The Art of

165
saw not only the reason for the lack of economic success, but also for the
delayed and reluctant incorporation within art history. For the announcement
poster we used a photograph by Michael Ruetz: Beate Klarsfeld slapping
the former NSDAP member and then federal chancellor, Kurt Georg
Kiesinger, at the CDU party congress in November 1968; the image caption
referred to Klarsfeld’s action as “Kunst nach Auschwitz” (Art after Auschwitz).
“How should one assess the ‘action art’ of the nameless woman in
the convoy of the ‘Grosse Aktion’ [Big Action] in Riga, who, while being
forced down Moskauer Strasse to the small forest of Rumbula,
was inspired to write a note at some point during the kilometers-long
march and also managed as well as to throw the piece of
paper on which she had written ‘Rächt uns!’ [Avenge us!] onto the
street without the Latvian police noticing? For this, she might have
been killed like my grandmother, while still on the road, before the
final destination at Rumbula. How can this action be compared with
the works of the famous New York “action” artist H. F., also Jewish,
whose mile-high and artistically anemic smears can be digested in
museums? These are only a few examples: where is the great artistic
feat? Not necessarily, barely, rarely in so-called art. Art is hidden outside.”
08
While we were at work planning our events, in the spring of 2002 the exhibition
Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art opened at the Jewish Museum
in New York. Two examples that caused a scandal were Zbigniew Libera’s
LEGO Concentration Camp Set and Alan Schechner’s It’s the Real Thing—
Self-Portrait at Buchenwald.
08
BORIS LURIE
in: nGbK, NO!art,
p. 123.
“Some prisoners in Buchenwald lying on their cots and in front of it is
this artist, young fellow, a younger fellow, who’s holding a Coca Cola
can. They found that so insulting and horrible. I don’t see anything
insulting in it, absolutely nothing.” 09
It was at the latest with this exhibition that the issue shifted: art after became
art about and with Auschwitz—the genre of Holocaust Art, as it were,
had been established.
09
BORIS LURIE
in: optimistic | disease |
facility 00:46:20
III
Prior to my stay in New York in 2004, my plan had been to shoot a filmic portrait
on Boris Lurie and NO!art. In the meantime, however, Naomi Tereza
Salmon’s film essay optimistic | disease | facility. Boris Lurie: New York—Buchenwald
had been released, and Reinhild Dettmer-Finke and Matthias Re-
A Failed Portrait