More than a hundred years ago Franz Grillparzerpredicted a political evolution that would lead from humaneness byway of nationalism to bestiality. With the past and currentlyexisting totalitarian regimes in our century that extreme conditionhas been realized.
For the artist it is not easy in view of thesedevelopments and the ever changing scenery of the days to breakthrough in basic questions dealing with art. Too often historical orpolitical views--because they are the prevailing opinion--are imposedon art or culture by functionaries and museum bureaucrats out ofsimple expediency. Fortunately the indications that Grillparzer'sprediction does not have to be a one-way street are on the increase.The past years have allowed us to recognize a growing level oftolerance:
Marc Chagall, the Russian-French painter who dieda few years ago, was exhibited for the first time on a large scale inthe Soviet Union. On the occasion of his hundredth birthday on 7 July1987, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow showed a retrospective of hisworks. In the Soviet Union from 1920 on, however, nothing else aboutChagall was published. In 1976,--according to the Great SovietEncyclopedia --his work still reflects "the spiritual crisis ofintelligence in the West." Chagall's openness and his support ofnonconformist artist colleagues in Vitebsk after the revolution haddoomed him in his homeland. Vitebsk today denies its most famous sonwho in 1918 had been appointed by the Cultural Minister Lunatsharskias the local minister of art and director of an art school untilhe--pressured by his enemies--left the Soviet Union in1922.
He only saw Russia again a half century later; onthat occasion the Tretyakov Gallery exhibited some of his graphicsfirst at an exhibition closed to the public. Now a Moscow publisherplans to publish the Soviet expert on Chagall, Alexander Kamenski,whose works up to now could only be published in the West.
Other artists have also experienced similarposthumous rehabilitations as a part of Gorbachov's glasnost.One of the last to enjoy such rehabilitation was Boris Pasternakwhose Dr. Zhivago can be read now for the first time in theSoviet Union; people are eager to know what lies in store forAlexander Solzhenitsyn.
What does a look at the leading world power, theUnited States of America, show us? Of course, it only took thirteenyears from the arrest of the poet Ezra Pound to his release from themental institution in Washington, D.C. His "punishment" for hiscriticism of the democratic-technical civilization and capitalisticmoney economy which led to the introduction of Italian fascism thuslasted only a quarter as long as in the case of Chagall.Nevertheless, this is a distressing example from the postwar era ofthe misuse of psychiatry for political purposes even in the West; thepoet Rudolf Hagelstange portrayed this as "man behind bars." EzraPound is recognized today universally as one of the great poets ofour century.
Tolerance in the sense of constructive interactionwith other opinions is notwithstanding even in today's Germany noforegone conclusion. As the museum benefactor Prof. Dr. Peter Ludwigwrites, for this reason "an influential clique really cries outagainst" the now eighty-nine year old Arno Breker who fashioned thebust of Ezra Pound. "A ban has been imposed on him out of anintolerance similar to that which Hitler directed toward thoseartists designated by him infamously as degenerate."
In 1987, Arno Breker was visited for the firsttime by a Soviet artist. Ilya Glasunov, from Moscow. Glasunov createdin Breker's atelier a pastel portrait of him in May, 1987. But evenin the case of the Germans a turn toward greater tolerance can beseen: After the war the National Gallery in Berlin still refused tocite Breker for his having done the work in the case of the deathmask of Max Liebermann (died 1934)--he had called Arno Breker back toBerlin in 1934. They credited the mask to H. Wolf, who had alreadydied, however, on 22 April 1934--before Liebermann.
Today Prof. Dr. Uta Ranke-Heinemann, daughter ofthe former President of the Federal Republic, active member of thepeace movement and interested art collector, calls it an "act ofcourage and humanity" that Breker showed himself aligned with theJewish painter Liebermann in those days. At a time, let us notforget, when the German museum officials, who are indignant todaywith Breker, removed Liebermann's pictures from their walls. Breker,who saved the lives of many and protected Picasso from the clutchesof the Gestapo, possesses the tolerance which is missing in hisopponents, the "Block Wardens of Today" as Alfred Hrdlicka callstoday's museum and artist union bureaucrats: "A scourge whoseavant garde lip-service gives witness to their political goodbehavior."
In Europe--as in the USA for a long time and inthe USSR for a short time--it is time to give up the custom ofdiscrediting forms because of ideological occupation per se.That is why Hanno-Walther Kruft wrote in the Swiss newspaper, NeueZürcher Zeitung: "The eagle is not a hateful bird becausethe Third Reich clung to its wings and sought to strangle the worldwith its talons."
Here the efforts of the art patron Peter Ludwigbroaden our view. In this same context we have the sculptures fromthe German Democratic Republic that were shown in Bonn and elsewherein 1987--in connection with which the similarly absurd reproach thatthose artists were responsible for the shoot-to-kill order at theWall was just not raised at all. Also here Professor Ludwig is to becredited for making it clear that art does not stop at the IronCurtain. May his courage in going against blacklists of artists findmany imitators!
Translated from the German by Dr. Benjiman D.Webb