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I am not as optimistic as you, Sabine: I would think few are really willing to stand back and think for themselves and analyse their motives: intellectuals, by definition, and hopefully artists (but ‘primitive’ artists, although possessing a unique artistic ability, do not fall into this group, also by definition). You yourself call this reflection a task, in my view, a task few attempt and far from being a universal human characteristic – maybe I just lived too long.

But you are right, Sabine, I failed to respond well to your contribution of the 7/11/08. I will try again, try to fail better: Are you really saying(1) that you can’t imagine the III. Reich, all of its 12 years existence, not just its ideology, as a ‘work of art’, my original request, disregarding the unprofitable question whether it was or not? Ever since Duchamp a negative answer may no longer be possible: Imitating Duchamp and many conceptual artists since, I could simply declare it to be a ‘work of art’ – my own now. Granted, the ‘work of art’ would then not be the historical physical horror of those 12 years, but the idea of it. Have I answered here my own question or have I failed? Is the idea of a reality as different from the reality as a tragedy played out on stage from it happening on the streets? Or am I trying to push art into a forbidden field?

(1) You wrote: I cannot see ‘individual and independent thoughts’ in the ideology of the 3rd Reich nor can I see that ‘the external war has been transformed into an inner one’.

Apropos the question whether kitsch is art or not: I think as long as the definition of art is fuzzy the answer to this question will be fuzzy as well.

What do I mean when I call something “kitsch”? I think of the three pottery ducks which flew across my grandma’s bathroom wall. It seems simple. Next I think of Van Gogh’s sunflowers reproduced on a tea towel. Already a bit more problematic. Finally, I think of the rainbows that the Chapman Brothers painted over their collection of Hitler’s watercolours… it looks pretty tacky to me, but perhaps layering 21st century kitsch on 20th century kitsch cancels out the kitsch?!

Can I think of any examples of Art that are definitely not “kitsch”? I think of Mona Hatoum’s sculptures and the performances of Marina Abramovic. Easy. But I also think of Robert Rauschenburg’s goat and then Tracey Emin’s bed – I’m not so sure everyone would agree with me there. Finally, I come to Jeff Koons’ work… work which is so cold and calculating, it surely cannot be kitsch, even if it references it endlessly. (I say this, by the way, as a fan of his work).

My point is that Art is big enough to encompass many forms, kitsch being not only one form amongst many, but also – crucially – defined in the eye of the beholder. Kitsch is not outside the realm of art, but part of it. What is kitsch for me, may well not be for you.

It is a historical inevitability that we should define Hitler’s taste in art as kitsch – we NEED it to be so, because – understandably – we need him to be a cretin down to every last detail of his being. I agree with Max here: our thoughts/tastes/attitudes our dictated by the culture within which we find ourselves. However, we should consider that perhaps what really underpins any posited Art-Kitsch dichotomy is intellectual snobbery: it posits Rationality against Emotion (including the sentimentality by which kitsch is mostly defined). Personally, I think this is a strange thing to do, since, for myself at least, the greatest art appeals equally to both.

Is the artist responsible for any misreading of the work? Although the maker, once the work leaves his/her hands, looses the power over it, a certain responsibility remains, I think. Adorno even went so far as making artists responsible for any misuse of his/her work even long after their death, like music to be played for the torturer’s relaxation after a hard days work. But Abramović is different in so far as in some of her performances she temps the spectator to be corrupted by her performance, to give in to his or her sadistic impulses or – to use artandpowers words – she is producing her own special hell to which the spectator must respond; stronger even: she FORCES the spectator to respond by handing to him/her the power to end the performance for example, the 2 column performance, “Expansion in Space” (2) ends only by spectator intervention before she is knocking herself unconscious. Does that make the work itself sadistic? NO, as little as the work of de Sade can be called sadistic, rather the opposite, both are moralists.

