The Invisible monument (Jochen Gerz)

Can art can be bad ?

To many people, art is limited to paintings, architecture...We are used to limit art to beauty because it is pleasant to us... Therefore many artists are criticized because of their art that is considered weird, violent, ugly… However, even if beauty is searchable in art, I think there are a lot of other emotions and ideas that art offers us and it is a pity to refrain these emotions just because we are afraid to be confronted to them. Moreover, being in contact with an art that create something deep in you is a chance, an enrichment and it is still fulfilling in a way. If you are a sensible person, you shouldn't refrain from being in contact with art that you juge strange, sad or violent at first sight, because it will not destroy you but bring you something intersting that is always an enrichment.

would like yo introduce you to two artists whose art has a huge effect on me : Jochen Gerz and Marina Abramovic. These two artists have a vision of art that includes content and form. This idea isn’t new : there is always an idea behind a matiere. However the particularity of Jochen Gerz and Marina Abramovic is that they like to play with these two concepts and most of all to make form which content is not easy to guess. This article will be about Jochen Gerz and one of his. I will talk about Marina Abramovic in two weeks.

Jochen Gerz, born in 1940 in Germany is a contemporary and conceptual artist who mainly worked on the relationship between art, life, history and memory. He chose to mix various form of art in his work like photography, text, video, performance...But he is known for working on installations and in situ art, that is a work of art made specifically for a host site, or a work of art taking into account the site in which it is installed or exhibited. Several of his arts deal with Second War and Nazi Germany's past.

The art I would like to write about is an in situ intervention named « 2146 stones, Monument against racism » or « The invisible monument. » and totally reprensents Jochen Gerz's art. In 1990, the artist and a dozen of his students went to the former headquarter of the Gestapo which was also the Sarrebrucken castle. Illegaly, they removed during the night cobblestones from the promenade leading to this form headquarter, engraved on the invisible face of the pavements the names of Jewish cemeteries that were destroyed during the Second War. After that they replaced the stones facedown on the ground so that the square remained unchanged ans the monument was invisible.

If the place doesn't looked changed, why did he do that ?

As I said, Jochen Gerz is a conceptual artist : he is attached to concept, to the idea his work conveys. In his view, knowing is more important than seing. People know the cobblestones they are walking on are engraved. People imagine all these engravings. People remind of what happened 75 years ago. People know the horror, suffering and injustice. That matters, that's enough to make the art operate, to make the art what it is.

In a way, the Jews' memory was also destroyed during the Second War. This place is full of memory that is hard to be assumed for the German people. And the artist tries to reactivate it.

In German, Pflaster means cobblestone and bandage. The act of engrave deals with the idea of a memory that is engraved in the Man's mind.

With his « Invisible monument », Jochen Gerz plays with our custom of seing. He doesn't impose to us a great monument as we often see, but an invisible monument that is only in the person's mind who thinks about it. It has a strenght we can not ignore once we know it exist. Without the human being who knows, this art isn't. It is really invisible and forgotten.

The art was started illegaly and then was officialized in progress. Jochen Gerz defended his project in front of the German parliament to make it be recognized and legitimized. The art is still in progress because a new pavement is enraved and replaced each time the rests of a cemetery destroyed during the war is discovered.

What an amazing idea, what an amazing artist...

Savannah

Comments

[Fino]

I really like the fact that he let imagine the people mind thanks to t he invisble, he doesn't indicate the emotion by the vision, there is a knd of liberty in his art.