A review of the Michael Werner exhibition at the Musée d'art moderne

La Collection Michael Werner
Musée d’art moderne, Paris
October 5, 2012 - March 3, 2013

It was a Sunday when I saw this exhibition. I prepared a good meal at home, with salmon, Brussels sprouts and potato purée. We drank two-thirds of a bottle of burgundy, and also split a craquant au chocolat. It was her birthday.

We descended from our apartment, and found that outside it was a relatively balmy 10 degrees centigrade. The sun peeked out between the clouds, and the pavement was wet. I felt fine. We walked to the Strasbourg–Saint-Denis station, where we took the 9 train and got out at Iéna. Exiting onto the street, we followed the downward pitch of the Avenue du President Wilson and arrived at the entrance to the museum in under a minute. Across the avenue I saw the Square Brignole Galliera: empty, gray, and brooding.

Once inside the building, we walked through a metal detector. I bought a ticket for nine euros, while hers cost just seven. In order to reach the exhibition we had to pass through the museum’s permanent collection, free and open to the public, packed with kitschy Delaunays. At the entrance to the exhibition, a woman tore our tickets in half, and we each took programs from a receptacle suited for the purpose. We entered a dark octagonal room in which were arranged some bronze sculptures. I couldn’t bring myself to care, and passed up a few stairs into the first proper room, wondering if I still agreed with Baudelaire, that sculpture is the most boring of the visual arts.

Gaston Chaissac,
"Grande porte de bois peint" (1953)

The first proper room featured grayish ink depictions of naked women by Jean Fautrier. I admired the quality of line in these figure drawings, and the way it would shift from thin to thick as it followed the sensual curves of the woman’s thighs. I don’t remember anything about the Francis Gruber works that followed that, except that they were also fairly dark.

The darkness of the previous two artists ill-prepared me for the next room, and I felt a distinct shock when I found myself facing the garish colors of Gaston Chaissac. As if my eyes were adjusting to the color, I gradually liked each painting more and more as I looked at them. There was a brownish one whose colors seemed “just right.” I finished my time in this room by writing Chaissac’s name on my program, so that I would remember it (it took me a few rooms to realize that it would be easier to just circle the name where it is printed in the program). I also noted the years of the two paintings I liked best: 1958-9 and 1943-4.

Derain followed in the next room: the largest room yet. at the center were arranged several dozen heads of bronze, with round, beady eyes, thick, flat lips, whimsical expressions. I remember thinking to myself, “these are pretty funny.” I saw two paintings that bothered me, and then I began to like the rest of the paintings that I saw. Derain has a special touch. Like Robert Delaunay he seems to have been unable to formulate his own style, and resorted to borrowing from others over the course of his career; but whereas Delaunay’s borrowing results mostly in kitsch, Derain usually succeeds in creating something worthwhile despite its derivativeness. He’s not a genius, but he’s much smarter, and probably funnier than Delaunay: I left the room with a heart warmed by the admiration I was feeling just then for André Derain.

The next room was the worst of all the rooms, featuring late paintings of Picabia. The program insists that Picabia “slaughtered the second sacred cow of the art world: style,” and indeed Picabia’s later paintings lack all semblance of style. Yet nothing is revealed by them in their stylelessness; one looks at them and one sees nothing worth looking at. I laughed aloud reading the program mention “his so-called bad paintings”: so-called bad paintings, or just simply bad paintings? Bad, bad paintings that no one needs to try to admire.

Louis Eilshemius, "Nymph with Pink Scarf" (1914)

After that, one of the shining moments of the exhibition: a wall of small scenes painted by Louis Eilshemius. Like pompier paintings attempted by a child, these works exude a trembling sentimentalism, earnest and sad, a breath of fresh air after Picabia’s painting-hell. Intimate pastoral clearings, dotted with blurry nudes. The program mentioned Duchamp’s advocacy of Eilshemius at the 1917 “Independents Exhibition” in New York (I think Marjorie Perloff may have mentioned him in her talk on Duchamp). This made total sense to me, and also made me think that I, too, would advocate for Eilshemius whenever I had the chance. This room alone made the visit worthwhile.

