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Hans Haacke | |
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| Born | 1936 (age 88–89) Cologne, Germany |
| Education | Temple University |
| Occupation | visual artist |
| Known for | Institutional Critique |
Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" ofinstitutional critique,[1][2] and is considered to be the most harsh and consistent critic of museums among the Euro-American artists of his time.[3]
Haacke was born inCologne, Germany.[4] He studied at theStaatliche Werkakademie inKassel, Germany, from 1956 to 1960. In 1959, Haacke was hired to assist with thesecond documenta, working as a guard and tour guide.[5] He was a student ofStanley William Hayter, a well-known and influential English printmaker, draftsman, and painter. From 1961 to 1962, he studied on aFulbright grant at theTyler School of Art atTemple University inPhiladelphia. From 1967 to 2002, Haacke was a professor at theCooper Union in New York City.
During his formative years in Germany, he was a member of Zero (an international group of artists, active ca. 1957–1966).[6] This group was held together with common motivations: the longing to re-harmonize man and nature and to restore art's metaphysical dimension. They sought to organize the pictorial surface without using traditional devices.
Although their methods differed greatly, most of the work wasmonochromatic,geometric,kinetic, andgestural.[6] But most of all they used nontraditional materials such as industrial materials, fire and water, light, and kinetic effects. The influence of the Zero group and the materials they used is clear in Haacke's early work from his paintings that allude to movement and expression to his early installations that are formally minimal and use earthly elements as materials.[6]
These early installations focused on systems and processes.Condensation Cube (1963–65) embodies a physical occurrence, of thecondensation cycle, in real time. Some of the themes in these works from the 1960s include the interactions of physical and biological systems, living animals, plants, and the states of water and the wind. He also made forays intoland art, but by the end of the 1960s, his art had found a more specific focus.
Haacke's interest in real-time systems propelled him into his criticism of social and political systems.[7] In most of his work after the late 1960s, Haacke focused on theart world and the system of exchange between museums and corporations and corporate leaders; he often underlines its effects in site-specific ways.
Haacke has been outspoken throughout his career about demystifying the relationship between museums and businesses and their individual practices. He writes, "what we have here is a real exchange of capital:financial capital on the part of the sponsors andsymbolic capital on the part of the sponsored".[8] Using this concept from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Haacke has underlined the idea that corporate sponsorship of art enhances the sponsoring corporations' public reputation, which is of material use to them. Haacke believes, moreover, that both parties are aware of this exchange, and as an artist, Haacke is intent on making this relationship clear to viewers.
In 1970, Hans Haacke proposed a work for the exhibition entitledInformation to be held at theMuseum of Modern Art in New York (an exhibition meant to be an overview of current younger artists), according to which the visitors would be asked to vote on a current socio-political issue.[6] The proposal was accepted, and Haacke prepared his installation, entitledMoMA Poll, but did not hand in the specific question until right before the opening of the show. His query asked, "Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina Policy be a reason for your not voting for him in November?" Visitors were asked to deposit their answers in the appropriate one of two transparentPlexiglas ballot boxes. At the end of the exhibition, there were approximately twice as many Yes ballots as No ballots.[9] Haacke's question commented directly on the involvements of a major donor and board member at MOMA,Nelson Rockefeller. This installation is an early example of what in the art world came to be known asinstitutional critique.MoMA Poll was cited in 2019 byThe New York Times as one of the works of art that defined the contemporary age.[10]
In one of his best-known works, which quickly became an art historical landmark,Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, Haacke took on the real-estate holdings of one of New York City's biggest slum landlords. The work exposed, through meticulous documentation and photographs, the questionable transactions of Harry Shapolsky's real-estate business between 1951 and 1971. Haacke's solo show at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which was to include this work and which made an issue of the business and personal connections of the museum's trustees, was cancelled on the grounds of artistic impropriety by the museum's director six weeks before the opening. (Shapolsky was not such a trustee, although some have misunderstood the affair by assuming that he was.) CuratorEdward F. Fry was consequently fired for his support of the work.[6][11][12] This cancellation is widely considered as a turning point in the relationship between artists and museums in the United States, where such cooperation became conflicted.[3]
Following the abrupt cancellation of his exhibition and the trouble it had caused with the museum, Haacke turned to other galleries, to Europe and his native country, where his work was more often accepted. Ten years later he included the Shapolsky work—by then widely known—at his solo exhibition at theNew Museum of Contemporary Art, entitled "Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business".[13][8]
At the John Weber gallery in New York, in 1972, on two separate occasions, Haacke created a sociological study, collecting data from gallery visitors. He requested the visitors fill out a questionnaire with 20 questions ranging from their personaldemographic background information to opinions on social and political issues. The results of the questionnaires were translated intopie charts andbar graphs that were presented in the gallery at a later date.[6] They revealed, among other things, that most visitors were related in some way to the professions of art, art teaching, and museology, and most were politically liberal.
