The Art of

152
Gerhard Richter, Atlas (photographs from books, sheet 20),
1967, three black-and-white details, colored, 66.7 x 51.7 cm
that commenced towards the end
of the fifties not only influenced
those iconic images that remain part
of cultural memory to the present
day. It also determined the manner
in which the Holocaust was addressed
and reflected in contemporary
art. Informed by the rules of legal
practice, terms such as “facticity”,
“evidence,” and “witness”, there
emerged a certain knowledge of the
systematic murder of Europe‘s Jews,
its leading medium being photography.
The assumed objectivity of this
knowledge is counteracted by what
Roland Barthes describes as the
“horrible” in the photos of the dead:
the fantasies that these trigger in
their viewers. It is artistic works in
particular, such as those by Lurie and
Richter, that succeed in reflecting and simultaneously disavowing just these
fantasies and the associated emotions.
MIRJAM WENZEL