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Genealogies of Modernism Curatorial Practices of Comparing in the Exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art and Documenta I

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Genealogies of Modernism Curatorial Practices of Comparing in the Exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art and Documenta I Genealogies of Modernism Curatorial Practices of Comparing in the Exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art and documenta I Britta Hochkirchen Abstract The article examines how exhibitions come up with their own diverging definitions ofthege- nealogies of modern art through curatorial practices of temporal comparing. The focus will be on the exhibitions Cubism and Abstract Art that took place 1936 in the Museum of Mod- ern Art in New York and on documenta I in Kassel in 1955. Both exhibitions deal with the concept of abstraction, which is proposed to be the teleological quality of modernism. While both exhibitions are widely recognized as examples of a formalistic view on the artworks and the development in the history of art, we will see that they use completely different practices of comparing to point out these formal issues. I. Preliminaries “Learning from Athens”—this was the guiding notion behind the documenta 14 in Kassel in summer 2017.1 This seemed to be a striking title for an exhibition ded- icated to contemporary art, or more precisely, one that should show the current state of the art. Is this a return to classicism and its strict norms? On the contrary, Adam Szymczyk, the artistic director of the fourteenth volume of documenta, al- tered the plans for this venerable major exhibition of contemporary art that has been held in Kassel, Germany, since 1955. In contrast to all the former volumes of this exhibition, documenta 14 was held in two locations at nearly the same time: Athens and Kassel. Artworks were exhibited in both places where they were sup- posed to take issue with each city. According to Szymczyk, the idea was to drop the auctorial perspective—the hegemonial authority over meaning assumed by north- ern and western Europe—in favor of presenting different nonhierarchical points of view and ways of thinking at the same time. The curator’s emphasis on contemporaneity 1 The documenta 14 washeldinKasselfrom10Juneto17September2017andinAthensfrom8 April to 17 July, 2017. 350 Britta Hochkirchen is striking, because it alludes to the perpetual defining question at any documenta: “What is contemporary art?” Documenta 14 offered the possibility of a relation between two perspectives, but they could be perceived, and compared, only through a bodily and temporal shift: Visitors had to travel from one city to the other and therefore still perceived the works successively. They compared a “beforehand” with an “afterward”—at least in their own perception and experience. But even the separate exhibition venues in Kassel and Athens created, by juxtapositions, a condition that prompted compara- tive viewing: Marta Minujín’s Parthenon of Books, a work of contemporary art allud- ing to the temple for Pallas Athena in Athens as a democratic symbol2 decked with censored books, was installed next to the Fridericianum, the first public museum building on the European Continent from the eighteenth century, and one that is oriented architectonically toward Greek antiquity. Standing next to each other stimulated the visitor’s comparative view. The architectonic pillars-and-pediment structure is the tertium comparationis of these two buildings, which in this constella- tion, both turn out to be imitations of an antique ideal—but imitations originating in different times: the eighteenth century and our contemporary time. The act of comparing, executed with the viewer’s body presence together with both the com- parata, produces by this means new relations between past, present, and future. These temporal dimensions are the topic of this chapter. Let me makeafew brief preliminary remarks about what it means to examine practices of comparing with respect to curatorial practices at exhibitions. The phenomenon of changing temporary exhibitions demonstrates what the art historian Felix Thürlemann con- tended about pictures in general: “they are more than one image.”3 This statement 2 MartaMinujín, The Parthenon of Books, 2017, Installation. Kassel, Friedrichsplatz, documenta 14. The Parthenon of censored books was placed at the Friedrichsplatz where the National Socialists burned books on May 19, 1933. 