Undercurrents I: Stories, Symbols, and Sounds is curated by Isotta Poggi, Joes Segal, and Emma Diffley with support from Matthew Jones. Special thanks to the Archive of Modern Conflict, Corita Art Center, Getty Research Institute, Hanna Sawka, and Markus Müller from FMP-Publishing.
See also Anna Horakova and Isotta Poggi, “Overthrowing Reality: Photo-Poems in 1980s German Democratic Republic Samizdat ,” Getty Research Journal, No. 19 (2024), https://doi.org/10.59491/ZUEW3338. View article here.
All images courtesy of the artists and their lending institutions. Collection Wende Museum and Corita Art Center photography by Angel Xotlanihua and Dorian Hill. Please do not reproduce without permission.
April 27, 2024–September 15, 2024
Introduction
Does art have the power to change society? This exhibition presents artwork that did not follow the beaten tracks of mainstream art production and conformist political messaging. Through appropriation and subversion of official imagery, or by creating an alternative aesthetic universe, these artworks opened new perspectives and inspired unconventional, alternative readings of reality.
Repeatedly, historians and art historians have suggested a clear division between “official” and “dissident” or “countercultural” artists under authoritarian regimes. Quite often, these distinctions turn out to be problematic. Artists can be critical of a regime but supportive of its official ideology, or they can be involved in state propaganda and in cultural opposition at the same time. While this exhibition focuses on independent art scenes in the formerly socialist Eastern Europe, we acknowledge the gray zones and complexities of creating art under political restrictions.
The exhibition presents artists’ books, portfolios, prints, posters, and photographs from the collections of the Wende Museum, the Getty Research Institute, and the Archive of Modern Conflict. From the collection of Corita Art Center, works by U.S. artist, educator, and social justice advocate Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita) created during the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s complement the exhibition.
Jan Sawka, The Invasion (Trees) 1975, watercolor and pencil on paper Collection
Wende Museum
Jan Sawka was part of the Polish “generation of 1968,” a group of artists and writers opposed to the communist regime. He was forced into exile in 1976, and emigrated to the United States in 1977. A multidisciplinary artist, he achieved recognition in graphic design, painting, set design, multimedia, and architecture. All his life he grappled with the visual propaganda of repressive systems, starting with banners he created for protests against the communist state’s “Anti-Zionist” campaign of 1968. Titled either The Invasion or Trees, this sequential painting consisting of 24 panels was generously donated to the Wende Museum through the mediation of the artist’s daughter Hanna Maria Sawka. The Invasion represents a technique Sawka developed at the time using hand-etched prints as the bases for sequences that he painted by hand. The Invasion is a contemplation on the impact of totalitarianism, propaganda, censorship, and repression on society, inspired by Sawka’s experiences living as an artist and intellectual in communist Poland. In 1992, the artist showed a parallel version of this work at the Polish pavilion of the World Exposition in Seville, Spain, as part of his installation “My Europe,” an artistic and philosophical reflection on Polish history in the twentieth century.
Jan Sawka
Jan Sawka, Invasion, video created and edited by Hanna Maria Sawka based on a 48-panel sequential artwork by Jan Sawka titled Invasion (1975–1979, ink, acrylic, and graphite on intaglio print base), duration 2 minutes
Courtesy of Hanna Maria Sawka
During the 1970s, Jan Sawka developed a style of sequential artworks that he would base from a repeated intaglio print, each panel painted differently. This technique allowed him to create large works upon assembly that he could transport for unauthorized pop-up exhibitions. In 1975, curator Mariusz Hermandorsfer of the National Museum in Wrocław submitted such artworks to the International Festival Painting in Cagnessur-Mer on Sawka’s behalf. Sawka won the Oscar de la Peinture and a Special Jury Award for Innovation in Painting for these works. That same year, he created Invasion and exhibited it without censor permission at the Wilanów Poster Museum in Warsaw. Sawka credited Invasion and its public display as the artistic gesture that led to his exile in 1976. The video shows a “sister” version of Invasion that was completed a few years after the artwork on display.
Hanna Maria Sawka, The Invasion, video, 2017–2024, based on Jan Sawka’s sequential artwork Invasion (1975–1979)
Sándor Pinczehelyi
Sándor Pinczehelyi, Sarló és kalapács 4 [Sickle and Hammer 4]
1973, gelatin silver
Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Sándor Pinczehelyi, Sarló és kalapács 2 [Sickle and Hammer 2]
1973, gelatin silver print
Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
In his photographic work, multimedia artist Pinczehelyi often focuses on symbols of the international workers’ movement, such as the red star or the hammer and sickle, separating them from their original propagandistic function and giving them a new and ironic significance through a process of appropriation and reinterpretation. Pinczehelyi was a member of the influential neo-avant-garde Pécs Workshop (1970-1980) and experimented with geometrical abstraction, land art, and process art. He also worked as gallery director and curator at the Pécs municipal art gallery. In 1988, together with two other artists, he represented Hungary at the Venice Biennale.
Sándor Pinczehelyi, Star Coca-Cola 1988, oil and silkscreen on canvas
Collection Wende
Museum
In the late 1980s, irony became a favorite means of artistic expression all over Eastern Europe. On the one hand, by superimposing multiple Coca-Cola logos over the red star of communism, Pinczehelyi seems to imply that socialism is no longer presenting a viable alternative to Western capitalism and that it is only a matter of time before Hungary becomes part of a global consumer culture. On the other hand, this highly ambiguous work suggests that capitalism and communism have more in common than is usually understood. Both systems use iconic images and logos to impose their respective ideologies. Moreover, the painting reflects the curious mixture of socialist and capitalist elements in late 1980s Hungary after a series of political reforms. This painting is presented as a counterpart to Árpád Kiss-Kuntler’s series Stars, stars.
Following page
Installation view of Sabine Jahn, Sándor Pinczehelyi, and Árpád Kiss-Kuntler
(Collections of the Wende Museum and Archive of Modern Conflict)
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler
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Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Angyalföldi óra [Clock in Angyalföld], Stars, stars 1988, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Between 1981 and 1989, Kiss-Kuntler worked on a series of photographs of one of the most significant symbols of international socialism: the five-pointed red star. Whereas the star usually features as a part of political propaganda, the artist documented its decontextualized or subversive use as an illustration of social decay or expression of counterculture.
