Documenta Art Fair Turned Ugly by Antisemitism and Agitprop
At one of the world’s great art festivals in Kassel, Germany, any groundbreaking works were overshadowed by far left rhetoric of every national flavor.
More politics than art.
Photographer: Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images EuropeBy the time my wife and I got to Kassel to see the latest edition of the Documenta — the once-in-five-years event that, in the contemporary art world, rivals the Venice Biennale for direction-setting importance — its centerpiece had been removed from public view, its director had resigned in disgrace and the German government was promising to step up its supervision of the exhibitions to follow.
The scandal that engulfed what the German Jewish newspaper, Juedische Allgemeine, dubbed “Documenta of Shame” has implications that reach beyond the borders of Germany and the contemporary art milieu. The Western world, with its surfeit of money and its growing shortage of creativity, has been settling into the role of benevolent funder of whatever the creative energy of the downtrodden can produce. That energy, however, is anything but benevolent. The feeding hand may get bitten off — and that’s a scary prospect for Western bureaucrats and politicians, both in and outside the arts.