documenta 8

Edy de Wilde and Harald Szeemann were actually supposed to co-direct documenta 8, but differences of opinion led to the premature termination of this collaboration. Manfred Schneckenburger then took over as artistic director at short notice and was thus - after Bode - the first and so far only person in documenta history to hold this position twice. It was probably not least due to the short preparation time that Schneckenburger's documenta 8, like documenta 7, dispensed with a theoretical concept. Unlike its predecessor exhibition, however, documenta 8 once again insisted on the socio-political responsibility of art; instead of aesthetic autonomy, many of the works presented insisted decidedly on a "functional integration of art", as Elke Bippus wrote in a text about the exhibition.

Schneckenburger's merit was that, for the first time at documenta, the question of the political quality of art was no longer primarily posed in terms of modernist models of thought, but in terms of postmodernism. Schneckenburger proclaimed the loss of utopia in advanced capitalism and at the same time emphasized the dissolution of a hierarchical canon of styles and forms in art. Eclecticism was the order of the day; "anything goes" seemed to be possible towards the end of the 20th century. Both the loss of utopia and formal eclecticism led to the end of the concept of the one grand narrative, or, as Schneckenburger put it in the catalog, to the abandonment of the "belief in thematic encyclopedias in which one theory solves all the world's riddles at once. For Schneckenburger's second documenta, this postmodern idea meant, on the one hand, an orientation in terms of content that focused above all on the examination of violence and war. On the other hand, the interrelationships between architecture, design and art were repeatedly examined in formal terms. It is therefore not surprising that painting played a much smaller role at this documenta than five years previously, with sculptures and installations, videos and performances taking center stage instead.

The installation Kontinuität (1987) by Hans Haacke, for example, is exemplary of Schneckenburger's curatorial approach. Haacke had staged a setting in the rotunda of the Fridericianum that at first glance was reminiscent of the prestigious entrance hall of a large company. Behind the Deutsche Bank logo, enlarged into a sculpture and crowned by a Mercedes star, hung a photo of a funeral procession in South Africa. Information boards and indoor plants framed the ensemble, which referred to the role of these two traditional German companies in the apartheid policy in South Africa at the time. In the 1980s, both companies had not adhered to international calls for a boycott of South Africa in their unscrupulous business policies. With his guillotine series A View to the Temple (1987), the Scotsman Ian Hamilton Finlay created one of the best-known works at documenta 8, and it too was convincing due to its quasi "anti-utopian" commitment. In the Karlsaue, wooden guillotines with bronze hatchets stood "in rank and file", as it were. The latter were engraved with quotes from revolutionary theorists who used the example of the French Revolution to illustrate how utopian ideas can lead to terror and violence.

The American artist Barbara Kruger, on the other hand, showed her photographic work Untitled (Endangered Species) (1987), in which three fearful human faces can be seen. Kruger had mounted the words "Endangered Species" above them, thus artistically bringing a possible end to (human) history into play.

Despite such striking works, documenta 8 had to face some harsh criticism at the time, partly due to the supposed "arbitrariness" of the selection of works - after all, 405 artists took part in the exhibition.