the Grain: Art and its Political Forms), Michael Diers has presented a clear statement that, while it does not provide answers to all question above, does offer valuable insights.

In twelve examples of contemporary artists (all of whom are men, except for one mixed team), he presents explicitly political works of art, places them in an insightful art-historical context, and explains their reception, their contradictions, and the various restrictions these works had to contend with. Presented are an upside-down gallery display case (David Hammons), a balcony at the World Trade Centre (artist collective Gelatin), a protest camp at Tate Britain (Mark Wallinger), white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge (Wermke/Leinkauf), a mosque in a Christian church (Christoph Büchel), a tiger cage in Berlin (Zentrum für politische Schönheit), a gallows sculpture in Minneapolis (Sam Durant), a wall memorial for Trump (Christoph Büchel), a refugee boat at the Venice Biennale (Christoph Büchel) and fields of rubble (Thomas Demand and Thomas Hirschhorn).

The topics range from colonialism and decolonisation in the museum world to architecture of power, nationalism, Islamophobia, media hysteria and the hypocrisy of the Christian church, to inhumane refugee policies and the impact of disturbing images. The book ends where artistic freedom in Germany was also massively called into question: at documenta 15 and the cloth painting People's Justice by Taring Padi. Diers' book is also a tribute to Christoph Büchel, to whom he devotes three chapters.

The author selects artistic works that violate both aesthetic and political rules, and through which their artistic character becomes truly visible. For Diers, art always includes politics. He now considers Adorno's concept of the autonomy of art to be empty. The first chapter deals with the subtle interventions of David Hammons and Lothar Baumgarten, both of whom reduced traditional ideas of exhibition objects ad absurdum: Hammons by confronting so-called ‘high culture’ with African traditions, Baumgarten by deconstructing the glass display case as an outdated form of presentation.

With their balcony ‘The B-Thing’ on the 21st floor of the World Trade Centre, the artist collective Gelatin rebelled for a brief moment against architecture as a bastion. Mark Wallinger's ‘State Britain’ from 2007 references the ephemeral Wailing Wall of a peace activist whose indictment remained in public space for five years, consisted of 600 individual parts, and denounced his government's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wallinger created a visible memorial to the destroyed peace monument. It is an artistic replica of a political installation that was on display at Tate Britain. Wallinger's contribution was a defence of freedom of art and expression that is particularly poignant today.

‘White American Flags’ by Matthias Wermke/Mischa Leinkauf on the Brooklyn Bridge on the night of 21 to 22 July 2014 questioned a national sacred symbol with the Stars and Stripes flag. Diers uses the idea of their intervention to present the artistic treatment of the flag of the powerful country by Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, Jimi Hendrix, David Hammons, Hans Haacke and others. The themes addressed are nationalism, racism and white supremacy. The duo's aim was to demonstrate the limitations of public space through an important symbol.

Three projects by Christoph Büchel are presented: The Mosque (2015, Venice), The Wall and The Boat. ‘The Mosque,’ the mosque in a Christian church, provoked right-wing circles in Venice, if not all of Italy, who did everything in their power not only to discredit the artwork, but also to end it prematurely, which they succeeded in doing by closing the venue. The artwork was actually supposed to run for six months. The attempt at interreligious dialogue at the intersection of cult and art space encountered a Muslim-hostile right-wing climate. The former Christian church had served as a venue for various art events, but a mosque as a work of art was a step too far. Nevertheless, Venice finally had a mosque for twelve days.

Büchel revisits the theme of walls with ‘Prototypes’ beyond a national perspective, shifting it to the border fence between Mexico and the United States, whose border is 3,144 kilometres long and encompasses four North American states. The first attempt to close the border took place under Bill Clinton, and since then billions have been sunk into the project. Trump brought it to completion with a design that called for a 9.1-metre-high steel mesh wall. Biden initially halted the project. Büchel attempts to counter this ‘underlying political delusion’ artistically, with the idea of having Trump's wall project declared a ‘national monument’ and an anonymous collective (Clinton-Trump) work of art, thereby combating the project through affirmation. At the end of 2019, however, the ‘prototypes’ were demolished.

Büchel's third artwork is also the most spectacular and best known: a Tunisian fishing boat that sank on 18–19 April 2015, which had been used as a refugee boat and capsized with 700 people on board. Twenty-eight survived. It was one of the worst disasters in post-war European history. By exhibiting this boat, Büchel wanted to show visitors to the Venice Biennale the catastrophe of European refugee policy. The object, exhibited in 2019, challenged the prevailing concept of art. According to Diers, it created a new art form. Of course, the work was subject to numerous criticisms, which agreed that it was art or considered it ethically reprehensible to exhibit the ill-fated ship.

