Dezember 2013 23. Jahrgang Heft 92 € 15,- [d]

Dezember 2013 23. Jahrgang Heft 92
Dezember 2013 23. Jahrgang Heft 92
€ 15,- [d] / $ 25,-
VALUED OBJECTS, HIGH RETURNS
On Amie Siegel at Simon Preston Gallery, New York
and Europe loves me)“ (2013) den Mythos vom
weiblichen Mittel- und Kleinformat durchbricht,
arbeitet in ihrem Projekt mit einem Text des
Kurators Sebastian Cichocki, der von einer fiktiven Sammlung von Miniaturen handelt – einem
Kellermuseum. Sie stellt in ihrer Serie malerische
„Originale, Doubles, Zwillinge, Miniaturen“
her. Sie malt in Kleinformaten den Inhalt eines
mikrologischen Museums, wiederholt malerisch
Objekte aus einem Prähistorienmuseum auf Santorin, dem Weltkulturenmuseum Frankfurt, der
Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück und Jeanne Mammens
Studio. Unspektakuläre Dinge, die, teils im Bild
von der linken Hand der Künstlerin gehalten,
durch die dokumentarisch gefärbte Malerei in den
Vordergrund treten und zu Originalen werden.
Hier wird keine Virtuosität zelebriert, sondern
ein Handwerk einem neuen Zweck zugeführt,
einem Hang zum Realen. Wie Mammen schafft
auch Majewski einen Grund der Malerei, der aus
ihrer jeweiligen Konzentration, nicht aus deren
Gattungswert entspringt. Ihren Positionen ist das
Kammerspielformat der Ausstellung angemessen,
doch Plavcaks surrealistisch angelehnte und Sartis
auf Farbmaterialität bedachte Arbeiten scheinen
zu Majewskis Realismen und Mammens exzentrischer Abstraktion eher der Vollständigkeit halber
dazuzukommen. Auch hier bleiben die Positionen letztlich divergent, unverbunden in ihrem
Verständnis des Mediums. Was sie zusammenhält,
ist wieder nur ihr Geschlecht und die senatsgeförderte Gattung „Malerei aus Berlin“.
Was nun noch bleibt, ist Franz Ackermann,
dessen gewohnt raumgreifende Installation
„Hügel und Zweifel“ in der BG den Arbeitsstand
seiner unermüdlich fortgesetzten Kombination
aus Malerei, Fotografie, Skulptur, Architektur und
geografischem Blick demonstriert. Unverbunden
208
REVIEWS
mit den anderen Stationen tut es auch Ackermanns Wucherungen antikolonialer Stadtansichten, in denen sich touristische und situationistische Blicke überlagern und in überbordend
farbigen grafischen Konstruktionen ganze Räume
umspannen, wenig Gutes, als „Berliner Malerei“
repräsentiert zu werden. Es hebt die letztlich
doch koloniale Positionierung dieses Blicks in den
Vordergrund.
„Painting Forever!“ ist letztlich eine Ausstellung gegen Malerei in Berlin, denn sie besteht
darauf, dass keine internationalen Verbindungen
existieren, sich außer dem City Branding kein
sinnvoller Zusammenhang stiften lässt und die
Vorzeigedisziplin der Hauptstadt die Herstellung
virtuoser Nationalschinken im Großformat ist.
Kerstin Stakemeier
„Painting Forever!“, Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für
Moderne Kunst, Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, KW Institute for
Contemporary Art, Neue Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen
zu Berlin, 18. September bis 10. November 2013.
Amie Siegel, “Provenance”, 2013, film still
The blessings of the modernist object may also be its
curse. Aesthetic and formal programs that were once
developed in the context of broader social agendas
have turned into features that enhance financial and
taste values.
Amie Siegel’s “Provenance” filmically traces the
facture, roots, and circulations of such objects. Kari
Rittenbach, in turn, studies Siegel’s work in search of
moments not readily subsumed by a mere economy of
return values.
