Pop Art in German Cities, Part 2: In the early 1960s, Berlin makes its first hesitant attempts to put itself back on the map of international art production.
In Düsseldorf, the wave set in motion by Gerhard Richter & Co.'s proclamation of German Pop Art aka Capital Realism is so powerful that the new art movement soon spills over into far-away Berlin. The city rests like an island in the middle of the socialist East, and it is not until the early 1960s that it makes its first hesitant attempts to put itself back on the map of international art production. René Block heads off to divided Berlin from the Rhineland. What he finds there is a gigantic art wasteland that still feeds on the echo from the 1910s and 1920s, the period of the Dadaists and the Expressionists. "Berlin's art scene seemed to me to be stuck in a self-satisfied, post-Expressionist mediocrity," Block recalls in a conversation with Lea Schleiffenbaum in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition "German Pop."
Block sees works from the Düsseldorf scene at the large-scale annual exhibition mounted by the Association of German Artists in spring 1964 in Berlin--the works are installed at the Academy of the Arts, the Berlin University of the Arts, and at the Haus am Waldsee. "The works of these artists were simply impertinent: the insides of a slot machine painted with fluorescent paint by Kuttner, paintings of soccer players by Lueg, paintings by Richter based on black-and-white photographs, and works by Vostell created from torn posters--these were the new visual messages," says Block. Sigmar Polke is still a master student in Düsseldorf, and Block becomes familiar with his works through Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg. Block's good friend KP Brehmer follows him to Berlin after completing his studies at the art academy in Düsseldorf, and later Wolf Vostell as well.
Block is just twenty-two when he opens the Grafische Cabinet René Block in the district of Schöneberg, and then shortly thereafter his own gallery. His first exhibition there was entitled "Neodada, Pop, Décollage, Kapitalistischer Realismus." If one added Fluxus to the title, this would result in a wonderful list of what influenced the works produced during this period among the circle of artists from Düsseldorf. It is a heterogeneous field of art production that is held together by figures such as René Block. His exhibition includes works by KP Brehmer, Herbert Kaufmann, Wolf Vostell, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Konrad Lueg, the Berliner K. H. Hödicke, and others. It is followed by a solo exhibition of works by Gerhard Richter with the title "Bilder des Kapitalistischen Realismus" (Pictures of Capitalist Realism).
"There was absolutely no capital, only the will to demonstrate in Berlin, a city on the front between two worlds, that there was a different kind of art."
Block curated other presentations with artists from Düsseldorf; Joseph Beuys was also periodically among them. It is a time of provocative gestures, performances, and happenings. Block regularly invited the Rhinelanders to Berlin for soirées. He says that today, he is amazed himself when he thinks back on these early years: "There was absolutely no capital, only the will to demonstrate in Berlin, a city on the front between two worlds, that there was a different kind of art." At the time, German collectors are primarily interested in American Pop Art. Block will later open a gallery in New York. Its first presentation is Beuys's legendary performance "I like America and America likes me," in which the artist has himself locked up with a coyote for several days.
The German version of Pop is more political than American and British Pop Art. It attacks affluent society, the suppression of the Nazi past, rearmament under Adenauer, and much more. Block presents the exhibition "Hommage à Berlin" in 1965. The participating artists address their relationship to the divided city. Vostell, for example, creates a work that deals with Peter Fechter, who was murdered at the Berlin Wall. Polke, on the other hand, who is more of a humorist, decides on a raster painting with pancakes. In 1967, Block organizes the exhibition "Hommage à Lidice," conceived as a gift to the museum in the Czech village of Lidice--the target of a retributive action by the National Socialists in 1942, its inhabitants were brutally massacred or transported into concentration camps. Richter contributed his famous painting "Uncle Rudi," which features his uncle in a Wehrmacht uniform. By doing so, Richter addresses what many Germans successfully suppressed in the 1960s: the guilt of one's own family.
Shortly before the memorable year 1964 comes to an end, the Academy of the Arts in Berlin presents the first large-scale survey exhibition in Germany of Pop Art: "Neue Realisten & Pop Art" (New Realists & Pop Art). The academy took over the show from the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; it did not include a single German artist, but primarily art from the United States and Great Britain. At the opening, Block handed out leaflets calling on visitors to "Please count up how many German artists are missing from this exhibition." In 1971 he published the portfolio "Grafik des Kapitalistischen Realismus" (Graphic Art of Capital Realism) with lists of works by Richter, Vostell, and Co. The publication marked the end of the movement, yet it also marked the beginning of a new chapter in German art history, which from then on is inconceivable without Capitalist Realism aka German Pop Art.