When it comes to political art, the Zentrum für politische Schönheit (Centre for Political Beauty), founded in 2008, is of course not to be forgotten. Diers does not present a specific project, but rather focuses on the ‘overstepping of boundaries’ of the artist group. ‘The Holocaust Memorial in front of Höcke's house’ and their most controversial work, ‘Flüchtlinge fressen. Not und Spiele’, a tiger cage with Libyan tigers in the middle of the city, are characterised as artistic staging, and he concedes that the group has succeeded in narrowing the distance between art and politics and asserting the expanded concept of art. The group's actions combine elements of theatre, showmanship and visual art. This group is a clear example of how quickly art is accused of breaking the rules when it violates the purely aesthetic field.

Das Trümmerfeld (The Field of Rubble) also deals with several artistic approaches to times when death is largely omitted or only represented indirectly. In his works, Thomas Hirschhorn has artistically interpreted the fields of rubble in Syria, Palestine, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Congo, Lebanon and Afghanistan (Nachbarn/Neighbours, 2002; United Nations Miniature, 2000/03), thereby giving form to the catastrophe.

Perhaps the most interesting project, including its reception, is Scaffold by Sam Durant, not least because it shows the boundaries of art from a different perspective – not from that of the state or the art world, but from the point of view of those to whom it was actually dedicated. ‘Structure – Scaffold’ was commissioned by documenta 13: an arrangement of replica gallows used in historically significant executions in the USA. A chronological list of the gallows was part of the installation. An arrangement of replica gallows used in historically significant executions in the USA. These included such significant executions as that of John Brown in 1859, who rebelled against slavery, the Haymarket martyrs in 1886, anarchist trade unionists, and Saddam Hussein in 2006. Durant wanted to take action against the death penalty and its bloody history. In 2014, the work was purchased by the Art Centre in Minneapolis and installed in the Sculpture Garden in 2017. When the park reopened, representatives of the Dakota, who once owned the land on which the garden stands, protested against it. Thirty-eight of their ancestors were executed as ringleaders of an uprising and as rapists – in the largest mass execution in North American history. This was followed by the expulsion of the Dakota from their ancestral lands. The commemoration of this event by a white artist was not only met with incomprehension, but was also perceived as incredibly painful. Discussions with the artist and the institution followed protests against ‘a triumphant gesture by the white population’. Durant transferred the copyright of his sculpture to the Dakota, who had the artwork dismantled by an indigenous construction company three days later and stored it in an unknown location. The location is still unknown today. American politicians have refused for decades to honour their commitments to the Dakota. This injustice was also inflamed by this work of art. And it became clear how difficult it can be to communicate a creation outside of the art world. Art that accuses was ultimately accused of the same offence.

And with documenta 15 (closing in 2022), the circle of politically possible art comes full circle. Because of one artwork – ‘People's Justice’ by Taring Padi – which was rightly identified as containing an anti-Semitic image, the entire exhibition and its artistic approach were called into question through prejudgement and censorship, and it was pushed to the margins of society. How the participating artists were treated in the Global North was of no concern. External advisors with no connection to art sat as judges without involving the participants. The figure depicted as a monster was undoubtedly an anti-Semitic representation. But how to respond to this in an ongoing major exhibition? The answer was to ban the image and censor it, so that no one could form their own opinion of ‘People's Justice’. Instead of commenting on the work and making it publicly accessible, endless articles were written about it and the feuilletons were in a frenzy. In very rare cases was the historical context of the work discussed, probably because it was unknown and seemed unimportant for the German discourse. kunststadt/stadtkunst reported on this in detail in its latest issue. Western support (Federal Republic of Germany and Israel) for the suppression of the student movement in Indonesia in 1998 played virtually no role in the debate. However, this does not in any way justify the anti-Semitic depiction. The aim should have been to comment on it, as with other depictions that no longer correspond to the contemporary ethical context, and to continue to present it in its historical context as a historical image. This would have been covered by artistic freedom, whereas the actual approach trampled on this freedom and set the course for current debates and restrictions. The interference of the highest representatives of the German state in the run-up to documenta pointed to their distance from art and lack of understanding of it. Diers argues that greater artistic solidarity and willingness to engage in debate would have been in order.

Indignation and incomprehension ran rampant, leaving art in a lost cause. The anti-hierarchical and collective artistic approach of the exhibition, which questioned the traditional concept of art, was no longer up for debate. Diers' portrayal of political art in the here and now is stimulating, controversial and points to the limits of artistic freedom and future challenges.

One shortcoming is that the exhibition only features Western European and North American works, unfortunately omitting many exciting current approaches from Eastern Europe, such as the artist group Chto Delat, a multidisciplinary collective that deals with post-socialist reality and authoritarian and capitalist impositions in a manner that is as intelligent as it is artistically outstanding. Nevertheless, Diers' compilation is an important contribution to the relationship between art and politics.