Re: <nettime> Josephine Bosma, review of Documenta XI

[David Garcia <davidg {AT} xs4all.nl>]

> It looks like critic Dave Hickey
> is right when he says (in a quote in a New York Times article): "It's
> basically a Protestant view of art". This is the Documenta of mostly
> useful art, almost everything has meaning and purpose. Enwezor's need to
> preach and teach then leads to the third, most poignant reason for
> depression: Documenta XI is above all dead and dead serious. There is
> very little humor or anything else ridiculous, useless or grotesque.

Strange that the "protestant view of art" is used here (and I admit quite
often elsewhere) as a put down. Many artworks, particularly Dutch
architecture and other expressions of a Northern, Calvinist persuasion may
be austere, maybe a little pedagogic, and may also have been "dead
serious" (not always a bad thing) but they still gave rise to many works
which we still value. Is this piece meant as serious critique or a report
from the "style council"?



   

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