Haacke’s work, “Seurat’s ‘Les Poseuses’ (Small Version) 1888–1975”, is a sequence of framed prints displayed alongside a photocopy of the original painting. One of his deceptively simple procedures is to simply display, in a series of frames, a provenance of a piece of art-a standard requirement for a buyer, which is meant to insure the painting’s authenticity by accounting for it’s past. The art of the art market: tracking the ownership of a masterpiece from 1888 to 1975 The New Museum retrospective provides ample examples of his methods. These systems, be it social, biological, or environmental, he attempts to connect to a precise temporal point or to unspool in their historical development, or, even, to allow to develop themselves spontaneously whether in an art-world setting or a public space. Haacke, however, sees his work not as political activism by means of art, but as an artistic examination of systems. It shows profits that the trustee-owned corporation made directly from Pinochet’s bloody 1973 coup in Chile. The job is accomplished later in the “Solomon Guggenheim…” piece, a work that is, by Haacke’s own admission, a revenge act of digging up “dirt” on them and, inevitably, succeeding. While the contested “Shapolsky…” does connect the Shapolsky family with vast inner-city real estate holdings, it makes no connection whatsoever with Guggenheim trustees. Guggenheim Museum Board of Trustees”, a work from 1974 now held by MoMA. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971” (see above) –alongside the later, “Solomon R. However, this retrospective sets the story straight by exhibiting both the original culprit– “Shapolsky et al. The museum director Thomas Messer condemned Haacke’s work for pursuit of “aims that lie beyond art” and went so far as to describe it as “an alien substance that had entered the art museum organism,” a phrase, which today is revived and proudly repeated by the New Museum’s curators in the show’s materials.Īs a part of Haacke’s legend – and to the artist’s annoyance – it was often repeated that the show’s cancelation was prompted by a piece exposing the trustees as New York’s “slumlords.” In 1970, the Guggenheim Museum was the first to offer Haacke a solo exhibition, only to cancel it a month before the opening and unceremoniously dismissing its curator, Edward Fry. Hans Haacke showing slums and naming slumlords in “Shapolsky et al Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System as of May 1, 1971” (1971) (segment) Early on, it was Haacke’s curators and the artistic directors that got the axe border immigration crisis and, most recently, resignation of London’s Serpentine Gallery director due to her husband’s ownership of cyber-security firm implicated in spying on human rights activists. Lately the “ artivists” have been “winning” the battles with the institutions- most prominent examples are the near-universal opprobrium against the Sackler and the removal of Sackler name from museums around the world due to their ties with the opioid crisis the resignation of tear-gas manufacturer Warren Kanders from the Whitney in the context of the U.S. The context is today’s New York art world, rocked by scandals brought on by activists and artists questioning the ethico-political aspect of the relationship between the museums and the art that they display. But it is his uncanny ability to touch on taboos at the nerve center of the establishment that is responsible for the timing of this retrospective. Haacke is recognized as a pioneer of kinetic sculpture and Conceptual and environmental art. It has also ended careers of curators and museum directors in New York and elsewhere, earning him a dubious distinction as a father of institutional critique as a form of art expression. Haacke’s work has been debated in the German parliament and firebombed by neo-Nazis in Austria. The artist’s banishment from New York museums, as it were, did not prevent him from building a formidable international career. The exhibit –which takes over the museum’s entire building on the Bowery, a block away from Haacke’s old studio – spans six decades of his works. Hans Haacke’s All Connected retrospective at the New Museum marks a return from the long banishment of the controversial New York-based German artist.
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