I passed through the following rooms with my eyes open. Grotesque three-dimensional paintings from Réquichot, three different artists (Jacques de la Villeglé, Raymond Hains, Mimmo Rotella) working with torn film posters and advertisements. It’s no coincidence that all three were doing the same thing independently: it’s a pretty obvious idea, one had by people everyday in the subway. Otto Dix and Günter Brus followed—seeming a bit exaggerated after Eilshemius, to say the least!—then Lucio Fontana, whose works were cruelly positioned in a curving hallway, making it all too easy to pass them quickly. The next large room featured great works by Beuys: East German paper used for wrapping foodstuffs, brown and flat with strange stamped motifs. Beuys’ ironic commentary on top. It just works: Beuys works and he always does, somehow. These pieces were unfortunately accompanied by some dull, dreary nineties’ conceptual kitsch from James Lee Byars. Not even worth a passing glance.

After that, a big room with big Baselitz paintings. All upside down, and all worth admiring. And after that, another big positive: a series of graphite drawings from Eugen Schönebeck, depicting Stalin, Mao, Mayakovsky, and more. Very great, making me circle his name enthusiastically in the exhibition program. The program speaks of manifestos written in the sixties against the German art establishment by Baselitz and Schönebeck. Where can I read them? Schröder-Sonnenstern also very great, and where else would you see these sick drawings? Höckelmann kind of a let down after this.

Henri Michaux, "Mouvements" (1951)

But this was succeeded by another shining moment: a half room of quiet drawings of Henri Michaux. Unfortunately, as we began to look at them we were followed into the room by two Russian bimbos passing in front of each drawing at a steady pace—slow, but never stopping—speaking very loudly. Their voices echoed through the room, destroying any attempt at admiring Michaux’s simple black forms on pale yellow. We just had to stop and wait, staring at the ceiling until these awful women passed on. These simple drawings are so effective. Unequivocally human forms represented by black lines and blots, spread across the tan paper. Delicate pastel and gouache on black paper. Sharp colors, the merest hint of figures. A devotional procession in reddish-orange on black, plodding towards an electric blue ladder climbing upwards to the right. Then on the facing wall, Michaux’s mescaline drawings. I tried to imagine him on mescaline, hunched over his desk, squinting as his white-knuckled hands gripped his pen and delicately described the forms that occupied his mind. Evocative work, earnest work, simple and alien. These made me think of a time in college when I drew a picture of my friend when we had both taken acid. My first attempt at drawing had failed disastrously: I could barely move my hand, and ended up with a minuscule cartoon of a planetary orb and a hot dog. I didn’t even know what I was doing. Somehow I relaxed, and drew from nature, effortlessly recording the smooth curve of my friend’s bald head, the spiky stubble of his beard and mustache. When he saw the drawing he told me, “you’ve captured something photographic.”

Marcel Broodthaers, from "Les très riches
heures du Duc de Berry" (1974-5)

The next room featured great and funny work by Jörg Immendorff. The program spoke highly of his “LIDL actions.” We admired his “Self-portrait of the Artist in his Studio”, which depicts himself, in his studio, painting a picture of striking factory workers. Then came Lehmbruck lithographs and sculptures, which passed me by. Lüpertz followed, with a grotesque sculpture of Mozart as a female bodybuilder. Some of his paintings were quite nice, and I appreciated his attempt to make sculptures of the forms described in his paintings.

Penck was strange, and I probably should have given him more attention—at least enough to find out how this artist would switch his primary source of inspiration, as the program noted, from scientific positivism to free jazz. I was distracted from his curving room by the intimate side room devoted to Broodthaers. Great, great works collected there. Conceptual but unpretentious. The saving grace of all intellectual art is a sense of humor. Very funny work, also mysterious. Would have liked to save it for later, contemplate it during the train ride home.

Then Leroy, Polke, Toroni (minimalism is alright, but Dia:Beacon makes too big a deal about it!). Polke succeeds with winning forms. He wins these late rooms. Van Vliet better than expected, but hard to think of him as anything other than an amateur (that’s bad, I know!). Freundlich I barely recall, and Kirkeby paints his own shapes over readymade canvases. I remember thinking, “that’s a pretty good idea,” and then almost immediately thinking, “no it’s not!”