In 1974, Haacke submitted another proposal that was subsequently rejected for an exhibition at theWallraf–Richartz Museum inCologne. The work described a well-documented history of the ownership (with individual biographies of each of the owners) ofManet's paintingBunch of Asparagus in the museum's collection, narrating how it came into the collection, and in which theThird Reich activities of its donor were revealed. Instead, the work was exhibited in the Paul Menz Gallery in Cologne with a color reproduction in place of the original.[6]
In 1975, Haacke created a similar piece to the Manet project at the John Weber gallery in New York, exposing the history of ownership ofSeurat'sModels (Les Poseuses) (small version). In the same manner as the previous installation, this work showed the increase of the value of the work as it passed from one patron to another.[6]
Also In 1975, he created one of his most memorable installations, entitledOn Social Grease. The work, which takes its title from a speech by a corporate head of one of the world's major oil companies, is made up of carefully fractured plaques exhibiting quotes from business executives and important art world figures. These plaques display their opinions on the system of exchange between museums and businesses, speaking directly to the importance of the arts in business practices.[6][13]
In 1978, Haacke had a solo exhibition at theMuseum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, that included the new workA Breed Apart, which made explicit criticism of the state-ownedBritish Leyland for exporting vehicles for police and military use toapartheid South Africa.
His 1979 solo exhibition atChicago's Renaissance Society featured paintings that reproduced and altered print ads forMobil,Allied Chemical, andTiffany & Co.
With extensive research Haacke continued throughout the 1980s to target corporations and museums in his work through larger scale installations and paintings. In 1982, at the documenta 7 exhibition, Haacke exhibited a very large work that included oil portraits ofRonald Reagan andMargaret Thatcher in 19th-century style, facing on the opposite wall a gigantic photograph of the demonstration against nuclear arms held earlier that year—the largest demonstration in Germany since the end of the Second World War. The clear implication, supported by Haacke's remarks, was that these two figures were attempting to roll back their respective nations to the socially and politically regressive, laissez-faire, and imperialist policies of the 19th century.
Becoming an increasingly strong critic of museums, Haacke wrote the polemical essay, "Museums, Managers of Consciousness," in 1984.[3]
In 1988 he was given an exhibition at theTate Gallery in London at which he exhibited the portrait of Margaret Thatcher, full of iconographic references featuring cameos ofMaurice andCharles Saatchi.[14] The Saatchis were well known not only as art collectors on an aggressive scale, widely affecting the course of the art world by their choices, but also as the managers of Thatcher's successful, fear-based political campaigns as well as that of the South African premier,P. W. Botha.
Haacke's controversial 1990 paintingCowboy with Cigarette turnedPicasso'sMan with a Hat (1912–13) into a cigarette advertisement. The work was a reaction to thePhillip Morris company's sponsorship of a 1989–90 exhibition aboutCubism at the Museum of Modern Art.[14]
Haacke has had solo exhibitions since, at theNew Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; theVan Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and theCentre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
In 1993, Haacke shared, withNam June Paik, theGolden Lion for the German Pavilion at theVenice Biennale. Haacke's installationGermania made explicit reference to the pavilion's roots in the politics ofNazi Germany. Haacke tore up the floor of the German pavilion as Hitler once had done. In 1993, looking through the doors of the pavilion, past the broken floor, the viewer witnesses the word on the wall: "Germania", Hitler's name for Nazi Berlin.[15]
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At the 2000,Whitney Biennial, at theWhitney Museum of American Art in New York, Haacke presented a piece that is a direct reaction to art censorship. The piece calledSanitation featured six anti-art quotes from US political figures on each side of mounted American flags. The quotes were in aGothic style script typeface once favored by Hitler's Third Reich. On the floor was an excerpt of theFirst Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression. Lined up against the wall were a dozen garbage cans with speakers emitting military marching sounds.[16] Haacke notes that "freedom of expression is the focus of the work".[15]
In 2000, the permanent installationDER BEVÖLKERUNG (To the Population) was inaugurated in theReichstag, the German Parliament building in Berlin, and in 2006, a public commission commemoratingRosa Luxemburg was completed in a three-block area in the center of the city.[17] In 2014, it was announced that Haacke would be installing one of his works as part of the annualFourth Plinth commission in 2015. His winning commission of a bronze sculpture of a horse's skeleton,[18] titledGift Horse, comes with an electronic ribbon tied to its front leg that displays a live ticker of prices on the London Stock Exchange.[19]
Along with Adrian Piper and Michael Asher, Haacke uses a version of Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky's 1971 artist contract,The Artists Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, in order to control the dissemination, display and ownership of his art works.
On being considered a political artist Haacke says: "it is uncomfortable for me to be a politicized artist.... the work of an artist with such a label is in danger of being understood one dimensionally without exception.... all artwork have a political component whether its intended or not".[20] Jack Burnham comments on Haacke's political growth and links its roots to exposure to a time of political unrest in the US surrounding theVietnam War. Burnham also points to Haacke's joining the Arts Workers Coalition and the boycott of theSão Paulo Bienal in Brazil in 1969 as catalyst for the artist's work to take a political direction.[6] Writing by Haacke and his close friends and colleagues, including documentation of his work, are collected in two separate books by the artist.
Hans Haacke first published a book about the ideas and processes behind his and other conceptual art calledFraming and Being Framed. Published in 1995,Free Exchange, is a transcription of a conversation between Haacke andPierre Bourdieu. The two men met in the 1980s and, as Bourdieu states in the introduction, "very quickly discovered how much they have in common".[8]
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