Kiss-Kuntler was a photojournalist for the social democratic Hungarian-language newspaper Népszava (1979-89) and for Világ Köztársaság (1989). He was a member of several Hungarian photography organizations, including Budapest Photo Club (1977), Studio of Young Photographers (1980), and the Association of Hungarian Photographers (1986).
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, E - klub [E-Club], Stars, stars, 1987, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler Hajviselet - Budapest [Hairstyle - Budapest], Stars, stars, 1984, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Jan Sawka
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Munkásőr kiképzőbázis - Pest megye [Munkásőr (Labour Guard) Bootcamp Training Base - Pest County], Stars, stars, 1985, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Moszkvai napok Budapesten című rendezvényhez kapcsolódó kirakat. Budapest Nagykörút - akkor Lenin körút [Shop Window Celebrating “Moscow Days” on Lenin Boulevard in Budapest], Stars, stars, 1989, gelatin silver print
Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Magyar-Mongol barátság mezőgazdasági termelőszövetkezet fogadókapujából részlet [Entrance of the Hungarian-Mongolian Friendship Agricultural Cooperative], Stars, stars, 1982, gelatin silver print
Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Utcai lámpa [Streetlight], Stars, stars
1987, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Kisfaludi Strobl Zsigmond, Energia szobor [Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl, “Energy” Statue], Stars, stars
1985, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Sziréna - Csorna [Siren - Csorna], Stars, stars, 1988, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Árpád Kiss-Kuntler, Május elsejei felvonulás [May Day Parade], Stars, stars, 1988, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Sabine Jahn
Inspired by the creative collaborations of Georgia O’Keeffe & Alfred Stieglitz and Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe, Sabine Jahn made this series of screenprints as an homage to the four American artists by mixing and appropriating work by all of them in innovative ways. She added a vibrant color dimension to Mapplethorpe’s black-and-white still-life photographs of flowers, while addressing the ephemeral beauty of nature by overlaying texts on artists’ portraits: an interview of Mapplethorpe on his own portrait and O’Keeffe’s poem “I have picked flowers where I found them” on her portrait by Alfred Stieglitz. Jahn’s appropriation and contemplative reinterpretation of artworks made by American artists were certain uncommon–and provocative in East Germany; her embrace of American art is an example of the gradually increasing openness across geopolitical and cultural boundaries that took place in the mid-to-late 1980s.
Sabine Jahn, Untitled [Still-life], Siebdrucke Sabine Jahn nach Fotografien von Robert Mapplethorpe [Screenprints by Sabine Jahn based on photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe] 1988, screenprint Collection Wende Museum
Jan Sawka Sabine Jahn
Sabine Jahn, Untitled [Still-life], Siebdrucke Sabine Jahn nach Fotografien von Robert Mapplethorpe [Screenprints by Sabine Jahn based on photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe], 1988, screenprint Collection Wende Museum
Sabine Jahn, Untitled [Still-life], Siebdrucke Sabine Jahn nach Fotografien von Robert Mapplethorpe [Screenprints by Sabine Jahn based on photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe], 1988, screenprint Collection Wende Museum
Jan Sawka Sabine Jahn
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Installation view of Sabine Jahn (Collection Wende Museum)
Sabine Jahn, Untitled [Still-life], Siebdrucke Sabine Jahn nach Fotografien von Robert Mapplethorpe [Screenprints by Sabine Jahn based on photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe] 1988, screenprint
Collection Wende Museum
Sabine Jahn, Untitled, Siebdrucke Sabine Jahn nach Fotografien von Robert Mapplethorpe [Screenprints by Sabine Jahn based on photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe] 1988, screenprint
Collection Wende Museum
This photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe is accompanied by a poem written by the famed artist on her body, as if to represent part of her own nature and identity.
Jan Sawka Sabine Jahn
Sabine Jahn, Untitled [Still-Life], overlaid by Untitled, Siebdrucke Sabine Jahn nach Fotografien von Robert Mapplethorpe [Screenprints by Sabine Jahn based on photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe] 1988, screenprint on transparent paper overlaid on screenprint
Collection Wende Museum
The text reads: Ich habe blumen gepflückt, wo ich sie fand - ich habe seemuscheln, steine und holzstückchen aufgesammelt, wo seemuscheln, steine und holzstückchen, die mir gefielen, zu finden waren... als ich das wunderbare weiße geweih in der wüste fand, habe ich es genommen und nach hause getragen. Ich habe diese dinge verwendet, um zu sagen was mir die unbändigkeit und die wunder dieser welt bedeuten, in der ich lebe
[“I have picked flowers where I found them - / Have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of / wood where there were sea shells and rocks and / pieces of wood that I liked // When I found the beautiful white bones on the / desert I picked them up and took them home too // I have used these things to say what is to me / the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it”]
Jan Sawka Sabine Jahn
Thomas Günther and Claus Bach
In this photograph staged by Claus Bach, Thomas Günther walks on a highway towards the horizon line while throwing hitch-hiking signs into the air. This is a manifesto of the three artists who chose to embark on an unscripted path and avoid pre-planned goals and destinations, drawing inspiration from the Surrealist poet Antonin Artaud, who is quoted at the bottom of the picture.
The text reads: Parce qu’on a eu peur que leur poésie ne sorte des livres et ne renverse la réalité
[Because they were afraid that their poetry might leap out of the books and overthrow reality]
Thomas Günther and Claus Bach, Artist’s Manifesto, with quotation by Antonin Artaud, 1982, photograph and collage on gelatin silver print
Thomas Günther and Claus Bach
Claus Bach, Thomas Günther, and Sabine Jahn
The three artists Claus Bach, Thomas Günther, and Sabine Jahn met in the late 1970s when they were in their twenties and formed an artists’ group to make special edition intermedia books and portfolios combining photography, poetry, and printmaking. They collaborated throughout the 1980s, producing works such as Nie mehr erwachen jetzt, a collection of Foto-Lyrik Arbeiten (photo-poetry works) combining staged photographs by Bach and Jahn with poems by Günther laid out during the printing process of the negatives. Using humor and sarcasm, these poems are a creative commentary on the artists’ experience of everyday life in the GDR. The photo-poems address travel bans, lack of inspiration from a sense of platitude, the difficulty of trustworthy social interactions, and surveillance.
Claus Bach and Thomas Günther, Mann der Moderne [Modern Man], Nie Mehr Erwachen Jetzt [Never Again Waking Up Now] 1980-1990, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum
The text reads: Mann der Moderne, Wie leer die Not, Wie gemein der Tod, Wie schal das Bier, So klagen wir
[Modern man, How empty the need, How common the death, How stale the beer, So we complain]
Jan Sawka
Claus Bach, Thomas Günther, and Sabine Jahn
Claus Bach, Vor dem Reisebüro [In Front of the Travel Agency], Nie Mehr Erwachen Jetzt [Never Again Waking Up Now] 1980-1990, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum
The text reads: Vor dem Reisebüro, Im Nebel zugehangen ist die Spitze des Fernsehturms: ein Augenwurm und Gespinst besonderer Art dem die Aussicht versperrt ist auf weitere Aussichten
[In front of the travel agency, the spire of the television tower is shrouded in fog: an eye worm and web of a special kind that blocks the view of further views]
Claus Bach, Epitaph für ein Ende [Epitaph for an End], Nie Mehr Erwachen Jetzt [Never Again Waking Up Now] 1980-1990, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum
The text reads: Epitaph für ein ende, ER HAT ERREICHT was er wollte, Er hat sich unverfügbar gemacht, Als Zahnrad funktioniert er nicht mehr, So trauern wir ihm nicht hinterher, Er hat erreicht WAS ER NICHT WOLLTE
[Epitaph for an end, HE HAS ACHIEVED what he wanted, He has made himself unavailable, He no longer functions as a cogwheel, So we don’t mourn him, He has achieved WHAT HE DIDN’T WANT]
Jan Sawka
Claus Bach, Thomas Günther, and Sabine Jahn
Thomas Günther and Sabine Jahn, Deutscher Traum an Einem Wintertag [German Dream on a Winter Day], Nie Mehr Erwachen Jetzt [Never Again Waking Up Now]
1980-1990, gelatin silver print Collection Wende Museum
The text reads: Deutscher Traum an einem Wintertag, Ich bin gerettet und verloren in einem Flugzeug nach L.A., Es sind die Wunder die zerfallen, Im Herzen taut der Schnee
[German dream on a winter day, I am saved and lost on a plane to L.A., It is the miracles that crumble, The snow is thawing in the heart]
Jan Sawka
Claus Bach, Thomas Günther, and Sabine Jahn
Jazz and Improvisation
In this portfolio, artists Jürgen Haufe and Claus Weidensdorfer capture the pulsing, uncontrollable spirit of free jazz in the German Democratic Republic during the 1980s. Because of its improvisational and therefore unpredictable character, jazz music was frequently criticized by the East German state. The portfolio focuses on six jazz musicians: Conrad Bauer, John Tchicai, Peter Brötzmann, Helmut “Joe” Sachse, Günter “Baby” Sommer, and Yosuke Yamashita. Bauer, Sachse, and Sommer were East German, while Tchicai was from Denmark, Brötzmann from West Germany, and Yamashita from Japan. They each performed in the GDR at some point, lending the country’s free jazz scene a sense of transgressive international solidarity.
Claus Weidensdorfer
Jan Sawka
Claus Weidensdorfer, Untitled, Jazz and Improvisation, 1986, lithograph Collection Wende Museum
Jürgen Haufe
Jürgen Haufe, Yosuke Yamashita, Jazz and Improvisation, 1986, lithograph Collection Wende Museum
Jürgen Haufe, John Tchicai, Jazz and Improvisation, 1986, lithograph Collection Wende Museum
Claus Weidensdorfer, Untitled, Jazz and Improvisation, 1986, lithograph Collection Wende Museum Jazz
Jürgen Haufe, Untitled, Jazz and Improvisation, 1986, lithograph Collection Wende Museum
Claus Weidensdorfer, Untitled, Jazz and Improvisation, 1986, lithograph Collection Wende Museum
This series of woodcut prints from 12 Holzschnitte, 6 Saxophone [12 Woodcuts, 6 Saxophones] combines the synesthetic experience of six artists who played the saxophone and drew inspiration from playing the instrument to make woodcut prints in a variety of styles. Each of the six artists (Klaus Martin Max, Klaus Werner, Dietmar Zaubitzer, Ludwig Böhme, Andreas Hegewald, and Tom Tritschel) created a black-and-white and color woodcut to reflect and visualize their individual musical experiences with the saxophone. Artist Christiane Just also utilized the woodcut printing technique to design the cover of the hand-made wooden case, which contains the six artists’ music recordings playing the saxophone on an audio cassette. This portfolio was produced in Dresden, an important cultural center for artists of East Germany, through the independent artist’s group Kristallschiff Editionen (Crystal Ship Publications). Like other examples in Undercurrents, this series highlights the highly intermedial character of artistic collaborations and practices during the last decade of the GDR.
Klaus Martin Max, Klaus Werner, Dietmar Zaubitzer, Ludwig Böhme, Andreas Hegewald, and Tom Tritschel with Christiane Just
Christiane Just, Front cover of 12 Holzschnitte, 6 Saxophone [12 Woodcuts, 6 Saxophones], Kristallschiff-Edition, 1986-1988, wood box enclosure Collection Getty Research Institute
Christiane Just, Back cover of 12 Holzschnitte, 6 Saxophone [12 Woodcuts, 6 Saxophones], Kristallschiff-Edition, 1986-1988, wood box enclosure Collection Getty Research Institute
Jan Sawka
Klaus Martin Max, Klaus Werner, Dietmar Zaubitzer, Ludwig Böhme, Andreas Hegewald, and Tom Tritschel, 12 Holzschnitte, 6 Saxophone [12 Woodcuts, 6 Saxophones], KristallschiffEdition, 1986-1988, woodcuts Collection Getty Research Institute
Klaus Martin Max, Klaus Werner, Dietmar Zaubitzer, Ludwig Böhme, Andreas Hegewald, and Tom Tritschel, 12 Holzschnitte, 6 Saxophone [12 Woodcuts, 6 Saxophones], KristallschiffEdition, 1986-1988, woodcuts
Klaus Martin Max, Klaus Werner, Dietmar Zaubitzer, Ludwig Böhme, Andreas Hegewald, and Tom Tritschel, 12 Holzschnitte, 6 Saxophone [12 Woodcuts, 6 Saxophones], KristallschiffEdition, 1986-1988, woodcuts Collection Getty Research Institute
Klaus Martin Max, Klaus Werner, Dietmar Zaubitzer, Ludwig Böhme, Andreas Hegewald, and Tom Tritschel, 12 Holzschnitte, 6 Saxophone [12 Woodcuts, 6 Saxophones], KristallschiffEdition, 1986-1988, woodcuts
Miroslav Hucek, Křídla pana Makovičky, Cesta za snem [Mr. Makovička’s Wings, The Journey of a Dream]
1972, gelatin silver print Collection Archive of Modern Conflict
Hucek started his career as a camera assistant for Czechoslovak state television. He was a photojournalist for the magazine Mlady Svēt from 1960 until 1975, when he was forced to leave the editorial office and then settled on a career as a freelance photographer, combining advertising work with personal projects documenting everyday life inspired by Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Eugene Smith. The photograph Mr. Makovička’s Wings is part of the series The Journey of a Dream, portraying the seventy-year old shopkeeper Mr. Makovička with his self-designed flying outfit. Taken as a scene from everyday life, the photo might reference the improbable dream of freedom under Czechoslovakia’s authoritarian regime that had suppressed the Prague Spring, a brief period of a more liberal, democratic, and humane form of socialism in the country under Alexander Dubček, First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from January 1968 to April 1969.
