Post-Wall German Art

Rudolf Herz, from the series Dachau, Museumsbilder, 1996

Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany

Reality Bites, is the the labor of Sabine Eckmann, curator of Washington University in St. Louis’ Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The thrust of the exhibit, is that the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the subsequent reunification of East and West Germany has caused a reinvigoration of the German art world, and this exhibit aims to showcase the artists at the center of this art scene. The University’s website states:

[The exhibit] will feature approximately 70 artworks created since 1989, by both German artists and international figures living in Germany. The vast majority of the artworks have never been exhibited in the United States. They range from video and photography to sculpture, installation, assemblage and new media art.

One effect of German unification has been a new emphasis on experiential reality. In contrast to the abstract, simulated aspects of post-modernity, the historical realities of post-Wall Germany continue to influence the daily experience of its citizenry. Artists have reflected this in a number of ways: by employing pop-culture imagery and integrating the viewer into the creation of aesthetic experience; by creating visual spaces that compete with social environments; and by mimicking the rhetoric of globalization through the use of mapping and networking tools. Such strategies highlight the dissolution of established artistic forms – such as painting, sculpture and photography – while blurring the distinctions between art and everyday life.

…[The exhibit] consists of three thematic sections: “Re-dressing Germany,” “Traumatic Histories” and “Global Spaces.” Each explores a particular manifestation of change either initiated or accelerated by unification and its aftermath.

The show is also significant as the first major exhibit since the completion of the museum’s new digs. If the exhibit is meant to showcase the reemergence of Germany as a major cultural force in Europe and the World, it is also a nod to St. Louis and its own reemergence as a culturally significant city worthy of hosting such a conceptually inspired exhibit.

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Another trophy building in St. Louis

Many middle American cities have a new strategy to lure tourist- bring in an internationally award winning architect to build a modern art museum, and they will come. The addition of the Pritzker Laureate, Fumihiko Maki designed Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University is now bringing in the kind of major international exhibits one would generally expect to find on the East or West coast. For St. Louis, this is their second Pritzker Laureate designed museum. The Pritzker Laureate, Tadao Ando designed Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts was completed in 2001. And this doesn’t include the copycat designed Contemporary Art Museum, right next door. In 1900, St. Louis was the fourth largest city by population in the United States, behind only New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia and the largest city West of the Mississippi River. In 1966, it became home to the Eero Saarinen designed Gateway Arch. Since then it’s growth has not matched that of other American urban centers. None the less, it is an older established American city already boasting a large collection of architecturally significant buildings, and its recent flurry of modern art museum construction by such prominently recognized architects has reasserted itself as a major cultural hub in middle America.

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The “urbane”-ing of middle America

Other cities following this trend include Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Cincinnati, with its newly constructed, Pritzker Laureate, Zaha Hadid designed Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, has been hosting shows worthy of its acclaim, including the current video exhibit by New York artist, John Pilson, titled Skyscraper Souls. In 2001, Milwaukee had the vision to commission Santiago Calatrava for his very first building in the United States, the Quadracci Pavilion at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Their current exhibit, Francis Bacon: Paintings from the 1950s, is worthy of any major New York establishment.

Shown L to R: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, MO; The Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH; The Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI.