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Review of Art Exhibition

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16.06.2024 - 10.11.2024 'ARTIST ACTIVIST ARCHIVIST: BERNHARD LÜTHI INVITES'

On 16^th June 2024, in the Fondation Opale in the town of Lens, Switzerland, the Swiss-born Bernhard Lüthi opened the exhibition with a speech reflecting on his nearly 60 years of artistic activities and 50 years of his radical support for Indigenous art. The exhibition that he curated highlights artworks/artists associated with Lüthi's long career, including curating the Australian contributions to 'Magiciens de la terre', and organising the first, largest, and artist-led exhibition of contemporary Indigenous Australian art in Germany, 'Aratjara', at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in 1993. A special interview with Bernhard Lüthi is available on youtube for viewing.

Exhibition Review

'Artiste Activiste Archiviste' is an exhibition for connoisseurs, like a fine wine tasting. It is not a simple solo exhibition, nor a group exhibition about a particular art direction. It is an exhibition for experts or those willing to delve into (mainly) contemporary Indigenous Australian art. The unique criterion for selection of the artworks is not a theme or a geographic focus or a time period but a pathway, a path trail-blazed by the artist, curator, Indigenous rights activist, and finally archivist of more than 40 years of Indigenous art in Europe: Bernard Lüthi.

The exhibition consists of more than fifty artworks in various media, each selected to represent a milestone in Lüthi's career, including some of his own early artworks and especially the exhibitions that he has (co)curated in Europe.

Much discussed by art historians, the 1989 exhibition 'Magiciens de la terre' (curated with Jean-Hubert Martin) was hosted in the Georges Pompidou Museum of Modern Art and the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, whereby Lüthi was responsible for organising the Australian artworks. As he explained in his opening speech at the Fondation Opale, persuading artists from Yuendumu in central Australia, to create a very complex ground installation in Paris, absolutely required first gaining their trust. Lüthi spent months in 1989 in Yuendumu and was able to convince the artists that he personally would ensure that the materials and central element of the ground painting, which had deep philosophical meaning for the artists, would be returned to them after the exhibition closed. Lüthi was very angry when that central element could not be handed over at the end of the show and he spent months harassing museum staff until 'it was relinquished' and he could finally book plane flights to personally return it to the artists of Yuendumu.

That episode illustrates his life-long deep integrity and is represented in the exhibition by paintings by several of the artists (Paddy Japaljarri Sims, Paddy Japaljarri Stewart and Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson) whom he had invited to make the ground installation in Paris, as well as by the stone circle artwork “Geneva One” from the European artist, Richard Long, reminding of the circular artwork by the same artist called “Red Earth Circle” that had hung behind the ground installation in Paris in 1989. Those two artworks became the iconic representation of that ground-breaking exhibition and that view is reproduced in every review article ever since (e.g. even three decades later in The Economist).

Lüthi's greatest exhibition, eight years in preparation with over 150 artworks on loan from institutions and collections in Australia, was 'Aratjara: Art of the First Australians' in 1993 in Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westphalen in Düsseldorf. It made Indigenous Australian art visible as contemporary art for the first time in Germany. The concept of the exhibition, as described in the introduction of the catalogue, was to let the art and the artists speak for themselves. As a result, about half of the seventeen chapters of the catalogue were written by Indigenous authors - surely a record.

That exhibition is represented by several artworks re-visiting Europe at the Fondation Opale, including the seminal artwork by Gordon Bennett, 'The Nine Ricochets (Fall down black fella jump up white fella)', from 1990. Loaning from Australia the large artwork, 220 × 182 cm on canvas and painting panels, was a feat in itself, greatly assisted by the executor of the artist's estate, Leanne Bennett, who attended the opening. Gordon Bennett's artwork caused an intellectual explosion in Australia when it was first made public, because he exposed the double- and triple-thinking involved in artistic appropriation and especially the (mis)appropriation of Indigenous intellectual property. Along the same lines, the (perennially controversial) artist Richard Bell, whose work was shown in 'Aratjara', is also represented at the Fondation Opale exhibition by a video documentary and by an acrylic painting 'Aesthetic Equal Rights' which uses techniques of 'dot painting' and the Ishihara Test for Colour Blindness to 'hide' a text message to viewers.

Archive

Each of the works in the exhibition can be similarly used as a window into the history of Indigenous Australian art in Europe and many anecdotes will eventually come to light when researchers have had time to examine the third part of the exhibition: the personal archive of notes, letters, brochures and exhibition planning documents meticulously collected by Bernhard Lüthi throughout his long career. The Fondation Opale has created a purpose-built extension to its building to house Lüthi's archive to ensure that his life's work remains available to scholars.

 

Roundtable

A special roundtable of discussions by Bernhard Lüthi and four other pioneers who were instrumental in bringing the first Indigenous art exhibitions to Europe in the 1980s - 2000s was hosted by Fondation Opaleduring the opening of the exhibition and is available here on youtube for viewing.

• Bernhard Lüthi
• Lindsay Frost
• Jean-Hubert Martin
• Ulrich Krempel
• Georges Petijean

Some questions addressed in the roundtable:

• Why did you consider it important to show Aboriginal/Indigenous art in the early days?
• What were your challenges back then (political, financial, etc.)?
• How did you find the state of appreciation and recognition of Aboriginal art then and today, in the art world, and the greater public, and what does that say about our society?
• What traces do you see today of your projects and what are the future prospects?

PREPARED ANSWERS by Lindsay Frost, collector, author and co-curator of 23 public art exhibitions in Germany from 1997 to 2018. Of course, the actual discussions diverged from these points and readers are encouraged to view the recorded video here.

Panel Question #1: Why did you consider it important to show Aboriginal/Indigenous art in the early days?

I am Australian, but when I emigrated to Germany in 1985 the only Indigenous art was in various ethnological museums. My partner Elisabeth Bähr and I believe the contemporary Indigenous art movement has a depth and breadth equal to any in Europe. It brings new ways of seeing the world. It is everyone’s right to look, analyse, and in the end enjoy it or find it unattractive, BUT to just ignore it is discrimination. Even for me, seeing the 'Aratjara' exhibition in 1993 was an eye-opener. So many different styles of Indigenous Art were on display, and the comprehensive catalogue was filled with content written by Indigenous artists and curators, as well as by some few European art historians. But the discussion in and around Indigenous art did not really 'take off' in Germany. Even when Ulrich Krempel hosted in the Sprengel Museum in 1995 the exhibition 'Stories: Eine Reise zu den gro&slig;en Dingen', where Elisabeth Bähr collaborated on the catalogue, there was hardly any public discussion.

Therefore, Elisabeth Baehr and I both thought, it is important to bring Indigenous Australian art to Germany so that people can see it and judge for themselves. We first tried convincing some art museums, but then we decided to be more direct: two years later, in 1997, we opened the Aboriginal Art Gallery Bähr in Speyer, Germany. As well as exhibitions in our gallery, we put a huge effort into persuading City Art Museums and the larger Art Associations (Kunstverein) around Germany to borrow artworks from us and show public (non-commercial) exhibitions. We are proud to have arranged nearly two dozen exhibitions, all around Germany, over the next decade. The visitors were always very interested, or even enthusiastic, but I must say the art professionals were cagey.

Panel Question #2: What were your challenges back then (political, financial, etc)?

The first challenge was to obtain paintings, back in 1997! We wanted to source them directly from the artists or their art cooperatives in Australia (called Art Centres), to be sure of provenance and also to give maximum financial/professional benefit to the artists. That meant, in those days, driving many thousands of kilometers of bumpy dirt tracks in a 4-wheel-drive campervan and being prepared to buy every painting we needed, because there was no such thing as 'on loan to the gallery, pending sale'. Such trust took years to build. The other difficulty was convincing German art museums or art associations (Kunstverein) to allow us to curate exhibitions. In the first years, Elisabeth sent detailed exhibition examples and photos to over 180 such organisations for modern art and - despite her follow-up telephone calls - this resulted finally in just 10 exhibitions. Ten years later, interest was even lower; we think the initial curiosity and cachet of 'exoticism' had faded. All the exhibitions we curated were, however, very well attended.

Panel Question #3: How did you find the state of appreciation and recognition of Aboriginal art then and today in the art world and the greater public, and what does that say about our society?

As I said, for the early period 'then', the art-loving public was enthusiastic about all our exhibitions, and had many questions, but the art professionals were not willing to risk expressing an opinion or even to risk asking questions. They had too much to lose, in their professional careers, by being laughed at by peers. Also, forming a detailed opinion about such a new and diverse art movement takes years of study and out of more than three thousand German art professors at universities and colleges, no-one appears to have invested the effort to teach or to write about it. I think this clearly expresses that our society values security over intellectual freedom and initiative. On the other hand, non-professionals have nothing to lose by showing interest, asking questions, and forming their own opinions. Nothing in that has changed today. But there is always hope, such as when the Gropius Bau modern art museum in Berlin put on a solo exhibition of an Indigenous artist, Daniel Boyd, in 2023.

Panel Question #4: What traces do you see today of your projects and what are the future prospects?

The main traces of our projects, from 1997 to around 2017, are bringing the art to many different towns and cities and people of Germany. Furthermore, we loan artworks from our collection to (so far) five different art museums for their own multi-genre exhibitions. Plus, to accompany our exhibitions we created several informative catalogues which are in many German libraries today. It is very important to expand the available knowledge and discourse about the art in Germany. Silence is deadly for art! Therefore, I must say, the existence and activities of Fondation Opale are very important.

A recent project in 2022 was to provide a deep analysis, large range of examples, and extensive background about Indigenous Art, in the form of a 496-page book in Germany, called 'Erzählte Welt'. Now, just last week we completed a full translation into English and re-published it with the University of Heidelberg as a free open-access PDF book. You can google it at 'Narrated World Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art' or find the book on our website. And our next project will be to eventually donate our art collection to a European art museum, in the hope that the works will be regularly exhibited. That is a long-term project, however, because the last four decades and replies to over 450 exhibition proposals have shown us many excuses why German art directors reject contemporary Indigenous Australian Art … despite that an Indigenous artist (Archie Moore) just this year won the 60^th Biennale di Venezia 'Golden Lion' award.

PREPARED ANSWERS by Jean-Hubert Martin, curator, art museum director and author. Of course, the actual discussions diverged from these points and readers are encouraged to view the recorded video here.

Panel Question #1: Why did you consider it important to show Aboriginal/Indigenous art in the early days ?

I was interested in non-Western art as a curator and programmer of the Centre Pompidou in the seventies. At the opening of the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou in 1977, I organised the exhibition of African and oceanic artworks loaned by the Musée de l’Homme within the permanent collection. It did not include any paintings by Aboriginal artists. In 1982, I was appointed curator for the French participation in the Sydney Biennale. A group of people from Lajamanu were invited by Bill Wright to organise a ceremony and an earth painting. For me, it was the strongest work of the Biennale. This event, created partly in seclusion behind closed doors, was the subject of endless discussions among the international artists gathered there to install their works. The question was whether such a religious work could be considered as art, or not. From then on, I decided that this issue had to be addressed in an important exhibition. That same year I left Paris to become director of the Kunsthalle in Bern. Despite the fact that a similar earth painting was shown in 1983 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (city museum vs national museum at Centre Pompidou), I felt alone in my interest for Aboriginal art, till I met the artist Bernhard Luthi in Zurich. He was working on a project for an Aboriginal art exhibition. I had in mind a large and spectacular worldwide exhibition. The Aboriginal artists were in the forefront of my mind, because they were identified and reachable, in contrast to African artists, whose artefacts were numerous in Europe, but without identified authors and a tendency of the gallerists to always declare them to be “ancient” and to ignore or keep secret their provenance. As a director of the Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (a unique museum devoted to art as opposed to the ethnographic Musée de l’Homme), I travelled to Yuendumu and Yirkala to purchase paintings that were later shown next to ones from the collection of Karel Kupka.

Panel Question #2: What were your challenges back then (political, financial, etc)?

In Bern, I could have convinced the supervising board of the Kunsthalle to make an Aboriginal art exhibition, but my budget was too small. In 1985, I returned to Paris to realise my worldwide project within the framework of the Paris Biennale, but unfortunately, the previous curator caused excessive expenses that made it bankrupt. I obtained a part of the needed budget from the Ministry of Culture, however it took me several years to convince sponsors -- among which Ms. Sylvie Boissonnas and Canal+ Television were vital -- to organise Magiciens de la terre. I assembled a team of collaborators with whom I shared responsibility for the geographical areas and Bernhard Luthi became the obvious one responsible for Aboriginal art. He was at the same time preparing his own exhibition Aratjara and, since I had been appointed director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou, I planned to include it in my programme. However, I left the museum in 1990 and my successor cancelled the project right away.

Panel Question #3: How did you find the state of appreciation and recognition of Aboriginal art then and today, in the art world and the greater public, and what does that say about our society ?

Even in Australia in the eighties, my colleagues surprised me by their lack of interest in Aboriginal art, and let’s not talk about Europe. There were a few commercial galleries in Australia. but the display of Aboriginal art in the New South Wales Art Gallery was striking, because it showed sculptures and many bark paintings. One could easily compare them and make up one’s own judgement upon their respective quality. In the late nineties, Lüthi and I protested in the press when the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi was rejected from the the Cologne Art Fair. My feeling is that, apart from the discrimination, the organisers were afraid of the idea that collectors might be attracted by the quality of the works and their relatively modest prices. It is all about the market, that unfortunately most of the curators follow. In our capitalist society, recognition comes only with financial value, even if Europe tries in some ways to resist. If curators are courageous enough to plan exhibitions, they know that they have to expect a low attendance for which they will be blamed by their boards or political authorities. The process of acceptance is long and slow and, as often, the recognition only comes when the extinction of the old spiritual tradition is pronounced. Our culture is still very protective. It accepts the so-called universal culture when it deals with the past, but not the present. Nevertheless, things are evolving: first, Emily Kngwarraye’s paintings sell for six figure amounts, and then Gagosian «discovers» aboriginal art in 2019 !, as shown on the internet ...

Panel Question #4: What traces do you see today of your projects and what are the future prospects ?

The indigenous artists who participated in Magiciens de la terre can be proud to have been recognised and for most of them to have been integrated into the network of contemporary art. This was a one-shot event that broke the ice. There is still so much to do. A major principle should be that exclusion is forbidden in culture. The use of Western criteria and genre or technical hierarchy is a brake on an understanding of indigenous cultures. Today, the major paradigmatic criterium for contemporary art is politics. With my exhibitions, I have tried to introduce the idea that Aboriginal art, with its close connection with the land that the people try to keep or claim, is a political act of protection. But nobody cares! Media and critics are only interested in repeating that it is a hundreds of centuries-old culture. Who are the foreign curators who have travelled to Australia to meet artists in their communities? This is my main disappointment after Magiciens de la terre. I expected that curiosity would push young curators to travel to remote places and look for artists. In fact, everybody is satisfied with urban art and the numerous artists who have accepted to play our game, to use our strategies and to adhere to modernism. Fortunately, Berengère Primat has proposed that I curate the next exhibition at Fondation Opale, Rien de trop beau pour les dieux to open on 15th December, 2024. It will deal with the progressive inclusion of spiritual, transcendental and religious attitudes, coming mainly from the South, into the contemporary art scene.