Jan Sawka Miroslav Hucek
Stefan Th. Wagner and Ernst Goldberg, Front cover of Holzland: ein neues deutsches Hausmärchen [Woodland: A New German Fairy Tale], 1988 Collection Getty Research Institute
Stefan Th. Wagner and Ernst Goldberg
Stefan Th. Wagner and Ernst Goldberg, Holzland: ein neues deutsches Hausmärchen [Woodland: A New German Fairy Tale], 1988 Collection Getty Research Institute
Under the guise of a fairy tale, this work by Stefan Thomas Wagner is a daring critique of the Socialist Unity Party, the ruling party of the GDR throughout the whole duration of the country’s existence. Holzland (Woodland) is named after a region of Thuringia in East Germany, an idealized setting for imaginary storytelling. Starting with the classical: “Es war einmal…” (“Once upon a time…”), the book tells the story of a construction contractor (Bauherr) who sets out to build a palace in which everybody’s needs and desires are met. His efforts ultimately fail as he comes to the realization that such an endeavor is incredibly demanding and seemingly unattainable. The pop-up construction shows a white spiraling tower mounted behind a striped, entangled zig-zag barrier. The palace of the people envisioned by the contractor recalls the utopian tower designed to celebrate modernity and the Communist Third International by Vladimir Tatlin in 1919, which was never realized. For the artist, however, this tower resembled a surveillance watchtower like those placed along East Germany’s borders and by the Berlin wall. This work demonstrates the imaginative storytelling which artists devised to push the boundaries of censorship and to communicate with one another. The story can be read as another phantasmagorical German fairy tale, or as a staunch critique of the political situation in the GDR.
Henrik Schrader (pseud. Schrat) became interested in art in his early twenties when he received a screen printing kit as a gift from a friend who had left the country. He called his “publishing house” O-rakel, playing on the concept of oracle, the prophetic (and ambiguous) response received by a priest in antiquity’s prophetic divinations, and “rakel,” the German word for the squeegee tool used in screen printing. Appropriately for an oracle book, Schrader published the ancient texts of Der Seherin Gesicht: Texte aus der Älteren Edda (“Vision of the Seer: Texts from the Older Edda”), the mythical story of Edda from the Norse tradition in Northern Europe. With highly poetic speech, rich in imagery and allusions, Edda shared her earliest memories: the creation of the world and how the elements of the universe found their place; the creation of humankind; the first wars and extreme corruption resulting in the complete demise of the world; and finally, the rebirth and repurification of the universe. Instead of using paper for pages, the artist used industrial felt panels that were produced to support linoleum floors, thus transforming ready-made construction materials into a new aesthetic language. The book was bound with screws (visible on the left side of the cover) that could be unmounted to open up the whole book and read its enigmatic prophecies.
Jan Sawka Henrik Schrader
Olaf Wegewitz
Due to his interest in abstract art practice, Olaf Wegewitz at first struggled to claim his place as an official artist in the GDR. It took him two attempts to be finally accepted in the Verband Bildender Künstler der DDR (Association of Visual Artists of the GDR), which provided the credentials to practice art, acquire professional painting supplies, and exhibit in national exhibitions. Besides his fascination with abstract visual languages, Wegewitz had an artistic sensibility for bookmaking arts, developing innovative binding techniques and creative paper-based designs and applications. The cover of this small, dainty artist’s book was designed to both enclose and protect the fragile pages made of tissue paper inside, as well as to be unfolded into a large exhibition advertisement poster. Reconnecting his readers with stories inspired by nature, past civilizations and cultures, or imaginary worlds, Wegewitz’ books often propose legends that resonate with contemporary issues. Here, Ulfilas tells the story of a gothic Christian priest who supported unity amongst his people in the mid-fourth century CE. Wegewitz’s intention was to counter the obsession with stories of violence when it comes to examining history, which he believed were often used to justify violence of the present day. He tells this story through the appropriation of found images, the use of an invented iconography inspired by his discovery of discarded accounting books from a parish in Leipzig, and the incorporation of a variety of handmade papers.
Galerie oben
Ulfilas Ausstellung [Gallery oben ‘87: Ulfilas exhibition], 1987, exhibition announcement poster on tissue paper Collection Getty Research Institute
Jan Sawka
Olaf Wegewitz,
‘87:
Olaf Wegewitz
Installation view of Henrik Schrader, Olaf Wegewitz, Peter Gosse, and Karl Georg-Hirsch (Collection Getty Research Institute)
Karl-Georg Hirsch and Peter Gosse
Previous pages
Karl-Georg Hirsch and Peter Gosse, Ketzer, Narr und Ruferin [Heretic, Jester, and Caller]
In the city of Leipzig, home to a famous book fair since the early 17th century, book art design was taught at the renowned Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (University for Graphics and Book Arts) and practiced in the local chapter of the Pirckheimer-Gesellschaft im Kulturbund der DDR. This bibliophile society curated limited editions of 50 copies of various books in a series titled 24 x 34 Blätter zu Literatur und Grafik (Leaves for literature and graphics [in size] 24 x 34 cm). Printmaking professor Karl-Georg Hirsch joined writer Peter Gosse to create this book as the issue no. 3 of this series. Made out of one single sheet folded in opposite directions in a leporello format, this work can stand on each of its pages and show all facets at once like a tri-dimensional structure. The dialogue between Gosse’s texts and Hirsch’s caricature-style woodcuts presents three grotesque archetypal figures: the heretic, who challenges the authorities; the jester, whose hat with little bells hides the “unspoken truth,” and the caller, who, much like Cassandra in the Trojan War, sounds out the alarm but is never believed.
