The Art of
Katalog_Boris-Lurie_English
Katalog_Boris-Lurie_English
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151<br />
Wolf Vostell, Wir waren so eine <strong>Art</strong> Museumsstück, 1964, silkscreen print and paint on canvas, 120 x 450 cm<br />
13<br />
KATHRIN<br />
HOFFMANN-CURTIUS<br />
Bilder zum Judenmord:<br />
Eine kommentierte<br />
Sichtung der Malerei<br />
und Zeichenkunst in<br />
Deutschland von 1945<br />
bis zum<br />
Auschwitz-Prozess,<br />
Marburg: Jonas Verlag,<br />
2014, 250. <strong>The</strong> quotation<br />
by Ruth Klüger is<br />
taken from the book<br />
Von hoher und niedriger<br />
Literatur, Göttingen:<br />
Wallstein Verlag,<br />
1996, p. 35.<br />
Wir waren so eine <strong>Art</strong> Museumsstück and another work produced in 1964,<br />
Eine Aut<strong>of</strong>ahrt Köln-Frankfurt auf überfüllter Autobahn kostet mehr Nerven<br />
als eine Woche lang angestrengt arbeiten (A drive from Cologne to<br />
Frankfurt on the packed autobahn is more nerve-racking than a week <strong>of</strong> laborious<br />
work), include the reception <strong>of</strong> the Holocaust in a broader reflection<br />
on the media presentation <strong>of</strong> political events. <strong>The</strong> two silkscreen prints<br />
sprayed with paint set the memory <strong>of</strong> Auschwitz alongside contemporary<br />
events and thus draw the viewer‘s attention to the fact that media reporting<br />
reduces singular historical events to one level.<br />
In contrast to Vostell‘s media-critical approach, only a little later the Atlas<br />
project by Gerhard Richter closely examined the iconography <strong>of</strong> the photos<br />
from the liberated camps themselves. <strong>The</strong> “photos from books” that Richer<br />
assembled on sheets 15 to 18 stem from the influential book, above all in<br />
visual terms, Der gelbe Stern. Sheets 19 and 20, however, document the<br />
artist‘s own attempts to approach the iconic photographs—be it in his distinct<br />
blurred-looking painting technique, be it through diagonal cutting or<br />
subsequent coloration.<br />
<strong>The</strong> fact that Gerhard Richter definitely considered exhibiting these photos<br />
alongside pornographic images from magazines is indicated by the subsequent<br />
sheets 21 to 23. <strong>The</strong> artist himself later spoke about this unrealized<br />
exhibition, 12 but he did not comment on the conceptual affinity between<br />
the Atlas project and Boris Lurie‘s collages. Kathrin H<strong>of</strong>fmann-Curtius interprets<br />
this affinity as an echo <strong>of</strong> the beginning mass-media reception <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Holocaust: “Richter[’s] ... selection <strong>of</strong> photographs <strong>of</strong> the genocide <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Jews and the subsequent pornographic images open up comparison to extremely<br />
obscene attacks on the female body, a composition that primarily<br />
criticizes the voyeurism <strong>of</strong> the viewers. <strong>The</strong> concept that was not actually<br />
realized in the gallery but is shown in the Atlas thus documents a period<br />
about which Ruth Klüger said: ‘And there was also something <strong>of</strong> pornographic<br />
lust attached to that period‘s interest in the Holocaust, which<br />
was not yet called by that name.’” 13<br />
<strong>The</strong> media reception <strong>of</strong> the events in Europe between 1933 and 1945<br />
From Display to Lust<br />
12<br />
Cf.<br />
GERHARD RICHTER<br />
“MOMA-Interview mit<br />
Robert Storr 2002,” in:<br />
id., Text 1961 bis 2007:<br />
Schriften, Interviews,<br />
Briefe, Dietmar Elger/<br />
Hans Ulrich Obrist ed.,<br />
Cologne: Verlag der<br />
Buchhandung Walter<br />
König, 2008,<br />
p. 416.