documenta 7

The Dutchman Rudi Fuchs, the artistic director of documenta 7, wanted to give contemporary art back its "dignity" with his exhibition. This was not least because he did not see art here primarily as having a socio-political responsibility, but instead emphasized its aesthetic "autonomy". With his documenta 7, Fuchs reacted in a kind of "dialectical countermovement" to his predecessors, who had seen art as a medium for social change both in the art system and in "real life". Fuchs dispensed with a title as well as a theoretical curatorial concept. Instead, he used poetic metaphors such as that of a "measured regatta gliding along" to present his documenta in a way that was as provocative as it was subtle, relying in particular on tried and tested categories such as "beauty" and "artistic individuality". This turnaround was also reflected in the weighting of the media presented at documenta 7: Fuchs had selected (large-format) paintings and sculptures above all; conceptual and performative art was also on display, but this time in a significantly reduced presence. As if he wanted to contradict the "documenta media", Fuchs only showed one (!) video installation in his exhibition, namely the work PM Magazine/Acid Rock (1982) by US artist Dara Birnbaum. Performances, such as the Opera Suite (1982) by Carlo Quartucci and Carla Tatò, took place in the Staatstheater. It was no coincidence that this "value-conservative" repositioning of documenta was undertaken at the beginning of the 1980s, the same year in which Helmut Kohl began his sixteen-year term as CDU chancellor. The student movement of the 1960s and its humanist hopes were now finally history; the "long march through the institutions" had long since taken the place of revolutionary uprisings and protests. This also applied to large areas of art: suddenly the institution of the museum regained its importance - not least thanks to important new buildings such as the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach or the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart -, a conventional work character increasingly replaced the more open projects of Fluxus, Performance and Concept Art, and in this decade an internationally active, extremely successful art market developed for the first time, whose gallery system also "craved" works of art for sale.

Representational painting in particular caused a sensation at documenta 7. First and foremost, the opulent paintings by representatives of the Italian "Transavanguardia", artists such as Enzo Cucchi, Francesco Clemente and Sandro Chia, as well as expressive dilettantish paintings by German "Neue Wilde" artists such as Elvira Bach and Salomé, but also the works of their quasi-predecessors Georg Baselitz, A.R. Penck and Anselm Kiefer. It was a breakthrough for the "Neue Wilde", even if it was forgotten again just a few years later. What was new at the time, and this is the real curatorial achievement of Rudi Fuchs, was that these representational paintings were hung in dialog: for example Jonathan Borofsky's sculpture Five Hammering Men (1982) amidst the graffiti canvases of Keith Haring and the paintings of Salomé and Martin Disler. Fuchs had added classicist sculptures from Kassel museums to them, thus emphasizing that even the most recent art always takes place in the tradition and context of art history.

One of the highlights of documenta 7 was Marcel Broodthaers' installation Battle of Waterloo (1975) in the Rotunda. In the midst of a recreated allotment garden idyll, the Belgian conceptual artist had staged set pieces from the Battle of Waterloo and then confronted them with modern war equipment such as neatly lined up machine guns. In this way, Broodthaers cleverly reflected on the construction of any history. "Past and present become mutually dependent fictions", wrote Bazon Brock about this installation in his "Besucherschule d7". In the Neue Galerie, Hans Haacke then showed Oilpainting. Hommage à Marcel Broodthaers (1982) - a portrait of Ronald Reagan executed in oil by the artist behind a museum barrier cord, from which a red carpet led to a photo wallpaper of an enlarged slide showing anti-Reagan demonstrations in Bonn.

Even though the art at this documenta was mostly shown in the closed rooms of lofty "temples of culture" - the Fridericianum had been renovated by the state building authorities shortly beforehand, losing much of the building's contemporary character - it is, as at documenta 6, primarily works in outdoor spaces that have left a lasting impression on the memory, as they have remained in Kassel. For example, Claes Oldenburg's The Pickaxe (1982), an oversized monument to a pickaxe that the US pop artist placed on the banks of the Fulda. And, of course, Joseph Beuys' tree planting campaign 7000 Oaks (1982-1987): 7000 trees were to be planted by Kassel citizens in the urban area to green the city. A basalt stone was placed next to each tree. The stones were stored in Kassel's Friedrichsplatz - much to the annoyance of the citizens of Kassel at the time - until they were used, so that the progress of the project could be seen from the shrinking dimensions of this mountain of stones. The last tree was planted during documenta 8; Beuys himself, who died in 1986, did not live to see it. The trees still green Kassel today.