10 Dusseldorf Questions

Published in IRWIN catalogue of the exhibition Stadtische Kunsthalle Duesseldorf, February 1989

Juergen Harten

Last autumn, at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, a group exhibition in urban surroundings was organized in Graz. On this occasion NSK also made a speech from the balcony of the main Nazi headquarters. Do you think that this was not blasphemous of the victims of the Second World War?

The Slovene nation also fell victim to this war. This does not mean that we have to become victims of these times.

At an exhibition in Paris you presented a work entitled L'ETAT. In this work you quote images of prominent French painters and also integrate your self-portrait into the picture. How do you associate the title of the picture with its contents?

Malevich said: "Painters always have and always will use the symbols and the gods of secular and ecclesiastical authorities".
A state without the symbiosis of man and machine does not exist, and it is the state which, by choice, includes artists into history and excludes them from it.

The French Ministry of Culture requested IRWIN to paint a work on the theme of the French Revolution.
Your work stresses the ideological disappearance of the avantgarde as well as the downfall of political totalitarianism.
Do you not feel that achieving political freedom from a totalitarian aesthetical foundation is a contradiction? Do you do this because of your faith in the political mission of art or just the opposite: because you feel that this mission is anachronistic anyway?

The avant-garde in its utopia wanted to change the world like an architect, but cooperated in this change more like a victim. We have no illusions about totalitarianism and art being naturally exclusive, which is why we are convinced that the more we are exploited, the more we are artists.

In addition to Slovene artists, you also quote in your works leading twentieth century artists, such as Duchamp, Malevich, Fontana, Yves Klein or Joseph Beuys. You combine these quotations with the iconography of the victim, with christian, communist or national-socialist emblems, as well as with ecclesiastical symbols, blood, soil and the heroic exaltation of work.
What is the reason for this combination of sacrificial kitsch and the avant-garde, and what is the role of the method of assemblage used?

The history of art has shown that different formal principles brought about canonization and thus became objective identification signs. We comprehend the signs which denote Suprematists, Nazi art, pop art and socialist realism, in the way Cezanne treated his apples in his still lifes.

You also combine noble metals and cheap materials and use traditional and new techniques (e.g. the computerized transfer of images). Are you guided by a certain pathos, parody or pretentiousness?

Noble and cheap materials do not exist in art.

Would it mean anything to you if Joseph Beuys was invited to the opening of this exhibition?

Approximately three years ago we began to prepare a project called "Slovenske Atene" (The Athens of Slovenia). It was then that we invited Slovene artists, ranging from expressionists to representatives of contemporary trends, to interpret the image of a sower.
During that time we made the acquaintance of Joseph Beuys in London.
We invited him to join us.
He responded with the idea that he would sow the fields of Slovenia as a sower.

January, 1989