documenta 4

The fourth documenta was held in 1968, and the events shaping that turbulent year, with its student uprisings and demonstrations against the Vietnam War, continued to unfold against the backdrop of the “World’s Art Fair” in Kassel. In that spirit, there were repeated protests and heated discussions during the opening. The Milan Triennale and the Venice Biennale had faced similar controversies a little earlier. Artists including Jörg Immendorff and Wolf Vostell used the press conference in Kassel to critique the absence of current developments such as Fluxus, Happening and Performance in the exhibition. They lambasted documenta, perceiving it to be too close to the market and overly complacent and in addition alleging that it predominantly included works from the USA, particularly from the Pop Art context, rather than from Europe, especially West Germany. That accusation earned documenta 4 the nickname “Americana.” In fact, artists from the USA made up around one-third of the exhibition. From today‘s point of view, however, it seems more striking that there were only five women among the 150 participating artists: Jo Baer, Chryssa, Marisol, Louise Nevelson, and Bridget Riley.

The sometimes fierce criticism levelled at documenta even led to a magazine being found, Interfunktionen: published until 1975, it developed into one of the most influential European art publications, with Friedrich W. Heubach and later Benjamin H. D. Buchloh as its editors. The first issue primarily documented reactions to documenta: a number of typewritten articles and pamphlets, correspondence, and newspaper clippings.

Despite these reactions and the antagonism expressed, documenta 4 was a great success. It was the last time that founder Arnold Bode, was at the helm of this major international art exhibition; he had launched documenta in Kassel in 1955, when the traces of World War Two were still glaringly apparent in the city. Younger members had already joined the documenta Advisory Council after a number of prominent figures from the founding phase, notably art historian Werner Haftmann, had stepped down. The artists were to be selected by a committee guided by principles of grassroots democracy and ultimately comprising twenty-six members. After the three previous editions with their largely retrospective thrust, documenta 4 also faced a changed focus content-wise. The exhibition began to concentrate solely the present, self-defining as presenting a survey of contemporary artistic production since the previous edition. That meant documenta was also increasingly perceived internationally as a “World’s Art Fair” (from today‘s perspective, however, this claim is relativized) unfurling an overview of current artistic work.

Somewhat belatedly, Pop Art, particularly from the USA, arrived in Kassel, while other emerging trends such as Color Field Painting, Op Art, and Minimal Art were also shown. Furthermore, Bazon Brock organized the first “Visitors’ School” in 1968, aiming to teach the general art-loving public about contemporary art using performative and didactic means – an approach that decisively influenced the art education programs of later documenta shows. All in all, documenta 4 succeeded in connecting with contemporary and international art production, albeit at the price of abandoning a safe historical distance (however that might have been established) and ending up instead in the throes of the trench warfare emblematic of the fraught present, with all its conflicting voices and currents.

This polyphony can be readily detected in the works from the mumok collection shown here, created by artists who participated in documenta 4, for instance Öyvind Fahlström, Domenico Gnoli, Konrad Klapheck, Roy Lichtenstein, Bridget Riley, and Paul Thek. Walter Pichler’s Fusion of Spheres (Prototype 2) was exhibited in Kassel in 1968, on loan from the museum. Christo’s 200,000 Cubic Feet Package, a gigantic over 85-meter-high column of air contained within synthetic fabric that became one of the documenta 4’s emblematic works, is represented here as a model.