Raymond Queneau, "Main et coquillage" (c. 1925)

Schmit and Queneau in the little corner before the gift shop/exit. (Tip: you can see these for free from the staircase leading down to the permanent collection, just bring binoculars!) Schmit was interesting, but the drawings were too stiff. More of a philosopher, a comedian, a writer. I would read his novel. Queneau is of course more of a writer, whose novels I’ve read, but these little paintings are so good. His hand in front of a bottle, various objects, gouache polaroids. Mundane and magnificent. A final shining moment. Had to settle for mental postcards.

As we left we saw a long line of fashionable fools waiting to enter the Palais de Tokyo (whereas the Werner exhibit had been practically empty). One young man wore skintight jeans, a peacoat, Harry Potter glasses, Hitler Youth buzz-cut on the sides, smoothed back pompadour on top, and a massive lumberjack beard, as if he didn’t want to take any chance of anyone ever thinking he might not be a hipster. Skip the contemporary kitsch parade and see the Michael Werner show, you fools!

friedrich achleitner as beer-drinker

First literary cabaret of the Wiener Gruppe, 6.12.1958: friedrich achleitner als biertrinker

"The number friedrich achleitner als biertrinker, in which Achleitner sits on the stage drinking beer while an announcer tries to describe this occurrence, demonstrates the incompatibility of verbal description and reality, allows it to be authentically experienced and makes it understandable in its ridiculousness."
[Translated from Andrea Portenkircher's essay "kaspar ist tot" in Komik in der österreichischen Literatur (Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1996) p. 246.]

friedrich achleitner as beer-drinker
(by friedrich achleitner)

friedrich will drink a bottle of sweet gray beer. he sits on a chair from the old world of the künstlerbund. before him stands an unusual table. what stands on the unusual table. a full bottle of sweet gray beer. an unfull glass. what will friedrich do. he will take the full bottle of sweet gray beer in his excellent hand. what will he do with the full bottle of sweet gray beer. he will pour the full bottle of sweet grey beer into the unfull glass. he pours the full bottle of sweet grey beer into the unfull glass. despite sustained pouring the unfull glass is still unfull. now the unfull glass is full. we call the unfull glass full. the full glass of sweet grey beer stands on the unusual table. friedrich will place the unfull bottle in which the sweet grey beer resided on the unusual table.  he places the unfull bottle on the unusual table. he will take the full glass of sweet grey beer in his excellent hand. he takes the full glass of sweet grey beer in his excellent hand. he will set the full glass of sweet grey beer against his red lips. he sets the full glass of sweet grey beer against his red lips. he will drink. he drinks. he drinks. he drinks. he drank. he takes the unfull glass of sweet grey beer from his red lips with his excellent hand. he will place the unfull glass of sweet grey beer on the unusual table. he places the unfull glass of sweet grey beer on the unusual table. the unfull glass of sweet grey beer stands next to the unfull bottle of sweet grey beer. friedrich will say scheiss schwechata. he says scheiss schwechata. he said scheiss schwechata.


[My translation from original printed in Die Wiener Gruppe, ed. Gerhard Rühm (Rowohlt, 1967), p. 422.]
_________

EXTRA: another Austrian avant-garde meditation on the theme of Schwechater beer:

Werner Riegel (1925-1956)

Werner Riegel, around 1953.

Zwischen den Kriegen der organisierten Barbarei halten wir eine kleine Zisterne offen für ein paar hundert Dürstende, mehr können wir nicht tun.

Between the wars of organized barbarianism we hold a small cistern open for a few hundred thirsty, we can't do anything more.

Werner Riegel was a writer, poet, and journalist from Hamburg who self-published a literary journal entitled Zwischen den Kriegen from the years of 1952-1956. Together with Peter Rühmkorf (his partner in publishing Zwischen den Kriegen) Riegel formulated a literary program called Finismus, which can be partly understood as an attempt to resuscitate the corpses of pre-WWII German Expressionism and Activism in post-WWII Germany. Riegel operated independently of the literary establishment which was quickly forming in these years, shunning the opportunity of being printed by a major publisher, preferring the DIY hectograph production with which he printed ZdK.

