Irish Arts Review

Documenta 8Author(s): Dorothy WalkerSource: Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1987), p. 70Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492016 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

EXHIBITIONS

Documenta 8

Central to all the Documenta exhibit ions, which have taken place in Kassel,

West Germany, every four or five years since the early 1950s, has been the

work, personality and physical presence of the great post-war German artist, Joseph Beuys, who died last year. I think no-one foresaw how much the exhibition would be thrown off balance

without the power and creative energy of Beuys. I had with me a copy of Seamus Heaney's book The Haw Lan tern; nothing could have been more appropriate, for Heaney's poems lament ing his mother's death were entirely right for the huge emptiness of Docu

menta without Beuys: 'I thought of walking round and round

a space Utterly empty, utterly a source . .. A soul

ramifying and forever Silent, beyond silence listened for.'

Although a magnificent bronze sculpt ure by Beuys occupied pride of place in the Fridericianum Museum, his own unique presence was sorely missing,

'the melt of the real thing smarting into its absence.'

The only comforting thought was again expressed by Heaney:

'The space we stood around has been emptied

into us to keep, it penetrated clearances that suddenly stood open.'

One of those who penetrated such clearances was the veteran video artist, Nam June Paik. His astonishing video work about Beuys was one of the most spectacular pieces in the whole vast exhibition. It seems to me that the video image is often the most convinc ing way to deal with the contemporary icon; the figurative painting in Docu

menta was terribly weak and forced whereas the video work was immensely strong and accomplished. The young Belgian artist, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, had a fascinating piece 'Tears of Steel', a genuine Post-Modernist video treat

ment taking black and white images of a handsome young man in a gym, a

Michelangelo David, and showing his tortured and dramatic facial expressions, as he goes through his weight-lifting exercises, as a satire of Mannerist attitudes in painting and sculpture, the whole accompanied by equally dramatic

operatic arias. This piece occupied a wall of twenty-four video monitors - at least one can actually see where the budget of ?3.2 million goes - and the

artist also used the potential of the massed screens to pick up handsome abstract patterns from the rhythms of the multiplied body image.

Apart from Beuys, the best piece in the show was Richard Serra's Spiral Section, the huge curved wall of beautifully marked steel which in a single line encompasses not just a physical volume but a metaphysical idea of infinity.

The Czech artist, Magdalena jetelova, expressively hacks her way out of primeval Central European forests and modern constrictions of freedom through a huge archaic opening - actu ally the legs of a giant stool - made of vast baulks of timber. This Expressionist Constructivism is rare, and truly moving, almost as disruptive of the physical and emotional space as Serra's great steel pieces.

Many of the outdoor works in the city streets and in the park of the

Orangerie were handsome and impres sive, but the Sculpture Project in

Munster, Westphalia, was more inter esting and exciting, and I hope to review that in a later issue.

Dorothy Walker

Burren 4

Exhibitions generally exist to mark off a particular point in the development of the work on show. In some sense, the development has moved towards that exhibition, has been defined and is cut off by it, and is expected somehow to travel in a different direction after

wards. That is how most exhibitions are seen.

Burren 4, an exhibition organized by the Crafts Council of Ireland, at the Bank of Ireland, Baggot Street, Dublin, was different. It represented only the direction in which its participants' work has developed, and from which it will continue to evolve, summing up what has happened to date, but not seeking to block it.

This exhibition began last autumn, with a week-long course which the Crafts Council ran in the Burren for

-70

people working in crafts-related activit ies; it was designed to set the partici pants in an environment of geography and work outside the usual pressures of working. Its role was to place the whole area of creativity into the forefront of the thinking of fifteen or so crafts- and art-related practitioners. The course leaders were the painter, Barrie Cooke,

Rushton Aust whose work involves painting and dyeing fabrics and treating them as painted surfaces, and Mary Farmer who uses tapestry to make 'minimalist' art work.

For many of the participants, the effect of the course disrupted their pre conceptions. This was particularly so for those whose work is craft-based. Peggy Sharkey now produces paintings only. Patricia Murphy, who mainly makes hand-painted silk scarves or small-scale fabric pictures, developed a credible, 8' x 10', four-sided painted fabric installation. Bryde Glynn moved to a

much freer and expressive type of stitching than the usual traditional approach to quilt surfaces. Mary

McDonnell re-examined the possibilities of fabric textures pictorially. Kaethe Burt O'Dea continued to investigate the concept of felted coats and hats as ele ments in body-movement sculpture.

The level and diversity of work by people early in their careers were also noticeable. Dorothy Murphy, in her second year in college, makes free formed, low-fired, ceramic sculpture. Tracy Reid, who has just graduated, is casting platter-related sculpture in bronze. All of them, including ceramists like Judy Lardner, work in widely differ ing media, and take very different crafts- and art-based approaches to what they do. Despite that, there was a sense of a single, overlying feeling running through the exhibition, which made it cohere.

This cohesion centred on both the Burren week itself and on how the Burren had affected them in separate ways although, at the same time, as a collective experience. The level at which this experience had altered their thinking and pushed many of the parti cipants towards taking risks which they would not otherwise have confronted in their work, was even more important.

Sedn McCrum

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