DenatureD Delves Into The context of Modern German Art

Although small in scale and packed into a traditional gallery space, the Ackland Art Museum’s new exhibit, DE-NATURED: German Art from Joseph Beuys to Martin Kippenberger, packs a punch. Featuring works by bigger names such as performance and installation artist Beuys and photographer Thomas Struth, DE-NATURED crosses artistic disciplines to explore the state of contemporary German art.

The exhibit’s historical fixation is difficult to ignore. To contextualize the exhibit, the gallery guide reads, “German artists have had to deal with a severe legacy of a traumatic history marked by the events of the Nazi dictatorship, the Holocaust of European Jews, the terror of World War II and the resulting tense divisions of the Cold War.”

Such a disclaimer would seem to cast a shadow over the exhibit. Each work presented, however, explores this complex historical legacy through quirky or unexpected means. For example, one of the Beuys works is his cheeky “Noiseless Blackboard Eraser,” of which Beuys made hundreds of copies (termed “multiples”) in the 1970s. The piece consists of none other than that described in its title—an apparently typical blackboard eraser. Its simplicity is deceiving, though. Beuys was particularly attached to felt; while serving in WWII, his plane was shot down and Beuys constructed an origin myth in which he was rescued by Tartars, who applied animal fat and felt to his body. From that point onward Beuys incorporated felt into many of his pieces, including the “Noiseless Blackboard Eraser.” The piece also features Beuys’ signature—a humanizing touch that juxtaposes the eraser’s otherwise industrial nature—and a stamp that reads, “Organization for Direct Democracy,” as a nod to his belief in inclusive social and political participation in art.

The exhibit’s emphasis on photography furthers these ideas of social and political reconstitution. The right wall of the exhibit features several of Struth’s photographs in addition to two large-scale photographic works by Thomas Ruff. Struth is perhaps best known for his giant photographs showing onlookers candidly observing famous works of art in museums around the world. His main works in the exhibit take a somewhat different approach: A series of four black-and-white photographs depict city streets in New York City and Yamaguchi, Japan. The superficial differences in urban and cultural organization are immediately apparent, yet the works reference the same pictorial theme. Three of the four photographs feature a roadway surrounded, even imposed upon, by both towering buildings and smaller multi-story structures. Each road extends into some abyss beyond the space shown in each photo, imbued with a reserved acceptance of both nothingness and possibility.

One of Ruff’s two photographs, “Andere Portrait Number 109/97,” was made through a photomontage program originally used by the German police. To dilute the political weightiness, Ruff mixed in photographic images from his own series of works. The result is an enormous face of ambiguous gender, no longer belonging to a specific sex, race or political affiliation but instead indicative of a wider communal experiment.

The exhibit also features three works by Sigmar Polke, who studied under Beuys, as well as Gerhard Richter, whose pieces feature overpainted photographs with allusions to the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

Interestingly enough, the single-room offerings of DE-NATURED abut a related exhibit from a century earlier, entitled Romantic Dreams | Rude Awakenings: Northern European Prints and Drawings, 1840-1940. Most of the works are also by German artists, including Otto Dix, though artists from neighboring counties, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, are also included. The two exhibits, though at first seemingly disparate, create an intriguing dialogue in their exploration of social, political and personal consciousness. Historical context is the major player here, and it’s fascinating to see this framework embodied in the work of two very different time periods.

DE-NATURED and Romantic Dreams | Rude Awakenings will run until July 10 at the Ackland Museum of Art in Chapel Hill.