Zwischen den Kriegen 9, 1953.

Zwischen den Kriegen 10, 1953.

In the following two excerpts (from “Vorwort zum Finismus”, Zwischen den Kriegen 9, September 1953) Riegel clarifies the origins of Finismus, and describes the program of aesthetic rapprochement which would be its intended goal:

[Finismus] handelt sich um den aktivistischen Tendenzexpressionismus deutscher und um den nihilistische-apokalyptischen Destruktionsformalismus französischer Provenienz. Es handelt sich um die Bemühung der Heinrich Mann, Sternheim, Rubiner, Hiller, Hasenclever, Toller bis hin zu Brecht oder Kesten einerseits und um die aus prälogischen Schichten des Hirns steigende Verzweiflung der Heym, Trakl, Lichtenstein, Kafka und Benn anderseits.

Finismus deals with the activistic-tendential Expressionism of German provenance, and the nihilistic-apocalyptic destruction-Formalism of French provenance. It deals with the endeavor of Heinrich Mann, Sternheim, Rubiner, Hiller, Hasenclever, Toller up to Brecht or Kesten on the one side, and on the other side the despair, rising from the pre-logical layers of the brain, of Heym, Trakl, Lichtenstein, Kafka and Benn.

[...] 

Zwiefach gespeist von den Elektroden des Expressionismus, von der Anode des Aktivismus, von der Kathode der Normenverneinung, beginnen [die Finisten] in der Nachfolge Tollers u n d Trakls, Brechts u n d Benns die Synthese von Kampf und Trauer, Ja und Verneinung, Bruch und Bindung, Tat und Trauma, Arche und Flut.

 Dually fed from the electrodes of Expressionism, from the anodes of Activism, from the cathodes of norm negation, [the Finisten], in the footsteps of Toller and Trakl, Brecht and Benn, begin the synthesis of battle and mourning, affirmation and negation, break and binding, action and trauma, ark and flood.

Riegel's campaign to renovate what he sees as the withered trails of the pre-war German avant-garde is thus set against the contemporary literary situation, which he sees as dominated by kitsch and low quality literary replicas. The political situation of post-war Germany inspired a kind of reactionary, restorative moralism in many parts of the field of literary production, something which upset writers like Riegel. In the following passage (excerpted from the same essay) Riegel paints a symbolic landscape to represent the ruins of the pre-war avant-garde as they existed in the cultural milieu of his time:

In der Mitte des Jahrhunderts stehen wir vor dem gigantischen Torso, vor dem unvollendeten Kolosseum einer mit ungeheurer Vehemenz begonnen ‘neuen’ Dichtung, vor einem Trümmertrakt, mit dem niemand etwas anfangen kann, nicht einmal seine Urheber, sofern sie überlebten. Eine allgemeine Lethargie, Müdigkeit, Lustlosigkeit, Verächtlichkeit senkt ihren Staub auf das Amphitheater, die Düne deckt den Marmor zu, die Distel krönt den Sarkophag. Die Pyramiden werden ausgemessen, beklopft, beschrieben, man trägt sie mit Sternchen in den Poesiebaedeker ein. Am Rand der Wüste hockt ein Volk von Fellachen und verscheuert den nach großem Vorbild geschusterten Abklatsch.

In the middle of the century we stand before the gigantic torso, before the unfinished colosseum of a "new", begun with tremendous vehemence, before a ruined apparatus, with which no one can do anything, not evening its progenitors, provided they survived. A general lethargy, tiredness, listlessness, contempt drops its dust upon the amphitheater, the dunes cover the marble, thistle crowns the sarcophagi. The pyramids are measured, tested, described, and are entered with star-ratings in the poetry-Baedeker [a travel guide]. At the edge of the desert squat a population of fellahin, who peddle imitations, based on the grand prototype.

