Und Das Ist Kunst?

by Hanno Rauterberg

Genügt es wie seinerzeit, ein Pissoir in einer Ausstellung zu zeigen? Welche Rolle spielt das "Können"? Muss Kunst "schön" sein? Wie kann der Betrachter lernen, sich sein eigenes Bild zu machen? Hanno Rauterberg analysiert den Kunstmarkt, benennt die zehn populärsten Irrtümer der Gegenwartskunst und zeigt in seinem thesenstarken Buch, wie sich Kunstwerke beurteilen lassen.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Karen· · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hanno Rauterberg is the little boy in the tale of the Emperor's New Clothes who points out that there's nothing there. He takes modern art to task for being one-dimensional. Art that is carried only by expressing an idea, or that is only out to shock, or that is only self-referential, or that is only decorative earns opprobrium. He analyses the market forces driving the art world at the moment, he exposes what he calls the ten fallacies of the art world: 1) art knows no criteria 2) art always has to be innovative 3) art has to be truthful 5) art does not require technique 6) art has to refuse to be Art, has to expose the concept of Art 7) everything can be considered as art 8) art always has to fight its corner 9) art should make a critical statement 10) art needs ideas. He would like to see a discourse of considered criticism, and he would like to bring the informed viewer of art back into the debate rather than only the so-called experts. He does not reject the idea of criteria, but he does not want to see these criteria imposed by any one particular body or institution, but rather by a democratic culture of open debate rather than the speechlessness that overcomes most of us when faced by an incomprehensible installation or a collection of one artist's memorabilia. He makes an eloquent plea for judging art on its merits, according to the function that it wishes to fulfil. I found it fascinating that a lot of the sources he quotes that are looking hard at aesthetics and the function of art are the aestheticians of the eighteenth century, Schiller, Lessing and later Kant. Their findings hold good for us today: art should delight us, give us pleasure in the sense of discovery, reveal an aspect of the world to us, and most of all should retain some kernel of mystery, of ambivalence, of intriguing uncertainty.