"One and One is Two – Everyone Understands That"
The Deutsche Guggenheim presents Hanne Darboven’s Hommage à Picasso
In "Hommage à Picasso," Hanne Darboven’s commissioned work for the Deutsche
Guggenheim, the viewer is immersed in a sea of 9,720 sheets of paper
covered in writing in which Darboven has recorded the last decade of the
20th century. Her notations are juxtaposed with the copy of a famous
painting: Picasso’s "Woman with Turkish Headdress," painted in 1955. The
installation is complemented by a series of sculptures — from a bronze
bust of Picasso to a donkey woven together from birch branches. Angela
Rosenberg on the exhibition and on Darboven’s unadorned work.
Hanne Darboven with her goats
©Courtesy Galerie Crone Andreas Osarek, Berlin
Her name was Esmerelda and it was a Christmas present from his wife
Jacqueline Roque . We’re talking about
Pablo Picasso’s goat, whom he immortalized both as a bronze sculpture and
on several canvases. Picasso himself is considered to be an icon of the
artistic drive – unbridled originality, constant innovation, and sensuous
expression. The quickly painting artist with the increasingly expressive
brushstroke created a gigantic oeuvre. Particularly towards the end of his
career, when he produced numerous paintings in rapid succession, he not
only recorded the date the work was made on its reverse, but also the time
of day.
Hommage à Picasso (detail) 1995-2006
Photo:Mathias Schormann
Copyright:©
Hanne Darboven
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Hanne Darboven, Hommage à Picasso,
installation view
Photo: © Mathias Schormann
Copyright ©
Deutsche Guggenheim
Mickey is the name of
Hanne Darboven’s goat. The eccentric Hamburg artist is often called the
grande dame of conceptual art, which doesn’t really fit the petite lady
with the shortly cropped grey hair who prefers to dress in custom-tailored
men’s suits. "I don’t want any expressivity," Darboven coolly states. The
artist finds the representation of emotionality intoxicating and
artificial; instead, as a young artist in 1966, she began developing
constructions and writing these out using letters and numerals. The
crucial step occurred with the recognition that the essence of time lies
hidden in the date’s numerical construction. Since then, writing time down
as a formulation of these numerical constructions fills the artist’s
strictly ordered, almost monkish daily schedule, an unusual writing task
indeed. "I write, but I don’t describe anything."
The numbers Darboven writes do not count anything; they themselves are the
material of time that passes in writing. The artist has filled thousands
of sheets with numbers, written them out in her precise handwriting, day
by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. Rows of numerals,
lines of number words written out in her characteristic handwriting and
reduced to page size arrest time in the form of books, notebooks,
tableaus, and series of individual pages. Augmented by found objects,
texts, photographs, and magazine covers integrated into the work in the
form of historical, social, and political reflections, Darboven’s
numerical constructions repeatedly give rise to new and surprising
variations despite their apparent monotony. Arranged into large-scale
installations, the centuries lie spread out before our eyes not only as
lost time, but as epochs that are commented upon in a discreet way.
Due to her propensity for numbers, one might surmise that the artist would
be far more interested in the dates on the reverse sides of Picasso’s
paintings. But as a reminiscence on the "most important artist of the 20th
century," the artist exhibits her pages in hand-painted frames fashioned
by Polish craftsmen and inspired by Picasso’s painting
Woman with Turkish Headdress. In doing so, Hanne Darboven challenges
Picasso as an icon of innovation on what is supposedly his own private
territory. In the process, she doesn’t so much call the artist’s work into
question, but rather the legend of the artist as the producer of
originality. More than almost any other artist, Picasso left behind an
army of epigons who have diluted his handwriting, style, and motifs to the
point of complete and utter meaninglessness, which has also exerted an
influence on the reception of his work. When Darboven observes this
phenomenon, it is not without a touch of pleasure; she illustrates it
vividly using additional objects, such as the pretty brushwood donkey or a
sumptuous bronze goat clearly based on Picasso’s bronze of
Esmerelda.
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