Riegel died of cancer in 1956, at the age of 31. The volume shared with Rühmkorf below was the only proper book he published during his lifetime. The edition of selected works below that, edited by Rühmkorf, was published after his death, in 1961. There have been two four-volume editions of Riegel's selected works: one published by a Swiss press in 1988, and then a nice but strange edition put out by Stuttgart publisher Literarisches Bureau Christ & Fez in 2006. His Nachlass, which I had the opportunity to peruse this summer, lies at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach.

Heisse Lyrik, Limes Verlag, 1956. (Cover design by Hans Arp)

Gedichte und Prosa, Limes Verlag, 1961.

Room Sound Marienleben

>>>Hindemith's Das Marienleben @ Squirrel's Nest


This 1950 recording of Hindemith's song-cycle Das Marienleben has reminded me of how much I treasure a good, vintage "room sound." By room sound I mean that it sounds as though it were recorded in a small room—judging by the reverb in this recording, I would guess it was recorded in a room measuring about 14'x18' with a ceiling no higher than 10', perhaps with a window open and several listeners smoking pensively on plush chairs. This, for me, is chamber music sounding its best. Why would you record chamber music in a church or a large concert hall? The music is written for 'room sound'—it is delicate music, with changes in dynamic which require the subtlety of close reverb to be heard. The extended reverb of a great hall drowns such nuances, demanding to be filled with the sonic might of an orchestra. Chamber music is private music: living room, salon, or even bedroom music.
This recording is of the second version of Das Marienleben from 1947, Hindemith's "final word", going against that of Schoenberg, who preferred the 1927 version (which I assume is somewhat less neoclassical, though I have not heard it). The music is classic Hindemith, confidently straddling the gap between atonal formalism and neoclassical impressionism. Hindemith works best as chamber music, where his understated experimentalism is allowed to blossom comfortably within a similarly demure aural sphere.
I haven't yet paid much attention to Rilke's text here, although if Beckett is right, that Rilke, like Klopstock, suffers from "the fidgets"—and has the "childishness to which German writers seem specially prone" to "call the fidgets God, Ego, Orpheus and the rest"—we should be grateful to have such fidgeting transformed into bold, semi-tonal Lyrik. (Poetry can be useful). "The mystic heart, geared to the blaue Blume, petrified!" Hindemith thankfully escapes fidgeting mysticism (perhaps thanks to the ever-steadying close reverb of a small room), producing instead a set of modernist devotional Lieder for the listening pleasure and sober meditations of the refined Christian atheist-aestheticist.

Riegel and Gruppe 47

In "Proklomation des Hektographismus," which first appeared in the second issue of Zwischen den Kriegen, Werner Riegel begins a paragraph with a cryptic critique of the post-war literary scene, speaking of the “Kilometerstein 47” on the highway of literary progress, as well as a list of the top three authors of the time: “Oberst Hemingway” (5 bestsellers), “Kuli Plivier” (3 bestsellers), and “Gerhardt Maria Kramer” (1 bestseller). Riegel then drops the code and issues a string of barbs against the members of Gruppe 47:

Es lohnt leider nicht, die Namen derer zu nennen, die sich da unten in Süddeutschland als Gruppe 47 etabliert haben, die über ihr schlechtes Leben stöhnen und sich gegenseitig Literaturpreise verleihen. Was heißt überhaupt verleihen! Jedenfalls ist es für uns ein Festessen, zu sehen wie die Spießerliteraten der »Literatur« auf die Spießer schimpfen, die nicht so doof sind, mit Bücherschreiben Geld verdienen zu wollen sondern lieber im Toto wetten.¹

This reminded me of Thomas Bernhard's characterization, in a letter to Siegfried Unseld, of Gruppe 47 as "Literaturtombola."²


1. Werner Riegel, Ausgewahlte Werke in Einzelausgaben, Band 1 (Stuttgart: Literarisches Bureau Christ & Fez, 2006) p. 42.
2. http://literaturgefluester.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/bernhard-und-handke-in-der-osterreichischen-literatur/.

Against the charitable gesture there is no defense, that I know of. You sink your head, you put out your hands all trembling and twined together and you say, Thank you, thank you lady, thank you kind lady. To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth.

[from Molloy]