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Black Form Dedicated to the Missing Jews
Altona City Hall, Altona, Hamburg, Germany, 1987
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April 10, 2007
RIP – LeWitt
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Comments
Well, if you can say anything about LeWitt, he was great at drawing attention to — what is missing — quite appropriate in this piece.
I met him in college where he reassured a group of us with “don’t worry to much, I was a terrible student too”. My fond memory of him will be, he was everything his art wasn’t.
Posted by: anna missed | Apr 10 2007 19:36 utc | 1
That is good to hear. Really: no sarcasm.
Who paid for this pretentious piece of conceptual art?
The tax payer? Probably. I suppose. Don’t know. Guessing.
In Switz. that would be the case. Object would also be quickly demolished or covered in graffiti. Which is why even the most crazed but oh-so-arty-sensitive Pol (married to an Art Historian who is into the ‘support paper bags’ movement, killing plastic ones!) would hesitate to commission or sign the check. Howls of derision guaranteed, parody on the tee-vee, etc.
Germany, is, lets say, different.
The pulled-down Saddam Statue was replaced with an atrocity:
Telegraph
See a small but interesting collection of weird statues here:
Samoa
Posted by: Noirette | Apr 11 2007 19:43 utc | 2
@ Noirette – yes – paid by taxpayers but LeWitt donated the money somewhere for some jewish cause …
Graffity – I haven’t seen any on that piece – it’s a ten minutes walk away and I, at least in the summer I pass it often – but I have to confess – Lukas and me did bumb it several times racing our radio controlled buggies on the plane surrounding it.
Anyway – it’s as anna missed says above – you stand in front of it and one asks what’s missing. What is this brick thing here – it’s missing something.
It’s quite a strong thing …
BTW – this is the passing view of the “thing”.
It disturbes me whenever I pass it, but then – that’s just me …
Ok, it depends on the power of the symbol; respect; authority, an air of untouchability… as Art though it is let me say…empty… heh!
Posted by: Noirette | Apr 12 2007 19:33 utc | 5
I wonder if there will be similar memorials in Iraq one day.
Posted by: beq | Apr 13 2007 1:46 utc | 7
The memorial in Berlin makes a similar impression, as Annie says at #6.
#7
I could envision some wealthy Iraqi in the future “privatizing” the reflecting pool in D.C. and designing a memorial, so that when we looked in, the bloody horror of our deeds is all that we see.
Posted by: ww | Apr 13 2007 5:46 utc | 8