dOCUMENTA por Walter Grasskamp

Walter Grasskamp

El siguiente escrito es una reflexión sobre las exposiciones celebradas cada cinco años en Kassel, la dOCUMENTA. Recordando su largo noviazgo con el tema de la historiografía de exposiciones, compara documentación con las anteriores exposiciones en Recklinghausen y con Skulptur Projekte Münster- , extrayendo las características especiales de lo que él llama exposiciones periódicas.

"One of the main reasons I enjoyed my work was the astonishingly good quality of most of the photographs, especially the early ones from the first to the fourth documentas which were taken mostly by Günther Becker. It turned out that Arnold Bode, the creator of documenta, had had the foresight to commission Becker to take photographs of the first documentas. Being a specialist in trade fairs, Bode knew that events like these only survive adequately in photographs of the installations and not through catalogues. Thus, he employed a more than adequate photographer, someone who seemed to have been aware of the delicacy of the task. In documenting the early documenta exhibitions, Becker was sympathetic to Bode’s combinations of spaces and sites, single objects and constellations of works. His photographs constituted the best part of the volume Mythos documenta that finally did appear in 1982, as number 49 of Kunstforum International and not, as planned, as number 50.2

Of course there were exceptions to the rule, one being a very badly produced print that, moreover, had darkened with time and could not be reproduced in the magazine. It had been taken in 1959, judging by the Kandinsky it showed, but it had no identifying details on its reverse: no author, no date, no details, and – most unprofessional – no bank account. But I was fascinated by it: the unknown photographer, obviously an amateur, had seen the weird aspect of the scene, the contrast of the Kandinsky painting with members of a students’ fraternity, showing off their full regalia (fig.1). Thus, the image juxtaposed two very different German traditions: Kandinsky stood for the international free-trade zone of art that Germany had been between 1850 and 1914; the students stood for the nationalistic movements of the nineteenth century some of which eventually were entwined in many ways with the National Socialist nightmare of the twentieth. Whoever took this photograph was a fleeting witness to the contradictions of postwar (West) Germany. I was sorry not to know his name and not to be able to order a usable new print. Finally, I decided to include the visually unsatisfying print and dedicated a short essay to the unknown photographer and his little feat."

Artículo completo en el siguiente enlace:

http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/be-continued-periodic-exhibitions-documenta-example