Maria
Jones
Academic
Advisor Sunanda Sanyal
1
November 2012
Conceptualism: The Influences of Haacke
and Kippenberger
As a student and emerging artist today I
find myself in a fortunate position. Within the last two hundred years the art
world has grown and changed in leaps and bounds. Artists are not nearly as
restricted by institutions, galleries, and museums as they had been in the
past. Much of this freedom developed over time by ambitious artists fighting
against art cultural norms. Today, we have the opportunity to study and learn
from these great men and women, and the artistic knowledge and creative
resources they left us are endless. Since I began my study of contemporary art
I have found myself extremely interested in conceptual art the idea that art
exists as ideas rather than objects. Hans Haacke and Martin Kippenberger have
had a strong impact on my work because they created unique styles that speak to
individuals in drastically different ways and help me process my own ideas in a
more conceptual manner.
Hans Haacke is a prolific artist, and his
work in the 1960s greatly influences my work. He was born in 1936 and was
raised in Bad Godesberg, Germany. He began studying art seriously in 1956 at
the age of twenty when he moved to Kassel, Germany to study at the Staatliche
Hochschule für Bildende Künsteart (Hermann 1). He was trained in post-war
abstraction and painted in a style similar to Tachism[1]
until the 1960s. During his time as an abstract painter Haacke developed an
interest in visual movement, and during Documenta 2 he photographed exhibit
viewers as an exploration into the art world both in front of and behind the
scenes (Grasskamp 28). From these photographs he developed the painting A8-61, which explored reflecting the
viewer and exhibit in the art and creating visual movement through repetitive
yellow marks. The movement is created, as the viewer’s eye gets fatigued and
creates an optical illusion of shifts and changes in the pattern. This study
was Haacke’s jumping off point into three-dimensional art, the area of his
career I am most interested in.
Haacke’s art is extremely diverse and
constantly changing. I have chosen to focus on his work on the 60’s, which he
later became widely known for, because it dealt with ideas outside of art politics.
1964 was the advent of Haacke’s “event containers,” art that created changes to
the object as the environment changed, which required full participation from
the viewer in order to complete it as a work of art. Haacke created the pieces Rain Tower, Column with Two Immiscible
Liquids, and Wave with the intent
of breaking the art world’s idea of untouchable art (34). From these pieces he
moved into his wind series, which required fans to be switched on to create the
art, as seen in the piece below Blue Sail,
(Figure 1).
Fig. 1 Blue Sale,
1964-65. SFMOMA
Haacke’s early works have directly
influenced my current process. I am intrigued by the idea of harnessing the
energies of individuals to complete the idea in my work. I feel with the idea
of individual interaction it creates a sense of ownership for the
viewer/individual. The individual, when capable of taking part in the work,
leaves the art with his or her own created memories and personal power over the
object. This interaction creates lasting affects on the viewer, which is a
powerful motive, in my opinion, for any artist. Without outside intervention,
Haacke’s event containers and kinetic studies would be incomplete processes.
The art is not in the objects alone, but is dependent on viewer interaction to
create the idea. The idea of dependency on the viewer is an integral part of my
works. I want the viewer to approach my pieces and be allowed to have a direct
experience with them so my work will create a lasting impression on them. I do
not want to create an “event” as Haacke intended with his event containers, but
I would like to create an experience that is intimate to the individual. The
intimate reaction of the individual is a common theme in conceptual art. Hans
Haacke has put into questions past
ideas I had about my own work. Why can’t art be interactive? Would it be
completely asinine to open one’s work to the possibility of outsider
destruction? If a piece of art is ruined why not just make another? These
questions led to further investigation into the world of conceptual art, and I
stumbled upon the artist, Martin Kippenberger.
Kippenberger, like Haacke, was an
innovative artist with new ideas. His ideas of conceptualization have had a
strong impact on the way I think my work should come across to others. Martin
Kippenberger was born in 1953 in Dortmund, Germany. He had a somewhat manic personality constantly changing
direction in his life and art, which led him to travel a great deal and have
many interpersonal relationships in his adult years (213). Kippenberger was
always looking for the “good mood,” and he attempted to create that in his art
and daily life (175). Kippenberger had an expansive career and worked in many
different genres, and today art historians are still working to classify his
progression in a recognizable chronology.
Because of his vast scope of work in many genres I have focused my
efforts on his works created in conceptual manners.
Kippenberger would take everyday objects
and include them in his works to create tongue-in-cheek political and
philosophical pieces. One of his most ambitious endeavors is his piece One of You, a German in Florence, in
which he painted a daily snapshot of his routine in Italy. The paintings could
be stacked or hung individually, but his ultimate goal was to stack the
paintings until they reached his full height, which was a somewhat self-mocking
gesture of his lonely experience in Florence (120). He was constantly toying
with the idea of having artistic authorship without having to physically create
the work (185). This idea is expressed in his mixed media untitled piece
(Figure 2), in which he directed his assistant to make copies of paintings that
he later re-appropriated by deconstructing them and placing them in a crafted
bin.
Fig. 2 Untitled 1991.
SFMOMA 1
The
idea of appropriation is a new one for me. Kippenberger’s work contains
originality and philosophical ideas while utilizing appropriation. My current
pieces require a small amount of appropriation. I am working with everyday
objects of military life in ways that provide new meaningful works. I see
Kippenberger’s ability to work in multiple genres and mediums as a blueprint to
creating new pieces outside my current comfort zone in paintings.
Hans
Haacke and Martin Kippenberger were two great artists of the twentieth
century. Their bodies of work
encompass ideas that demand dramatic reactions and interactions from the
viewer. Through the study and influence of these great artists I endeavor to
create a body of work that speaks conceptually, and will be seen as unique,
intriguing and thought provoking. Haacke’s wind pieces demonstrated art that
was not possible without kinetic energy and human intervention. Without the
curator there to interact with the objects they would have lacked the ability
to express his idea artistically. As a very hands-on person I relish the
thought of going to public places and being allowed the ability to touch and
interact with my surroundings. Many galleries, museums, and artistic venues do
not allow this interaction based on the motives of preservation. Interacting
with objects is an important part of my personality, and currently I am working
to create pieces that drive the viewer to feel a desire to interact. Haacke
created the interactive experience in past works and works he creates today.
Kippenberger created interactive pieces, but his work involving appropriation,
and even the idea of re-appropriation, sparked my interest. I would like my own
work to elicit a reaction by the materials I choose. These reactions should
span a broad spectrum of human emotions, such as, excitement, sadness, anger
etc. I see importance in the use of everyday objects to convey my message
because people relate to art through association, and I think the use of
everyday objects make conceptual art easier to take in and understand. Although
galleries and museums today prevent interaction in order to preserve all great
pieces of art, not just works by Haacke and Kippenberger, I still feel a
certain satisfaction in knowing that at some point the art presented was
intentionally interactive. There
was no concern about reinterpretation or destruction. Interactive conceptual
art was and is all about the experience.
Works Cited
Batet,
Janet. “Martin Kippenberger: The Problem-maker.” ArtPulse.
Web. 18 Oct.
2012.
Grasskamp, Walter, Molly Nesbit, and Jon
Bird. Hans Haacke. New York, NY: Phaidon Press Inc. 2004. 160. Print.
Kippenberger, Susanne. Kippenberger:
The Artist and His Families. United States:J&L Books.
2011. 564. Print.
Meyer-Herman,
Eva. “Hans Haacke.” Tate.
Web. 19 Oct. 2012.
[1] A type of French
action painting involving non-descript blotches
of color which
are treated as a means of instinctive expression.
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