Now at the SCHIRN: Hans Haacke. Retrospective

In her publicly acces­sible rotunda, the SCHIRN presents Hans Haacke’s iconic “Gift Horse” (2014), which the artist devel­oped for Trafalgar Square in London as part of the Fourth Plinth, one of the world’s most pres­ti­gious commis­sions for public art. As a kind of “counter-monu­ment” to the impe­rial repre­sen­ta­tion of power by the statues in this square, Haacke’s 4.5-meter-tall bronze sculp­ture shows a horse skeleton based on a study from George Stubbs’s book “The Anatomy of the Horse”. The ticker of the Frank­furt Stock Exchange is trans­mitted live via an elec­tronic display on a loop at the front of the skeleton’s thigh bone. Haacke’s “Gift Horse” can be read as a commen­tary on a society that has for centuries been defined by class antag­o­nisms and subjected to the dictates of the markets.

Also on display is a series in which Haacke explored the various phys­ical states of water. One of the artist’s signa­ture works is the “Large Conden­sa­tion Cube” (1963–67), a cube of acrylic glass enclosing a small amount of water. Haacke also called these cubes “weather boxes” and later made analo­gies between mete­o­ro­log­ical and polit­ical climates. This linking of different systems is char­ac­ter­istic of Haacke’s method. The tran­si­tion from object (or sculp­ture) to process is also evident in his artistic prac­tice. Further “exper­i­mental setups” in the museum inte­rior demon­strate the water cycle (“Circu­la­tion”, 1969) by means of evap­o­ra­tion, conden­sa­tion, crys­tal­liza­tion, lique­fac­tion, other air move­ments (“Blue Sail”, 1964–65), or growth processes (“Grass Grows”, 1969). From 1967 on, Haacke also worked outdoors, for example with “Sky Line” (1967), and controlled processes related to water vapor or melting snow, which he then docu­mented photo­graph­i­cally.

He consis­tently returned to systemic and ecolog­ical ques­tions. His photo­graph “Monu­ment to Beach Pollu­tion” (1970) counts as one of the very first ecolog­ical works of art. With “Krefeld Sewage Trip­tych” (1972) and “Rhine Water Purifi­ca­tion Plant” (1972), Haacke offered direct and indicting commen­tary on the pollu­tion of the river Rhine. His “real-time systems” are also a distin­guishing feature of his oeuvre. The action “Chickens Hatching” (1969) saw chicks hatching in real time in the exhi­bi­tion space, demon­strating birth and growth processes in a mini­malist box struc­ture. “Ant Co-op” (1969) docu­ments the regu­larity of the tunnels dug by ants as a biolog­ical and social system. The docu­men­tary artist portrait “Hans Haacke: Self-Portrait of a German Artist in New York” (1969) offers insights into his artistic methods and also shows many early proces­sual works in action.

“Manet-PROJEKT ’74” (1974), which Haacke submitted for the anniver­sary exhi­bi­tion of the Wallraf Richartz Museum in Cologne, also prompted another act of insti­tu­tional censor­ship. He proposed exhibiting Édouard Manet’s “Bunch of Asparagus” (1880) from the museum’s collec­tion along­side the results of his own research into the work’s prove­nance. The infor­ma­tion panels contain detailed personal, biograph­ical, profes­sional, and finan­cial infor­ma­tion on the previous owners, as well as infor­ma­tion about their involve­ment in National Socialism. The SCHIRN is also showing two further pieces that crit­i­cally examine the entan­gle­ments between art patronage and economic activity: “Der Prali­nen­meister (The Choco­late Master)” (1981), about the connec­tions between cultural and tax-related deci­sions made by the influ­en­tial Cologne collector and manu­fac­turer Peter Ludwig, and “Buhr­lesque” (1985) on the Swiss art collector, patron, and arms manu­fac­turer Dr. Diet­rich Bührle.

In numerous pieces, Haacke advo­cated for demo­c­ratic processes, the acti­va­tion of public opinion, and a pluralist anti-fascist approach. Some of his projects deal with media repre­sen­ta­tion: “News” (1969) trans­plants the ticker of a news agency into the exhi­bi­tion space; in the SCHIRN, reports from selected Frank­furt media such as the Frank­furter Allge­meine Zeitung, the Frank­furter Rund­schau, and Hessen­schau.de are trans­mitted. “Photo Oppor­tu­nity (After the Storm / Walker Evans)” (1992) offers a compar­a­tive perspec­tive on photo reportage. The SCHIRN is also showing Haacke’s power-crit­ical work for docu­menta 7. The instal­la­tion “Oil Painting: Homage to Marcel Broodthaers” (1982) consists of a portrait of then US Pres­i­dent Ronald Reagan made by Haacke himself, which is shown oppo­site a large-format photo­graph of a major demon­stra­tion by oppo­nents of his poli­cies and the deploy­ment of nuclear weapons.