Hans Haacke

Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of institutional critique, and is considered to be the most harsh and consistent critic of museums among the Euro-American artists of his time.

Early life

Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the Staatliche Werkakademie in Kassel, Germany, from 1956 to 1960. In 1959, Haacke was hired to assist with the second documenta, working as a guard and tour guide. He was a student of Stanley William Hayter, a well-known and influential English printmaker, draftsman, and painter. From 1961 to 1962, he studied on a Fulbright grant at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia. From 1967 to 2002, Haacke was a professor at the Cooper Union in New York City.

thumb|left|250px|Condensation Cube, (1963-1965); [[Plexiglas and water; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]]

During his formative years in Germany, he was a member of Zero (an international group of artists, active ca. 1957–1966). This group was held together with common motivations: the longing to re-harmonize man and nature and to restore art's metaphysical dimension. They sought to organize the pictorial surface without using traditional devices.

Although their methods differed greatly, most of the work was monochromatic, geometric, kinetic, and gestural. In most of his work after the late 1960s, Haacke focused on the art world and the system of exchange between museums and corporations and corporate leaders; he often underlines its effects in site-specific ways.

Haacke has been outspoken throughout his career about demystifying the relationship between museums and businesses and their individual practices. He writes, "what we have here is a real exchange of capital: financial capital on the part of the sponsors and symbolic capital on the part of the sponsored". Using this concept from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Haacke has underlined the idea that corporate sponsorship of art enhances the sponsoring corporations' public reputation, which is of material use to them. Haacke believes, moreover, that both parties are aware of this exchange, and as an artist, Haacke is intent on making this relationship clear to viewers.

In 1970, Hans Haacke proposed a work for the exhibition entitled Information to be held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (an exhibition meant to be an overview of current younger artists), according to which the visitors would be asked to vote on a current socio-political issue. Haacke's question commented directly on the involvements of a major donor and board member at MoMA, Nelson Rockefeller. This installation is an early example of what in the art world came to be known as institutional critique. MoMA Poll was cited in 2019 by The New York Times as one of the works of art that defined the contemporary age.

In one of his best-known works, which quickly became an art historical landmark, Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, Haacke took on the real-estate holdings of one of New York City's biggest slum landlords. The work exposed, through meticulous documentation and photographs, the questionable transactions of Harry Shapolsky's real-estate business between 1951 and 1971. Haacke's solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which was to include this work and which made an issue of the business and personal connections of the museum's trustees, was cancelled on the grounds of artistic impropriety by the museum's director six weeks before the opening. (Shapolsky was not such a trustee, although some have misunderstood the affair by assuming that he was.) Curator Edward F. Fry was consequently fired for his support of the work. This cancellation is widely considered as a turning point in the relationship between artists and museums in the United States, where such cooperation became conflicted. The Saatchis were well known not only as art collectors on an aggressive scale, widely affecting the course of the art world by their choices, but also as the managers of Thatcher's successful, fear-based political campaigns as well as that of the South African premier, P. W. Botha.

1990s

Haacke's controversial 1990 painting Cowboy with Cigarette turned Picasso's Man with a Hat (1912–13) into a cigarette advertisement. The work was a reaction to the Phillip Morris company's sponsorship of a 1989–90 exhibition about Cubism at the Museum of Modern Art.

thumb|Blue Sail, photo was taken by Ed Schipul at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

2000s

At the 2000, Whitney Biennial, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Haacke presented a piece that is a direct reaction to art censorship. The piece called Sanitation featured six anti-art quotes from US political figures on each side of mounted American flags. The quotes were in a Gothic style script typeface once favored by Hitler's Third Reich. On the floor was an excerpt of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression. Lined up against the wall were a dozen garbage cans with speakers emitting military marching sounds. Haacke notes that "freedom of expression is the focus of the work". In 2014, it was announced that Haacke would be installing one of his works as part of the annual Fourth Plinth commission in 2015. His winning commission of a bronze sculpture of a horse's skeleton, titled Gift Horse, comes with an electronic ribbon tied to its front leg that displays a live ticker of prices on the London Stock Exchange.

Use of law

Along with Adrian Piper and Michael Asher, Haacke uses a version of Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky's 1971 artist contract, The Artists Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, in order to control the dissemination, display and ownership of his art works.

Writing and publications

On being considered a political artist Haacke says: "it is uncomfortable for me to be a politicized artist.... the work of an artist with such a label is in danger of being understood one dimensionally without exception.... all artwork have a political component whether its intended or not". Jack Burnham comments on Haacke's political growth and links its roots to exposure to a time of political unrest in the US surrounding the Vietnam War. Burnham also points to Haacke's joining the Arts Workers Coalition and the boycott of the São Paulo Bienal in Brazil in 1969 as catalyst for the artist's work to take a political direction.

Blue Sail (1964-1965), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Condensation Wall (1963/1966), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 (1971), Centre Pompidou, Paris and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 (1971), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City and Tate, London
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Board of Trustees (1974), Museum of Modern Art, New York City|
A Breed Apart (1978), Tate, London
Thank You, Paine Webber (1979), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Oil Painting: Homage to Marcel Broodthaers (1982), Los Angeles County Museum of Art
MetroMobiltan (1985), Centre Pompidou, Paris
The Saatchi Collection (Simulations) (1987), The Broad, Los Angeles
Mission Accomplished (2004-2005), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
News (1969/2008), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

References

External links

Hans Haacke on New Museum archive
[https://archive.today/20121215120212/https://www.watkins.edu/sites/all/files/imagecache/gallery_full/portfolios/images/05.jpg] ]
"Hans Haaacke: Talking Art" Tate Channel
Hans Haacke on Artcyclopedia
Hans Haacke at Artnet.com
MoMa.org Audio Program, All Systems Go: Recovering Hans Haacke's Systems Art by Luke Skrebowski, Middlesex University, England, MP3 file (30 min/28MB).
ZERO foundation
ZERO group
"Hans Haacke. ’Obra Social’" Hans Haacke's exhibition in Fundació Antoni Tàpies. 21/6/1995 - 3/9/1995