Karl-Georg Hirsch and Peter Gosse, Front cover of Ketzer, Narr und Ruferin [Heretic, Jester, and Caller]
Combining delicate juxtapositions of poetry, printmaking, and photography, this artist’s book ironically explores whether a landscape’s value can be measured, surveyed, or quantified, and is critical of threats to the environment from pollution and the exploitation of natural resources. It calls for the recovery and preservation of the natural landscape, addressing nature and culture as coexisting, complementary, or conflicting worlds. Henne’s poem “Landschaft” (Landscape), typed on graph paper along two perpendicular axes, repeats the word landschaft four times (top left), creating a visually enclosed space that contrasts the landscapes’ spaces (räume) and then dreams (träume) quoted below the horizontal axis. In the last verse, landscape is linked to emigration, to a landscape elsewhere. Wenzel’s meditative photograph shows a river in a misty, winter light. She was interested in capturing the mood and the beauty of nature, and the landscape’s structural composition. Flowing through a snow-covered field, the river cuts across from the top left of the frame toward the bottom right margin. The image contrast is so low that the horizon line between the earth and the sky is almost invisible. In the foreground, animal footprints in the snow appear as signs of a past presence, of passage, and of movement. In correspondence with Henne’s verse referencing “landscape in emigration,” these signs offer a visual reference to emigration, a topic rarely discussed openly in the GDR. Conversely, Volmer’s print highlights the contrasting dynamic, graphic representation of orderly and organic lines, presenting a dialogue between artifice and nature as contrasting or complementary forces.
Wolfgang Henne, Steffen Volmer, and Marion Wenzel, Landschaft als Zeichen messbarvermessbar [Landscape as Signs, Measurable, Surveyable], 1983, typescript, etching/relief printing, and gelatin silver print
Zeichen messbar-vermessbar [Landscape as silver print Marion Wenzel
Wolfgang Henne, Steffen Volmer, and Marion Wenzel, Front cover of Landschaft als Zeichen messbar-vermessbar [Landscape as Signs, Measurable, Surveyable], 1983, typescript and etching/relief printing
Jörg Kowalski, Volker Dietzel, Guillermo Deisler, Thomas Glöss, Cornelia Schniggenfittig, and Ulrich Tarlatt, Der neugepflanzte Erkenntnis-Garten [The Newly Planted Garden of Knowledge] 1988, woodcuts, collage, screenprints, and amulet Collection Getty Research Institute
Jörg
Kowalski, Volker Dietzel,
Guillermo Deisler, Thomas Glöss, Cornelia Schniggenfittig, and Ulrich Tarlatt
Jörg Kowalski, Volker Dietzel, Guillermo Deisler, Thomas Glöss, Cornelia Schniggenfittig, and Ulrich Tarlatt, Detail from Der neugepflanzte Erkenntnis-Garten [The Newly Planted Garden of Knowledge] 1988, mixed media amulet Collection Getty Research Institute
This book showcases the hand-made craftsmanship aesthetics of artists choosing simple materials, such as a raw cardboard cover featuring a sewn-on piece of leather printed with various symbols and a small decorative brass element on the lower left corner. The thick gray cardboard cover is attached to the book block with a simple jute string thread. With its variety of media ranging from woodcuts, screenprints, and collage art, this esoteric object invites the reader to decode secret languages or magic squares, playfully drawing on the ambiguity and correspondences of letters, numbers, or signs. As a “Garden of Knowledge,” the book contains stories inspired by magical-alchemical texts with spells and charms. It also includes a text by Karl Marx that has been transformed by changing the order of words. The text is accompanied by a brass amulet with the word “Schebiri” which is supposed to protect against the evil eye, an ironic commentary on the social circumstances of the time.
Collection Getty Research Institute
This self-published volume of graphic works was produced by a group of 36 international conceptual artists in Poland to commemorate the international art festival “Konstrukcja w Procesie” (Construction in Process) of the previous year. The event was supported by the local branch of the trade union Solidarność (Solidarity), which contributed its “brand” font style for the posters. Participating artists from both east and west of the Iron Curtain advocated for art as an open forum that eliminates divisions, classifications, and tendencies motivated by commercial, economical, and political aspects. While it was planned that the festival would travel to other cities until 1982, Poland introduced martial law in December of 1981 and banned the festival and the production of the associated catalog. This special edition was a clandestine alternative publication; some of the artists whose work it includes have been well-known since the 1970s. Contributions in a variety of artistic media include original photographic prints, photographic collages, computer-generated art, typographic text artwork, “instruction-based” art, and more. The work was curated by Polish artist Ryszard Waśko, a member of the Workshop of the Film Form in Łódź.
Schaden (“Damage”) was produced in East Berlin in 17 issues. It ran from 1984-1987 in limited editions ranging from just 15 copies (first issue) to 40 in the end. Painters, printmakers, and photographers, along with poets and writers, contributed their work in multiple copies. The Schaden editors collected these works and then organized, stapled, and sleeved them inside a paper envelope that was then sealed. The front and back of the envelope were treated as the front and back cover of the magazine, and were designed by a contributing artist. The recipient of a sealed envelope needed to rip the envelope along the top, right and bottom edges in order to open the magazine and read it, thus causing damage to the artifact. The action of ripping open the magazine was part of the intended experience of these magazines, which offered a platform to artists, especially writers and poets, who were often unable to publish and circulate their texts through official book trade channels. On display here are examples of the vibrant and spontaneous look of these magazines, which were illustrated in a dynamic range of styles and aesthetic choices. The works include original graphics such as screenprints, etchings, and woodcuts; vintage photographs; and poetry or prose typed with a typewriter and reproduced on carbon copy paper or mimeographs— at the time, xerox machines were not readily accessible. Sometimes the magazines were accompanied by separate supplements, like original photographs or prints documenting conceptual works, performance art events and festivals, or games.
