Documenta, Germany’s every-five-year art mega-fest, opened over the weekend, bringing the international media to Kassel, a sleepy town in the middle of the country, to kvetch about the state of modern art.
While the temporary greenhouse, main pavilion we previously wrote about is getting kudos for breaking the “white cube” mold of displaying works of art, Thai artist Sakarin Krue-On’s effort to grow rice on a terraced field in front of Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, an 18th-century castle, is not only failing but drawing local protest for degrading a potential U.N. World Heritage site.
Like the Venice Biennale, which opened last week, one of the predominant themes is emergent 21st-century strife: religious confrontation, environmental crisis, third-world poverty, war and genocide. Of the more than 500 works of art on display, the one that iconically captures that spirit best is Austrian artist Peter Friedl’s “The Zoo Story” (pictured above). Friedl recovered Brownie, a giraffe that died of panic when a battle broke out near the Kalkilya zoo on the West Bank, and had a local taxidermist preserve the remains.
Brownie’s body looks toy-like and almost resplendent, but of course the reality is much grimmer. Documenta runs until September 23.
