(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In twentieth-century art history, there is hardly a more iconic image of the committed and uncompromising activist artist than the photograph of Gustav Metzger wearing a military jacket, gas mask and helmet on three suspended nylon sheets with an acid-filled paint gun. The photograph was taken during a performance at London's South Bank summer 1961, where Metzger gave a demonstration of auto-destructive art – a term he had coined a few years earlier. The fabric disintegrated as the acid hit the surface, like abstract paintings where the rapid strokes are replaced by blemishes, and after about twenty minutes, only strips of sheets remained. In the leaflets distributed, Metzger explained that auto-destructive art "demonstrates man's ability to accelerate and control the destructive processes of nature."
Art should mirror its contemporary, it is called, and if it arises in a self-destructive order of society, must art also be self-destructive? Such thinking seems to have been the basis of Metzger's demonstration. Although not many of the spectators were familiar with this type of artistic action, Metzger's imagery was not unknown at a time when the notion of an imminent nuclear war was part of the collective consciousness.
Metzger's auto-destructive demonstration was an activist and critical act, a protest against the Cold War race on nuclear weapons. In an interview many years later, he said that it was about attacking the capitalist system and its warlords, symbolically destroying them. But the demonstration also had a different function. The idea of a self-destructive art goes in line with the idea of the work of art as an investment object. It was an attack on "you fucking smelly cigar-smoking assholes and perfumed fashionable cattle doing business with artwork" – to say it in the artist's own words.
It was an attack on "you fucking smelly cigar-smoking assholes and perfumed fashionable cattle doing business with artwork" – to say it in the artist's own words.
A new art form. Given the uncompromising and irreconcilable attitude, it is perhaps not so surprising that Gustav Metzger was for a long time a rather unknown figure in the art world. In recent years, however, he has been the subject of renewed interest. He has undergone a transformation from Old Testament doomsday prophecy to grandfather saintly form of leftist art. A selection of Metzger's works from the 1960s will now be displayed at the Artists' House and Kunsthall Oslo.
Metzger's stubborn attitude to art and politics had personal motives. He was born in Nuremberg in 1926 by Polish-Jewish parents, and was sent to England by "Kindertransport" in 1939. His parents remained in Germany and died in a concentration camp.
The acid painting was first and foremost a demonstration of a new art form, an invitation to other artists to join a movement. Nevertheless, the upgraded nylon sheet has become a signature piece, and when the Artist's House is now exhibiting a reconstruction from 2006, one can ask whether Metzger's action has not been integrated into the same art industry he was acting against. In that case, it is an endgame that is quite typical of historical activist art – the object is sent around as a relic, while the once radical ideas it was supposed to demonstrate are reduced to art-historical trivia. Another reconstructed version of the acid-dissolved sheets can be viewed at Tate Britain in London, where, ironically, it is part of the British Petroleum-sponsored BP Spotlights series. The dilemma of the radical art, which even the most impenetrable activist does not seem to escape, is as follows: In order to gain visibility one has to join the same cycle that one criticizes?
Artistic general strike. As symbolic staging, Metzger's work is still powerful. In contrast to the art market, however, efficiency is debatable. The ideals of the early sixties to make art a time-limited "happening" in order to avoid making it last, have long been devoured by an event-driven cultural economy.
What about other Metzger projects, do they still have topicality? When Metzger was invited to contribute to the exhibition Art into Society – Society into art In 1974, he chose to submit a text instead. The manifesto, entitled "Years without Art 1977–1980," appears as radical and thought-provoking today as it was first published, and goes to the core of the notion of art as a form of resistance. "[The idea of] art in the service of the revolution is unsatisfactory because art is so connected to the state and to capitalism." The only way out of a corrupt system is the general strike, Metzger suggests. Between 1977 and 1980 artists will neither exhibit, sell nor produce art. Instead, one can use the time to deal with historical, aesthetic and social aspects of art. "Capitalism has strangled art," he concludes – the years without art will form the basis for a new beginning.
There was no strike or any new beginning. On the contrary, the years after 1980 were the period when it
The commercial art market really accelerated. And Metzger himself? The indomitable activist, of course, carried out the strike alone. For three years he stayed away from the art world and spent time studying – of all things – the 1600th century painter Vermeer. For many artists, such an act would be depoliticized by calling it a form of performance. To Metzger's profit, he has never fallen for this temptation.
Despite the lack of support, Metzger has not made such calls for collective protests. In the late 2000s, he initiated "Reduce Art Flights", a campaign to limit the art world's extensive flick between international art fairs and biennials. The campaign was primarily intended as a protest against the increasingly sweeping commercialization and globalization of the arts. But by pointing to the connection between the internationalization of contemporary art and the access to cheap air tickets, "Reduce Art Flights" also pointed to the obvious climatic problems that are bound by a global art world.
Climate artist. Although an atomic war is no longer imminent, "man's ability to accelerate and control the destructive processes of nature" has not become less worrisome since Metzger's 1961 action. Metzger has been working on environmental issues since the 1970s, but this part of the artwork does not appear in the presentations in Oslo. Rather, the two current exhibits show Metzger's experimental art from the 1960s. Extreme Touch: Material / Transforming Art from 1968 displayed at Kunsthall Oslo, is a kind of science laboratory, while Liquid Crystal Environment (1965/1998) at the Artists' House are projections of heated liquid crystals that create psychedelic moving shapes. These projects are examples of a more quiet and exploratory direction in Metzger's art – an idea of the artist as a natural scientist, as a laboratory technician.
These are all interesting works, but it is also worth thinking how Metzger's climate-oriented work from the 1970s would have been received in Norway today. At the UN Environment Conference in Stockholm in 1972, he proposed a spectacular installation where a huge plastic box slowly filled with the exhaust of 120 cars. Eventually the cars would be pushed back into the box and exploded in flames. Metzger was not allowed to carry out this action in Stockholm, and even when it was reconstructed for the 2007 Arab emirate Sharjah, the cars dared to fire. When Metzger was confronted with the paradox of performing this action on a biennial funded by an oil nation, he toured by asking which places the symbolic impact would be greater than precisely in a petroleum economy. Imagining the realization of this Metzger plant in our domestic oil emirate is a specious thought.
Kunsthall Oslo and Kunstnernes Hus present two parallel exhibitions with Gustav Metzger, both opening on 13 November:
Extremes Touch opens at Oslo Kunsthall opens at. 18, while the Liquid Crystal Environment opens at the Artists' House at. 20.
Both exhibitions will be on display until 31 January 2016.
Helsvig is a visual artist and writer.
sjhelsvig@gmail.com.
