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Jorg Immendorff talks to Pamela Kort - '80s Then - Interview
ArtForum, March, 2003
PAMELA KORT: What were the signal moments in the '80s for you?
JORG IMMENDORFF: In 1982 I had my first large museum show in Germany at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, where my "Cafe Deutschland" [1978-82] paintings were featured. Shortly thereafter I participated for the second time in Documenta, and just a few months later "Zeitgeist" opened at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin.
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This period was also important to me because of the interaction between the older generation of artists and much younger ones, like Walter Dahn and Georg Jiri Dokoupil, two of the Cologne artists grouped around the Mulheimer Freiheit. They had just been featured in a show at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, "Zehn junge Kunstler aus Deutschland." A few months later their work was also showcased at Documenta 7. It is seldom that an older and younger generation come to public attention at the same time. Then there were books and catalogues published like Hunger nach Bildern and La transavanguardia tedesca. Suddenly all Europe was reacting to the German art scene, not just France and England but also Italy, where painters such as Francesco Clemente and Sandro Chia were working. A big part of the response centered on the debate around so-called figurative painting. And of course it was also at this time that David Salle and Julian Schnabel, who were shown as well at "Zeirgeist," began to exhibit in Europe.
PK: How important was Dusseldorf during the '80s? You had lived there for more than fifteen years by then.
JI: At least for me, Dusseldorf and Cologne were the centers of the German art scene. But it was Joseph Beuys who was able to open up the situation in Germany so that what was initially a regional scene could become an international one in the '80s. One should not forget that Beuys rejected painting as an art form. It was this attitude that inspired my 1966 painting Hort auf zu malen (Stop painting). That painting was born out of hard criticism. It is just as important for an understanding of my work as the "Cafe Deutschland" paintings. Like that later series, two things came together in the painting: the negation of past modes of painting and the affirmation of a new and completely different manner of working in paint. The emergence of a new style of German paintings in the 1980s could not have taken place without Beuys's example. And it had taken at least ten years for the seeds that he sowed to bear fruit.
During the late '60s and mid-'70s I officially abandoned painting and made my so-called agitprop works. Although Michael Werner showed the latter at his gallery in Cologne, I continued painting privately, encouraged by his continual purchases of my canvases. Beuys was also in the 1982 Documenta, and he was still the main figure. His 7,000 Eichen (7,000 oaks, 1982) was on the field in front of the Fridericianum. And my Brandenburger Tor--Weltfrage (Brandenburg Gate--World question) sculpture was on the street just in front of that. It wasn't my first Documenta, but it was the first time work by younger painters such as myself was widely acclaimed.
PK: Where did the impulse to paint come from then? The Dusseldorf Art Academy, where Beuys was teaching?
JI: Yes, the academy, but also the studios. At the academy there were artists like Blinky Palermo and Sigmar Polke, but of course it wasn't just a matter of everybody suddenly starting to paint. The field was prepared the decade before without an audience, without press coverage, without a huge scene.
Still, every artist recognized precisely what every other artist was doing. Open discussions took place regularly but not formally, in our free time--in pubs, for instance, like the Ratinger Hof in Dusseldorf. After A.R. Penck crossed over from the former East Germany in 1980, the Ratinger Hof was where we met along with other artists. He was intensely involved with musk; and that too became part of our daily lives; it was a kind of punk-rock scene. It was a very lively moment. I see it as a wave, which after cresting becomes a quiet sea. That is the way it is in the art world: There are peaks and valleys. It is a kind of dialectical process.
The difference between the '80s and today is that then we were much more deeply informed about one another's art. Today relationships among artists are not so intense. Sadly, they seem like strangers to one another.
PK: Would you characterize the painting that developed in Germany in the '80s as "neo-expressionist"?
JI: The term neo-expressionism is just as misleading as Neue Wilde. We were neither expressionists nor wild young artists. We have to try and get at the philosophy behind the paintings. I am as hungry for the meaning of painting as ever. What does art mean? What is the role of the artist in society? I still want to bring into focus the last two vibrant decades of the twentieth century and all they meant. But that will take time, because, in the end, the life force of art knows nothing of normal time. It makes itself known irregularly, affecting both our understanding of the past and our ability to cope with the future. What we really need is another concept of time in order to grasp the essentials of art.