3 Felix Thürlemann, Mehr als ein Bild. Für eine Kunstgeschichte des hyperimage, München 2013. Thürlemann brings up the concept of the hyperimage that is also useful for research on ex- hibitions: “Mit hyperimage wird eine kalkulierte Zusammenstellung von ausgewählten Bildobjek- ten – Gemälden, Zeichnungen, Fotografien und Skulpturen – zu einer neuen, übergreifenden Einheit bezeichnet. Der Begriff verweist auf verschiedene Arten des Zusammenspiels von Bildern, wie sie bei der Präsentation von Kunstwerken in Museen und Ausstellungen, bei der Projektion im Unterricht, aber auch im Layout von Bildbänden beobachtet werden können” (7). As an amplification to Thür- lemann’s concept of the hyperimage, practices of comparing open up the possibility of also looking at those aspects that are cropped and cut down through combining or linking two or more pictures. Furthermore, practices of comparing do not just concentrate on the intended meaning by the acteur–curator but are also sensitive for the meanings that occur coinciden- tally in a specific context. For the hyperimage, see also: Felix Thürlemann, Vom Einzelbild zumhyperimage.EineneueHerausforderungfürdiekunsthistorischeHermeneutik,in:Gerd Blum et al. (eds.), Pendant Plus, Berlin 2012, 23–46; David Ganz/Felix Thürlemann (eds.), Das Bild im Plural. Mehrteilige Bildformen zwischen Mittelalter und Gegenwart, Berlin 2010. Genealogies of Modernism 351 is surprising if one considers how much the definition of modern art is based on the idea of autonomy, that is, on the independence and self-referentiality of the individual work. However, every exhibition is, in fact, per se a site of comparing of multiple works of art. It is therefore a contradictory act when modern art is deeply connected with the temporal exhibition that is, in itself, a modern medium.4 The characteristic quality of exhibitions of art is the interaction of different times in a performative mode.5 On the level of the artworks, there is a clash between the different times of their origins, but also of the times they depict, and, not least, the multiple times of their reception.6 But the exhibition transforms these differ- ent kinds of temporalities into a new logic of time: First, there is the overall quality of presence through which the exhibition brings all these different times toward a contemporaneity of presence for the experience of the beholder. The presence is emphasized even more through the ephemeral character of the so-called temporal exhibition. But, furthermore, the exhibition forms and produces the temporality of the presented artworks: The pieces of art are not shown separated on their own, but in special constellations and displays to initiate a comparative viewing by the 4 One of the many “births” of the temporary exhibition is the so-called “Salon” in Paris, the exhibition of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture held regularly every year or every second year from 1737 onward. The “Salon” was open to the public and showed the contemporary art of the members of the academy. See Anja Weisenseel, Bildbetrachtung in Bewegung. Der Rezipient in Texten und Bildern zur Pariser Salonausstellung des 18. Jahrhunderts (Ars et Scientia. Schriften zur Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 14), Berlin/Boston 2017, 10. 5 Cf. Beatrice von Bismarck, Der Teufel trägt Geschichtlichkeit oder Im Look der Provoka- tion: When Attitudes become Form, Bern 1969/Venice 2013, in: Eva Kernbauer (ed.), Kunst- geschichtlichkeit. Historizität und Anachronie in der Gegenwartskunst, Paderborn 2015, 233–248, see234;BeatricevonBismarck,TheExhibitionasCollective,in:Kai-UweHemken(ed.), Kritis- che Szenografie. Die Kunstausstellung im 21. Jahrhundert,Bielefeld2015,185–199,see186.Seefor the question of the special quality of time in exhibitions: Beatrice von Bismarck et al. (eds.), Timing. On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting (Cultures of the Curatorial, vol. 2), Berlin 2014. See further: Krzysztof Pomian, L’Ordre du temps, Paris 1984. 6 See for the differentiation between the multiple temporalities of pictures, especially be- tween the time of the depiction and the depicted time: Heinrich Theissing, Die Zeit im Bild, Darmstadt 1987; Gottfried Boehm, Bild und Zeit, in: Hannelore Paflik (ed.): Das Phänomen Zeit in Kunst und Wissenschaft, Weinheim 1987, 1–24; Götz Pochat, Bild – Zeit. Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis zur frühen Neuzeit, Wien 1996. For the reception-esthetic temporality of pictures, see Johannes Grave, Der Akt des Bildbe- trachtens. Überlegungen zur rezeptionsästhetischen Temporalität des Bildes, in: Michael Gamper/Helmut Hühn (eds.), Zeit der Darstellung. Ästhetische Eigenzeiten in Kunst, Literatur und Wissenschaft, Hannover 2014, 51–72; Johannes Grave, Form, Struktur und Zeit. Bildliche Formkonstellationen und ihre rezeptionsästhetische Temporalität, in: Michael Gamper/Eva Geulen/Johannes Grave et al. (eds.), Zeit der Form–Formen der Zeit (Ästhetische Eigenzeiten, vol. 2), Hannover 2016, 139–162. 352 Britta Hochkirchen beholder.7 This transforms the specific temporality of a work of art andsuper- imposes a new temporality produced through curatorial practices of comparing.8 Hanging one piece of art next to another (or more) leads the beholder to compare between them. The comparison between two (or more) comparata produces one or more tertium comparationis: If there is one landscape hanging next to another,
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