In her essay “The Aesthetics of Silence” (1969),
Susan Sontag describes the historiography of art
in rather derisive terms, as the formulation of
a repertory of objects worthy of human attention. For the contemporary artist this concept is
even more problematic, since “the very faculty
of attention has come into question” and in fact
one should “ideally […] be able to pay attention
to everything”. Reflecting on the impoverished
politics of Minimal Art, which proposes a total
experience by dint of absolute reduction to the
narrowest forms of expression, Sontag writes:
“The motion is toward less and less. But never has
‘less’ so ostentatiously advanced itself as ‘more.’”1
This particular critique of modern aesthetic
purity was published in the same year that the
rational architect Mies van der Rohe died; author
reviews
209
Amie Siegel, “Provenance”, Simon Preston Gallery, New York, 2013, installation view
Amie Siegel, “Lot 248”, 2013, film still
of the eminently quotable aphorism “Less is More” tions of tradition and modernity on a sweeping
environmental scale, with the aim to produce a
and contemporary of the Swiss-born, Paris-based
architect Le Corbusier. Whereas Mies and his steel functionally utopian and very much postcolonial
political project. The influence of Le Corbusier’s
and glass skyscrapers found a foothold in the corforward-looking aesthetic on the development
porate world of the American postwar economy,
of Indian architecture remains a fruitful field
Le Corbusier’s more ordinary materials, organic
of study; so too the successes and failures of his
forms, and liberal ideas for city planning2 – outdesigns for Chandigarh, on both architectural and
lined in the continental modernism of his Ville
social grounds. Despite mild congestion, some
Radieuse (1924) – were less eagerly assimilated by
overpopulation, a dearth of pedestrian-scale
capital markets and thus relegated to new socialthoroughfares and other spaces for loitering in
democratic experiments in the former colonies;
public, the middle-class city of approximately one
in particular, in the master plan and official
million residents is the wealthiest, per capita, in
and residential structures of the newly created
the nation; owing to the confluence of state-run
regional capital of Punjab and Haryana at Chanagencies and a growing technology sector.
digarh. As part of a comprehensive modernizing
If the above information were to serve as
agenda, then-Prime Minister Nehru had invited
programming notes to American filmmaker
the European architect to design the Indian city
Amie Siegel’s cinematic portrait of contemporary
from scratch, or rather tabula rasa, essentially
Chandigarh, insofar as it emerges in “Provenance”
buying into the latter’s ethnographic explora-
(2013), it might complicate her neatly edited and
sumptuously photographed inverted temporal
loop with more troublesome noise, offbeat tracking, and rather less exoticism than the tasteful
primitivism over which her camera lingers in
the revelation of origins implied by the work’s
title. A well-executed and intensely focused study,
Siegel’s nearly silent film – making full use of the
diegetic sound from the insulated world of global
financial investment, the violent ripping of leather
and splintering wood from the carpenter’s workshop, and the digital tin of Hindi music broadcast
from cheap mobile phone speakers – lavishes
its attention on the transformation of a handful
of notable design objects in teak and rosewood
once appointed for various administrative buildings at Chandigarh. Designed for the most part
by Le Corbusier’s cousin Pierre Jeanneret (who
supervised construction of the entire project
210
reviews
on-site while the former remained installed in
Paris), in recent years reclaimed versions of these
simple tables, desks, and chairs have begun drifting toward the foreign auction market, where
they command considerable prices. In 2011 the
government of Chandigarh appealed to the British
High Commission in Delhi to block the sale of 20
items of furniture from the municipal court and
library by the London auctioneer Bonham’s; the
sale proceeded after evidence was presented that
the items had been “legitimately acquired”.3
So West London is where Siegel’s film begins,
finding Chandigarh benches, stools, and couch
calmly peopling a warm, if spare, modern
interior unexpectedly tucked behind a series of
street-facing Regency-style porticos. Somewhere
in the English countryside, several armchairs,
chaise-longue and others are observed happily clustered between curtain wall windows
reviews
211
and crackling hearth. Some minutes in, the first
human figure to appear onscreen is seen casually descending the stairway of a Paris flat, before
which a pony-hair upholstered divan is settled,
and where the focus of Siegel’s film inevitably
follows. Thus the subject of the video work is
divulged formally, signaled in the quiet attention
given to these angular and carefully positioned
midcentury antique objects, sometimes re-covered in awfully kitschy checkered patterns or else
expertly restored with hand-woven cane seat and
back. There is something about them – beyond
the incoherent codes curlicued on the hind leg of
each piece – that strikes a familial resemblance,
sparking the viewer’s interest in the nature of
this peculiar and presumably valuable diaspora.
