Thank you! Don't forget to confirm subscription in your email.
Hans Haacke —
German
Artist
born on August 12, 1936,
Hans Haacke is a German-born artist who currently lives and works in New York... (wikipedia)
Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.
Trivializing the Holocaust is the last thing I want to do.
There was an exhibition in Munich in 1937, 'Degenerate Art,' which included work by Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann and many others. The work was called 'sick' and put in the trash heap. The sentiments expressed toward contemporary art by Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Mayor Giuliani recall the language used by the Nazis.
Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.
When works of art are presented like rare butterflies on the walls, they're decontextualized. We admire their beauty, and I have nothing against that, per se. But there is more to art than that.