Schaden
Jan Sawka
Schaden, cover design by Angela Hampel, Issue 8 , 1985, mixed media Collection Getty Research Institute
Schaden
Jan Sawka
Schaden, cover design by Lutz Dammbeck, Issue 10, 1986, mixed media Collection Getty Research Institute
Schaden
1986, mixed media
Schaden, cover design by Sibylle von Dort, Axel Rannefeld, Egmont Hesse, and Leonhard Lorek, Issue 11.1
Collection Getty Research Institute
Michael Brendel, Rainer Görß, and Else Gabriel, Diagram Showing the Creation and Production of the Artist’s Magazine, USW. (Und So Weiter) [And So On], Schaden, Issue 11.1 1986, life-size drawing Collection Getty Research Institute
The diagram announces the launch of a new artists’ magazine, produced in Dresden by the artist group Autoperforationsartisten (also known as Autoperforationartistik): Michael Brendel, Rainer Görß, and Else Gabriel. The highly intermedial character of this artists’ magazine is illustrated on the left where small squares with arrows in two opposite directions allude to work submissions in graphic poetry, photography, or conceptual art (no.1). The diagram shows how the magazine was then organized conceptually (no.2) and then bound and distributed (no.3), similarly to how Schaden was created.
Schaden
Clockwise from above
Schaden, cover design by Dieter Ladewig, Issue 13, 1986, mixed media Collection Getty Research Institute
Schaden, cover design by Klaus Süß, Issue 17, 1987, mixed media Collection Getty Research Institute
Recto: Color-coded Circles and Directions, Zinnober Theater Script Puzzle, Schaden, Issue 10, 1985 Collection Getty Research Institute
The Zinnober Theater was an experimental theater lab founded in 1979 by actors, puppeteers, and theater artists seeking an autonomous, unstructured space for rehearsing. The group contributed a card game to Schaden’s issue 10 to announce their latest premiere work. Titled SZEN ARIUM: traumhaft (SCEN ARIO: dreamlike), the game consists of a puzzle of 58 pieces of paper, each with a prompt on one side and a color-coded guide on the other that provides the sort of sequencing order for the script. Each prompt is assigned to one of eight characters who recite a text, perform an action, or play music (tuba, saxophone, or violin). The prompts include a “chair-man or the accordion” (stuhlmann oder das akkordeon, ak), “the singing voice” (die singstimme, voc), “the idiot with an old bike” (der idiot mit dem alten rad, iar), and a “little angel (blackand-white)” (Engelchen (schwarzweiß), eng).
Hans J. Schulz, Labyrinth and the Minotaur, Schaden, Issue 6, 1985, fold-out accordion print
Collection Getty Research Institute
This work is a reinterpretation of the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which Ariadne hands a thread to Theseus before he ventures into the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur in order to help him find his way back. Ariadne, on the left, embodies the brain or control (Das Gehirn/Kontrolle). The labyrinth, paradoxically made out of the winding red thread that Ariadne has handed to Theseus, represents the (current) situation (Die Situation). Theseus exemplifies the hand that is tied to the control (while the other hand holds a sword to fight against the Minotaur). The typed text, all in lowercase, defies the proper capitalization rules of the German language, revealing a new, different formal language of expression. Inspired by the writings of Michel Foucault, the text invites the reader to reflect on the dominating hierarchical power structures and to develop strategies for social change.
Schaden
page
Installation view of Schaden, Miroslav Hucek, Stefan Th. Wagner, and Ernst Goldberg (Collections of the Getty Research Institute and Archive of Modern Conflict)
Heike Stephan, “Silk” Performance, Schaden, Issue 12 1986, gelatin silver print Collection Getty Research Institute
A textile and conceptual artist who used fabric as one of her favorite artistic media, Stephan created dramatic shapes on a public hilltop site by letting a huge piece of silk blow in the wind while enveloping a friend who stood in the middle of the fabric roll. As the person “trapped” in the silk moves arms and legs in space, the fabric acts as an extension of these movements, creating evocative images. While the shapes that are formed might recall the wings of the iconic sculpture of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, they can also resonate with the ancient myth of Icarus, who attempted to fly but failed. When this performance was enacted, the authorities shut down the event, fearing that someone was actually trying to flee the country by flying away.
Silberblick
Silberblick (the German word for cross-eyed) is a series of three portfolios in which unofficial East German artists and photographers use each other as artistic subjects. Silberblick I focuses on women depicting women; Silberblick II features men portraying men; and Silberblick III presents men and women representing each other. According to art historian Gabriele Muschter, who wrote the introduction to the portfolios and who would later become Secretary of State for the Ministry of Culture in the first (and only) East German government based on free democratic elections (May - October 1990), the idea was to reconcile the artistic media of printmaking and photography. In a time of radical political change, personal connections change as well. Silberblick explores the relationships between artists in a time of radical transition.
Karin Wieckhorst
Jan Sawka
Karin Wieckhorst, Christine Schlegel, Silberblick I, 1989, photograph Collection Wende Museum
Silberblick
Clockwise from above
Tina Bara, Angela Hampel, Silberblick I, 1989, photograph
Angela Hampel, Untitled, Silberblick I, 1989, lithograph
Bärbel Bohley, Manchmal ist Kunst abwesend! [Sometimes art is absent!], Silberblick III, 1989, white pigment on black paper
All Collection Wende Museum
Jan Sawka Silberblick
Angela Hampel, Untitled 1986, offset print on paper Collection Wende Museum
Angela Hampel was one of the leading free-spirited artists in the GDR in the 1980s. Her work often centers around strong women from mythology, such as Medea and Penthesilea, or from the Bible, such as Judith and Salome. Heavily inspired by reading Christa Wolf’s novel Cassandra in 1984, she developed a neo-expressionist style at odds with the prescribed socialist realist art practice. This sexualized print advertises Galerie EIGEN+ART, an unofficial art gallery founded by Gerd Harry “Judy” Lybke, first in his private apartment in Leipzig in 1983 as “Galerie am Körnerplatz” before it moved to a former chemical workshop under the new name EIGEN+ART. The gallery was known as a place for happenings, performances, artistic discussion, and creative thinking among unofficial artists in the GDR. Between 1983 and 1990 it organized 72 exhibitions, and it still exists today as one of Germany’s most successful commercial art galleries. The name EIGEN+ART is wordplay: when read with the plus sign separating the words it means “(Our) Own+Art,” but when read as as a single word, “Eigenart,” it means “idiosyncrasy,” a reference to East German counterculture artists living out of step with statemandated aesthetics and behavior.