Traversing Amsterdam, New York City, and
Long Island, Siegel traces the furniture through
baroque showrooms, across auction blocks in the
United States and France (where a pair of lounge
chairs go for $60,000; a large conference table
¤ 70,000), stages of processing and preparation
for sale, artisanal salvage, and finally sea-freight
shipment from its source: Post-Partition India’s
first planned city.
The return to Chandigarh, which structures
the second half of Siegel’s film, presents a problematic dualism that reflects some of the issues
explored in the filmmaker’s previous two-channel
works, including “Berlin Remake” (2005) and
“Black Moon/Mirrored Malle” (2010), which
restage historic filmic events (the East German
studio film; an interview with French auteur
Louis Malle) in the present. Shot for shot, Siegel’s
contemporary scenes play against their original
doubles, to reveal a number of everyday absurdities or unexpected coincidences afforded by the
passage of time. It is this thoroughly false sense
212
reviews
of regression – evident in the reversal of the
exchange of capital and the weathered nature of
the inhabited urban fabric as compared to the
well-preserved private residences of an unseen
global elite – in returning back to the foreign
point of origin that gives “Provenance” its awkward axis, and ultimately (silently) invites symmetrical contrast. Although Siegel’s eye remains
trained on the Jeanneret furniture, it is somehow
more difficult to see in the context of Chandigarh
itself, where modular desks stand comfortably
alongside suitably proportional chairs, or else a
lamp-lit library counter extends modestly into
the space of the reading room (accommodating
the collective studies of at least five students), or
a cane chair peaks from underneath the brightly
colored silk garments of a woman regarding some
sculpture in the city museum. If the prized – perhaps even looted – furniture is more populous in
Chandigarh, it is also less precious (receding from
figure to ground) and in relation to its design,
actually portrayed as functional, or at worst, serviceable (a conference table identical to one sold
by Artcurial is seen plastered in gaudy political
posters). A clamorous environment precludes
quiet contemplation, so the filmmaker struggles
to find a rarefied point of focus; at the same distance from an inanimate subject, her viewfinder
necessarily encompasses more. In one exemplary
passage, rolling ergonomic chairs encroaching
on a busy office setting allude to a stockpile of
settees – dusty and discarded – stacked high atop
the concrete roof of an unidentified building that
eventually frame, in the distance, an abstract view
of the General Legislative Assembly.
Cursory readings of “Provenance” dwell on
the evident disregard or “obliviousness” to value
that the sequence described above seems to indi-
cate, thus prioritizing the “object-oriented” view
of history outlined by Sontag over any potential
social, pedagogical, or public (thus ephemeral)
mechanism. Yet the measure of a government or
government agency does not always reflect the
caliber of its interior design (as partially explored
in “DDR/DDR”, 2008); and the political aspect
does not actually wend its way into Siegel’s
film. Rather, the discovery or determination of
cultural and financial assets – here represented
as unquestionably capitalist and Western, despite
Nehru’s ambitions – help situate the true provenance of contemporary Chandigarh-fever. If the
architectonic Immobiliers of Le Corbusier’s urban
plans were never destined for the continent, then
the greater liquidity of the mobilier that (still)
features in his totalizing utopian projects might
be repurposed for private interest in its social
currency; a scalar transformation through which
less is more, and scarcity produces greater worth.
