15 - Beyond Painting and Sculpture: German-American Exchange in the Visual Arts

Summary

This chapter views artistic production from a sociological standpoint and interprets relations between Germany and the United States in the visual arts since the mid-1960s as one means by which national identities were constructed. This artistic exchange was crucial in dialogically formulating a national self-conception. In contrast to the arts exchange of the preceding phase, one dominated by the wholesale export of American art into West Germany, the period stretching from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s was characterized by a sequentially evolving dialogue with shifting parameters. To capture the unique character of these years, we have divided them into three overlapping phases and focused on the diverse agents and mechanisms that determined this artistic exchange. Rather than resorting to an anachronistic interpretation of artistic activity as ideology - one either representing “interests” (the United States) or coping with “strain” (West Germany) - we investigate how cultural artifacts themselves embodied or constituted that interaction.

The institutionalization of American Pop art took place in West Germany during the late 1960s. The showcasing of this movement at documenta 4, as well as German collectors’ extensive purchases of works and a series of museum exhibitions initiated that year can all be seen as symptomatic of this process. Such developments mark a change in Pop art’s status, from being appreciated only within a restricted circle of artists and individual collectors – predominantly in Cologne and Düüsseldorf – to becoming a phenomenon with a wider public. This transformation expressed a structural shift in the West German art world involving changed attitudes and consequently institutions, creating the conditions for an extensive, albeit not altogether positive engagement with American art.