Installation view of Angela Hampel, Tina Bara, Bärbel Bohley, Karin Wieckhorst, Claus Bach, Inge Müller, and Christine Schlegel
(Collections of the Wende Museum and Getty Research Institute)
Inge Müller and Christine Schlegel
Inge Müller and Christine Schlegel, Vielleicht werde ich plötzlich verschwinden [Perhaps I Will Suddenly Disappear] 1986
Christine Schlegel made this book as a tribute to Inge Müller (1925-1966), a famous poet who had lived through the horrors of Nazism and of World War II as a child and who was married to playwright Heiner Müller. It was inspired by an anthology of poems published for the first time just two decades after Inge Müller’s death (by suicide). The title of the book, Perhaps I Will Suddenly Disappear, comes from a three-line poem by Müller that expresses a sense of suffocation and death. Schlegel’s work creates a frame out of the black suit pants and polished shoes of a group of men (except for one woman on the left) standing in a circle. The empty space in the foreground provides a canvas for the poem “Freundschaft” (Friendship). During the printing process, the artist intentionally scratched the verses to make the poem difficult to read, a gesture of erasure that creates space to question what friendship could mean in an authoritarian context, where the word had become coercively associated with political loyalty to the socialist regime.
Gundula Schulze Eldowy
Gundula Schulze Eldowy studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig between 1977 and 1984. Many of her photographs from the 1970s and ‘80s capture the private lives of everyday individuals with a direct and unsparing gaze, including those living on the margins of society— something quite unusual for East German visual culture. From 1977 to 1990, Schulze Eldowy worked on various photo series, including this one about a retired postal worker nicknamed “Tamerlan” by her husband after a popular song from the 1920s. The series was photographed in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg following a chance encounter in a public park. After their initial meeting, Schulze Eldowy remained in close contact with her until the woman’s death ten years later, uncompromisingly documenting the final decade of her life and with it the gaps between the visual culture of state ideology and that of lived reality.
Claus Bach, Kopfkörper in Fire, Kopfkörper [Headbodies] 1990, photograph
Collection Wende Museum
“I remember it was one of the first photographs of my [Headbodies series] in color. It shows a kind of apocalyptic situation with three persons in three white coats and three black jeans holding three different burning photographs. [There is] a very romantic landscape [in the photograph] on the left. In the middle is a burning photograph of a contemporary East German house with a special head sculpture [in front of it]. And at the right side is a burning photograph of trash near Weimar.” —
Claus Bach
In his Kopfkörper (Headbodies) series, Bach used staged photography to make visual connections between a person and a projection of an idea. While in 1989, the punk movement brought much political and social disruption to the status quo in the GDR, the following year Bach presented a postapocalyptic setting for the country that was no more. Three figures wearing black pants and white coats are burning images of past memories of the GDR, from a romantic landscape (left), to an apartment complex symmetrically split in the center by a public art sculpture reminiscent of socialist art (middle), to a waste dump (right).
Jan Sawka Claus Bach
Thomas Florschütz
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Thomas Florschütz, Serie aus sechs Photographien [Series of Six Photographs] 1985, gelatin silver print on paper Collection Wende Museum
Thomas Florschütz is an autodidact and independent photographer who started his career in the 1980s with serial photographs of close-up parts of his own body, often in contorted perspectives. His works explore skin and body under different conditions of light and perspective. While not directly political in character, Florschütz’s emphasis on disjointed body parts stands in stark contrast to the typical presentation of the heroic body as exemplified in socialist realist paintings. Individual expression and formal experimentation were frowned upon. The framing of the photographs conveys a sense of crampedness and possible psychological turmoil. In 1987, Florschütz received the first prize for new European photography in Frankfurt am Main. In 1988 he emigrated to West Berlin.
Autoperforationsartisten
Rainer Görß, Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop]
1988, photograph of Allez! Arrest installation Collection Wende Museum
The East German artist collective “Autoperforationsartisten” (literally: self-perforation artists), consisting of Michael Brendel, Else Gabriel, Volker Lewandowsky, and Rainer Görß, organized a series of performances during the second half of the 1980s in which the aesthetic norm of socialist countries, socialist realism, was radically subverted. For their performance “Allez! Arrest,” the artists locked themselves in an art gallery in East Berlin for one week, and made art from what they found and what the visitors to the gallery happened to bring them. The photograph shows how Rainer Görß used the wooden floor to make original woodprints. The spontaneous and coincidental character of the performance clashed with the criteria of rational planning and political engagement that were expected from artists in the GDR. In this exhibition, we recreate Görß’s installation of his floorboard prints in the East Berlin art gallery on our museum walls.
Rainer Görß, “Sabbat” VI Tag [“Sabbath” Day Six], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal, woodcut print on paper
Rainer Görß, Gründonnerstag IV Tag [Holy Thursday Day Four], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal, woodcut print on paper
All Collection Wende Museum
From left to right
Rainer Görß, III Tag [Day Three], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal, woodcut print on paper
Rainer Görß, Mein Geburtstag VIII Tag [My Birthday Day Eight], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal, woodcut print on paper
Rainer Görß, Ostersamstag VII Tag [Easter Saturday Day Seven], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal, woodcut print on paper
All Collection Wende Museum
Clockwise from above
Rainer Görß, V Tag [Day Five], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal, woodcut print on paper
Rainer Görß, XI Tag [Day Eleven], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal, woodcut print on paper
Rainer Görß, “Sabbat” VI Tag [“Sabbath” Day Six], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal on paper
Rainer Görß, IX Tag [Day Nine], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal on paper
All Collection Wende Museum
Rainer Görß, Ostersamstag VII Tag [Easter Saturday Day Seven], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal on paper
All Collection Wende Museum
Rainer Görß, Karfreitag Tag V [Good Friday Day Five], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal on paper
Rainer Görß, Mein Geburtstag VII Tag [My Birthday Day Seven], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop], 1988, ink and charcoal on paper
Rainer Görß, VIII Tag [Day Eight], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop] 1988, ink and charcoal on paper Collection Wende Museum
Rainer Görß, XII Tag [Day Twelve], Allez! Arrest [Go! Stop] 1988, ink and charcoal on paper Collection Wende Museum
Neues Deutschland
Neues Deutschland (New Germany) was the official newspaper of the former German Democratic Republic, established in East Berlin in 1946. Once known as the “German Pravda” for how it closely followed its Soviet counterpart’s format and content, Neues Deutschland sought to instill socialist zeal in East Germany. Neues Deutschland continues publishing today as one of Germany’s national dailies, although its circulation, mainly in eastern Germany, is dramatically down from a 1980s zenith of one million.