But we still have not come any nearer to an answer to my original question (for which the III. Reich only served as a provocation): Is ART really the one exemption among all human endeavours in being truly HUMANISTIC? Is it not possible to find examples of art that clearly could be labelled anti-humanistic, ‘deprived’ or worse? Perhaps KITSCH? Provided kitsch is accepted as a form of Art? (3) Isn’t kitsch art or pseudo-art that plays under false pretences with emotions, that is false, that lies? And if you argue that kitsch is ‘non-art’, isn’t the reason you exclude kitsch from art exactly because kitsch is corrupting? That it is the ‘hell’ to the ‘heaven’ of art – although maybe often a quite jolly and pleasurable ‘hell’ opposed to a ‘demanding heaven’? (4)

I am sorry, Sabine, I am not convinced by your argument about ‘independent thought’. We get here into a philosophical argument about how independent thought can be. Thought, not least through language, is always culturally imbedded; independence can only be relative. Could one not argue that national-socialism is a further development of fascism and thus shows some independence of thought? What strikes me when reading some pages of ‘Mein Kampf’ is just how sentimental and ‘kitschy’ they are! And the yearly large state-sponsored art exhibitions in Munich were full of kitsch of an Arno Breker and others. Kundera says (5) “kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word”; and: in a totalitarian state, “in the realm of totalitarian kitsch […] everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished. […] In this light, we can regard the gulag (and concentration camps, I may add) as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.” So then the question could be reformulated: Can kitsch ever be a form of art? Or is it always opposed to art but, it seems, somehow linked to art like ‘heaven and hell’ or ‘god and the devil’? If we choose the latter, art is then, by definition, a humanistic endeavour, always, without exception.
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(1) Balzac, Le Chef-d’Œuvre inconnu
(2) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PD41IRukna8&feature=related
(3) Kitsch should be distinguished from ‘bad art’ which is art that failed in some aspect of the rules it has set itself; in this I agree with Tomás Kulka who (in :’Kitsch and Art’) opposes kitsch to art.
(4) Don’t let’s forget that Faust had quite some fun from his dealings with the devil!
(5) In: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, part VI

Pondering over the thought of “…looking at the 3rd Reich as art…” I wondered what or where the source of art in general is?

I can’t think of art without linking it to the thoughts of an individual (or a group of individuals) who is in conversation with the surrounding world. To me art expresses and materializes individual and independent thoughts – thought as a creative process.

Metzger’s and Abramović’ work have been mentioned. Without being really familiar with their work I think – correct me if I’m wrong – destruction and pain are their materials to express what they think. It’s the processes in destruction and pain they use.

I think also they “…transform the external war to make it their own war of consciousness…”* (which to me might be as well a definition of art).

Uff…to come to a conclusion: I cannot see ‘individual and independent thoughts’ in the ideology of the 3rd Reich nor can I see that ‘the external war has been transformed into an inner one’.

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To Max’s first question in the discussion (Why did you read out text in German? You must have known that most would not understand it?) made me think of the following essay by Oliver Sacks:

http://www.junkfoodforthought.com/long/Sacks_Reagan.htm

Sometimes those who don’t understand a language might get layers of a speech that the knowing won’t get…

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*Beuys on Christ. A Position in Dialogue / F Mennekes – Joseph Beuys (1984)
F Mennekes: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3545240,00.html

I am interested in the idea you posit, Max, of “new realities” and enjoy that you say this rather than “new possibilities”. It’s optimistic. It underlines the power art can have. I said earlier that for me, art is a way of thinking about the world; but this does not underline the necessity to communicate those thoughts, as you mention. It is vital to me that people get at least the tiniest glimpse of what I am trying to say with an artwork.

I’d also like to go off on a bit of a tangent if I may, as I would like to think about when this idea of communication might get very tricky indeed. For example, would it be possible for someone to be at a Marina Abramovic performance and not see it as a hell at all? What if they see it as a heaven? What does the artist do then? This would be a terrifying “new reality”, in which the looking has encouraged an unpalatable seeing. It would be the bringing into being of a deeply horrible reality, even worse than the “hell” originally intended, for which the artist would have to bear some responsibility… or would they?

I think that in pointing to art’s material economy your statement enables us to build upon and open up Nicola’s search for a definition. I agree that art can provide unique ways of looking at (i.e., contemplating and perhaps even ‘understanding’)the world. What initially comes to mind is how Emily Dickinson everytime shows me phenomena in nature (the ubiquitous sunset or a bird in flight) as i was somehow never able to SEE or know it, despite my having LOOKED at such phenomena before or even repeatedly.

Yet, supervening on this is the fact that art can also provide a sense of the world, and perhaps even a way to exist in it. On this line an art work depicting hell in one way or another, to return to your example, would be capable of producing its own special hell with which the spectator must contend, doing so with whatever senses she or he might choose or, more precisely, be forced to put to use in the interpretive process.