Now that transparent walls have become “the
very index of capitalist corporate exclusivity”4,
organic modern furniture built for “other” uses
accrues the auratic authenticity of the art object
when atomized from its intended environment.
Whether Siegel’s film essay can be said to critique
or celebrate this phenomena of agency-free capital
flow is open to interpretation.
“Provenance” ends in the space of an Economics lecture, where a professor’s voice echoes
cheerily in the vicinity of a folding cane chair:
“When you are investing something, it means you
are getting something – it means high returns.”
The formula might be applicable to modern
design (collectors as rescuers of bourgeois
European cultural heritage) or something even
less tangible (market forces manipulated by the
imbalance of supply and demand). Siegel’s work
itself was considered complete only after it was
auctioned by the artist and her New York gallerist
at Christie’s in London, where, spurred by interest
from a handful of buyers, a single edition of the
film sold for £52,500 in October 2013.5 Is the only
possible investment for contemporary art one that
colludes in its own objectification, and consequently, financial speculation?
Kari Rittenbach
Amie Siegel, “Provenance”, Simon Preston Gallery, New York,
September 8–October 6, 2013.
Notes
1Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will, New York 2002.
2Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture, Cambridge, Mass. 1973: “The only ideology which
[Le Corbusier] could accept was that of his own construction, what might be called idealist liberalism. Like a true
son of the Enlightenment he would accept only ideals as
his guide, ideals based on reason. This allowed him, like
Walter Gropius, to remain free from partisan involvements
in a sort of apolitical politicism, sailing between the Scylla
of Fascism and the Charybdis of Communism, a polarization which brought down most other architects in the
thirties.” (p. 157) Although conceived earlier for a flattened,
war-ravaged Europe, many of Le Corbusier’s urban designs
were not realized until the 1950s, and even then, abroad.
3Cahal Milmo/Andrew Buncombe, “Design heritage of Le
Corbusier’s Indian vision is carved up for sale”, in: The
Independent, October 25, 2010.
4Victor Burgin, In/Different Spaces, Berkeley/Los Angeles
1996, p. 146.
5In the evening auction the following day, Christie’s set a
record price for Ryan Trecartin’s “A Family Finds Entertainment” (2004), which sold for £37,500.
reviews
213
CREDITS
Gloria Moure: Gordon Matta-Clark. Works and Collected
Writings, Barcelona 2006 (28–29, 91); BAUWERT Werderscher
Markt GmbH, Film: eilmes & staub (32–34); Peach Property
Group AG (39); Google Maps 2013 (41); Will McBride (44–45);
Foto: Jonas Holthaus (48, 51, 52, 57, 58, 60, 101); Oswald
Mathias Ungers, Hans Kollhoff, Arthur Ovaska, The Urban
Villa. A multi family dwelling type, Köln 1977, Foto: Jonas
Holthaus (62–63); Isa Melsheimer, Esther Schipper (67);
Oswald Mathias Ungers, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Riemann, Hans
Kollhoff, Arthur Ovaska, Die Stadt in der Stadt. Berlin: ein
grünes Archipel, hg.v.Florian Hertweck u. Sébastien Marot,
Zürich 2013 (68); Wikimedia Commons, Foto: Suse (71); UAA
Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft, Köln, Foto: Stefan
Müller, Berlin (70, 73, 74, 75); Oswald Mathias Ungers, Hans
Kollhoff, Arthur Ovaska, The Urban Villa. A multi family
dwelling type, Köln 1977 (72, 76); SAN ROCCO 04, Milano
2012 (77); Storefront for Art and Architecture, Foto: Markus
Jans (78–79); Hauser & Wirth, Foto: Markus Jans (92–93, 97,
100); Dan Graham Studio (82); Mies van der Rohe Foundation
(84); Arts and Architecture, December 1947, Foto: Charles
Eames (85); Storefront for Art and Architecture, Vito Acconci