Neues Deutschland: Organ Des Zentralkomitees der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands [New Germany: Organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany] 1980, newspaper
Collection Wende Museum
eNDung
Joseph W. Huber, Kunstsprachlehrunterweisung [Artificial Language Teaching], eNDung 1979, print on paper Collection Wende Museum
eNDung is a series of six prints by Joseph W. Huber, inspired by Neues Deustchland, the official newspaper of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. It features fragmented words that in many cases echo the propagandistic character of the newspaper. However, by turning them into geometric patterns, the artist renders them utterly meaningless—or rather, they take on completely new meanings as geometrical abstractions. Huber’s artistic approach recalls Dada and Surrealist word poems.
Joseph W. Huber, Beziehung [Relationship], eNDung, 1979, print on paper Collection Wende Museum
Joseph W. Huber, Zusammenfassung [Summary], eNDung, 1979, print on paper Collection Wende Museum
Joseph W. Huber, Kundgebung [Rally], eNDung, 1979, print on paper Collection Wende Museum
Joseph W. Huber, Perspektivierung [Perspective], Collection Wende Museum
[Perspective], eNDung, 1979, print on paper
Joseph W. Huber, Durchdringung [Penetration], eNDung, 1979, print on paper Collection Wende Museum
Thomas Günther and Sabine Jahn, Neues (Druck in gelb) [New (Printed in Yellow)], No Return 1980, print mounted on board Collection Wende Museum
Not unlike Joseph W. Huber with his portfolio eNDung, Günther and Jahn make an ironic play on the official East German newspaper Neues Deutschland with its strongly politically-colored news. Highlighting the word “Neues” (New), they might reference the focus on progress and modernity in official political messaging— a concept that evoked enthusiasm in the early years of the GDR but soon became nothing more than a hollow phrase.
Uwe Warnke
Uwe Warnke, Buchstabensuppe by NAKA: “Stabilbaukasten zum Mittag” oder “Eßbare Collage” [Alphabet Soup by NAKA: “Erector Set for Lunch” or “Edible Collage”], special edition in UNI/verse 1990, assemblage Collection Getty Research Institute
Upon the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing unification of the two Germanys, poet Uwe Warnke referenced the lack of linguistic tools to capture the experience that a country and ideology that had lasted four decades and shaped a population born into it was no more. Drawing on the Dada tradition of creating poetry by using random chance correlations between words, Warnke offered a pre-packaged alphabet soup inviting the viewer to simply imagine eating it. His “found art” was the commercially available soup package made by the GDR’s state-owned company NAKA (short for Nahrungsmittel und Kaffee, or Nutrition and Coffee) from the city of Halle. Warnke offered the viewer-consumer the opportunity to reflect not only on a product from a country that had become extinct, but also on the outright closing of state-owned businesses that were shut down as a result of reunification and adoption of the economic system of West Germany.
Uwe Warnke
Corita Kent
For more than three decades (1951–1986), Corita Kent was committed to the advancement of social justice through her work in education and printmaking. Primarily working with community members in her serigraph studio, Kent was able to raise awareness about the injustices of poverty, racism, and war. She was known for her innovative production techniques and teaching methods. She often combined bright colors and bold text with handwritten excerpts from religious works, philosophers, poets, and pop music. Kent’s words and images delivered messages about love, hope, and peace. By 1968 her art was enormously popular, having been displayed in over 230 exhibitions and held in public and private collections around the world.
Corita Kent, manflowers, heroes and sheroes 1969, screenprint
Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, corita.org
Made immediately following her 1968 departure from the Catholic Church after more than three decades as a nun in the Hollywood-based order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and amidst tremendous social and political upheaval, this serigraph series marks a significant shift in Kent’s practice. Using a vocabulary resonant with pop art— which had an early presence in Los Angeles—and in the spirit of ongoing Vatican II deliberations around the updating of Catholicism for a modern world, these works subvert what she called “crass realism, crass materialism” by infusing familiar language with spiritual and humanistic meaning.
Corita
Corita Kent, news of the week, heroes and sheroes 1969, screenprint
Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, corita.org
In this work, Kent probes connections between the Vietnam War and domestic policy. A Newsweek cover announcing a story about the Viet Cong appears in red atop an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s 1892 “Song of Myself,” an eighteenth-century diagram of the Brooks slave ship, and a LIFE magazine cover featuring American soldiers in Vietnam, all in green. The complementary colors flag a recurring theme of suffering— Whitman on pain, the injured soldier, the institution of slavery. Moreover, the Brooks slave ship diagram links the violent American repression in Vietnam to that of Black Americans domestically. Notably, broadsides featuring this image of the ship were critical to nineteenth-century abolitionist campaigns in England.
Following page
Corita Kent, Fast for Peace Vietnam Moratorium 1970, poster
Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, corita.org
In 1970 Corita Kent offered to create a poster promoting the Fast for Peace, a three day event primarily focused on generating anti-war solidarity on college campuses and raising funds for various relief programs. The event benefited from the rapid growth of countercultural movements on college campuses throughout the 1960s, with local organizers at each university able to quickly spread the word to peers at other institutions. The organizers also hoped to raise awareness of how American taxes were being used to fund international violence, encouraging a broader resistance to US economic systems that benefit from war. They planned protests in thirty different cities, carrying out highly visible actions to help under-informed citizens realize that if they wanted to ease their economic insecurities, they needed to demand that the government end its imperial violence.
Jan Sawka Corita Kent
Corita Kent, Suburban Prayer, The Critic 1966, magazine
Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, corita.org
Suburban Prayer features the poem “Prayers for the post-Council, pre-Holocaust Christian” by Daniel Berrigan, who was a poet, activist, and Jesuit priest. Much of Kent’s artistic activism came out of her close friendship with Berrigan, and the two carried on an extensive correspondence and collaborated on a number of projects. Kent designed the covers for several of Berrigan’s books, including The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Beacon Press, 1970), his free-verse play about his trial and conviction for burning draft files with napalm at the Catonsville, Maryland draft board office in 1968. Berrigan wrote the introduction for Kent’s book Footnotes and Headlines, and she used both his published writings and personal letters in numerous prints.
Corita Kent, Suburban Prayer, The Critic, 1966, magazine
Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, corita.org
Jan Sawka Corita Kent
Corita Kent, Motive, 1966, magazine
Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, corita.org
Corita Kent, The Artist As Communicator, The Critic, 1967, magazine
Courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, corita.org
