"Cathedrals of Thought"
The Press on Hanne
Darboven’s Installation "Hommage à Picasso" at the Deutsche Guggenheim
Hanne
Darboven’s commissioned work "Hommage à Picasso" covers the walls of the
Deutsche Guggenheim with a sea of 9,720 written pages contained in 270
frames. The work is a transcription of the last decade of the 20th
century. Darboven juxtaposes her notations with a lithography of a famous
painting: Picasso’s "Woman with Turkish Headdress" from 1955. The
installation is complemented by a series of sculptures ranging from a
bronze bust of Picasso to donkeys crafted from woven birch branches. The
exhibition is acoustically accompanied by Darboven’s composition "Opus
60." The press has proved to be highly impressed by the monumental
installation.
"It doesn’t matter what artist is showing at the Deutsche
Guggenheim – each time, the first thing you ask yourself is how the
long, narrow space will be transformed this time? (…) Over the course of
the past several years, a large number of prominent artists have left
their mark here, and conversely the exhibition location has affected each
of the works presented. The specific combination of work and location in Hanne
Darboven’s Hommage
à Picasso, however, has been condensed into a veritable
event. Suddenly, the Deutsche Guggenheim is no longer an ordinary
exhibition space, but a pantheon – for the artist of the century Picasso
as well as for the creator of this installation." This is how Nicola Kuhn
begins her review of the exhibition in the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel.
For Kuhn, its interest lies in the encounter between two different
"temperaments that could hardly be any more different (…) on the one hand
the painter whose passion and power of invention went beyond every art
historical standard, on the other the veteran of Minimal Art who has been
using numbers and signs since decades to create a work that seeks to ward
off the phenomenon of time." Kuhn found the 9,720 written pages covering
the walls of the exhibition space to be "overwhelming." The exhibition
hall reminds her of a "pharaoh’s grave … because the pages are presented
in 270 hand-painted picture frames whose patterns are reminiscent of
hieroglyphics." Despite the force of the presentation, a "subtle dialogue"
arises in the show between "Picasso’s emotionally charged painting and
Darboven’s slavish writing exercises that elevate the passing of time to
an image.
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The Hamburg-based artist juxtaposes the drama of history
and daily occurrence with the regularity of her numerical columns. Whoever
enters into the work discovers the emotionality behind it. And suddenly, a
Picasso appears in the midst of this cosmos – it makes perfect sense."
For
Harald Falckenberg from the Kunstzeitung, the installation is "one
of the Hanne Darboven’s key works," in which she positions her "number
script" in a web of references. One crucial element are the frames
containing her written pages. "Normally, Hanne Darboven is satisfied with
cheap frames from department stores. Here, however, they have been
fabricated and painted by Polish craftsmen taking the frame of the Picasso
lithography as their model. It’s a matter of references (for instance to
Picasso’s pet goat Esmeralda), quotes and repetitions, and finally of the
trivialization of the mimetic art tradition. To Darboven’s mind, Picasso
is a symbol of this development, the last great painter."
To
Ingeborg Ruthe from the Berliner Zeitung, Hanne Darboven is
Germany’s "most consistent conceptual artist." Her work carries "time and
history into an obstinate system of order" that turns into a "spatial
sculpture" encompassing the world. With her Hommage à Picasso
, she is trying to "get a clearer grasp of the role of quotation and
reverence in art." In her review, Ruth draws attention to the elegant
donkeys standing at the end of the exhibition hall that Polish
broom-makers crafted from birch branches. "Darboven uses these archaic
animal figures to inquire both into how art is actually created and the
connection between concept and handicraft. Not least, she refutes the
prejudice that her ‘number acrobatics’ are overly intellectual." Through
the music accompanying the exhibition, this "cathedral of the written" is
further emotionally charged with "a pathos that does not seek to
overwhelm, but to touch gently, elevating thought upwards into an
imaginary dome."
Gabriele Walde from the Berliner Morgenpost
also feels transposed by the installation to a sacred location. To her, it
seems "as though time had stood still, so that the viewer might become
aware of it." In the face of Hanne Darboven’s "cathedral of thought," she
arrives at the conclusion that "art can hardly have a more powerful
effect."
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