and Steven Holl (86, 87); Storefront for Art and Architecture
(88, 89); Foto: Dean Kaufman, 2011 (98); United Nations
Logo, Foto: Jonas Holthaus (106–107); Safdie Architects (110);
Wikimedia Commons, Foto: Maria Azzurra Mugnai (116);
Report of Habitat: United Nations Conference on Human
Settlements, Vancouver, 31 May–11 June 1976, New York 1976,
Foto: Jonas Holthaus (120); Wikimedia Commons, Foto:
Mélissa Charland, Jonathan Desjarlais (122); CBC Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (125); Ostzeit. Geschichten aus
einem vergangenem Land, Ostfildern 2009; Sibylle Bergemann; Foto: Jonas Holthaus (132–133); Yorgos ­Sapountzis
(139–143); Wikimedia Commons; Otto von Leixner, Illustrierte Literaturgeschichte, Leipzig 1880 (144); Christoph
Schlingensief, Volksbühne, Berlin, Foto: Georg Soulek (147);
PHOTOCASE, Foto: Timmitom (148); dctp/Kairosfilm (151,
153); Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels Zadik,
Nachlass Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf (154); The Estate of
Sigmar Polke, Cologne, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 (156–157);
HBO (159, 160, 162, 163); NBC Studios (160, 161); CONTOUR
2013, Mechelen, Foto: Sven Goyvaerts (164); CONTOUR 2013,
Mechelen (166, 167); Dóra Maurer, Muzeum Sztuki, Lódz
(169); Colgate University, Hamilton NY, Foto: Mark William
(170); Igor Hansen (172); Collection of Jerome and Ellen
Stern, Foto: John Berens (174); The Institute of Contemporary
Art Boston, Foto: John Kennard (176); Louise Lawler, Metro
Pictures, New York, Sprüth Magers, Berlin und London (178);
Kölnischer Kunstverein, Foto: Amelie Proché (181, 182);
Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin (184–185); Bergen Assembly,
2013, Norway (187); Bergen Assembly 2013, Norway, Foto:
Nils Klinger 2013 (188); Foto: Victor Robledo (190,191); Jewyo
Rhii, Galerie Ursula Walbröl (193); Galerie Ursula Walbröl,
Foto: Achim Kukulies, Düsseldorf (194); MMK Zollfuhramt,
Foto: Axel Schneider, Frankfurt am Main (195); Kunstverein
Langenhagen (196); Kunstverein Langenhagen, Foto: Christian
Dootz (198); Fondazione Prada, Merz Collection, Turin (200);
Fondazione Prada, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, Panza Collection (202); Fondazione Prada, Foto:
Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer (203); Courtesy Antje Majewski,
Galerie neugerriemschneider, Berlin, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
2013 (204); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (206); KunstWerke
Berlin, Foto: Christine Kisorsy (206); Amie Siegel and Simon
Preston, New York (209, 210); Amie Siegel (211); National
Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Cornell University, NAIC
(214); Trevor Paglen, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln
/ Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco/ Metro Pictures, New
York (216, 217); Real Fine Arts, New York (218–221); Merlin
Carpenter (223–227); Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk, Foto:
David von Becker (228, 232); Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
2013, Foto: Albin Dahlström / Moderna Museet, Sweden,
VEGAP, M·laga, 2013 (231); Courtesy of AA Bronson, Esther
Schipper, Berlin, Witte de With Center for Contemporary
Art, Rotterdam, Foto: AadHoogendoorn (234); Collection of
AA Bronson, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art,
Rotterdam, Foto: AadHoogendoorn (235); Collection of Philip
Aarons & Shelley Fox Aarons, New York, Witte de With Center
for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Foto: AadHoogendoorn
(237); Foto: Nancy Barton (239–242); Foto: Servet Dilber
(245–246); Foto: Michaela Eichwald (248); Foto: Produzentin (249); Allan Sekula (251); Foto: Selby Hicke (255); Julie
Mehretu (259); Jorinde Voigt (261); Texte zur Kunst (263).
credits
inhalt.indd 269
269
22.11.13 17:57