reading

miriam cahn

cité des arts

18 rue de l’Hôtel de Ville

cedex 04 75 180 Paris/France

Basle, 30 December 78

Dear Mr. Morgenthaler,¹

For some time now, I have been thinking that I would very much like to teach a course in Drawing. Starting from the situation that I am fully familiar with your vocational school and am increasingly concerned and coming to grips with the practice of drawing, I would like to construct a course that makes reference to drawing as taught at the vocational school, where drawing is essentially concerned with cubes, ellipses etc.

On account of my own experience and my gradual disengagement from this “academic” manner of drawing I would like to offer you a course that sees itself as a counter-movement to Drawing as taught in your school – as a counter-pole to this purely logical and intellectual copying and rendering of objects, people and spaces, copying in the sense of an as-precise-as-possible reproduction, and standardized inasmuch as the personality of the drawer takes second place to a so-called “objective” reproduction of what is being drawn.

I would submit that in this process the personality of the drawer misses out. If one studies the drawing products issuing from your school, one sees only minimal differences between the drawings: the personal style or touch is almost totally absent and the drawings assessed as being the “best” are those that have “apprehended” what is to be drawn in the “most correct” way, without questioning what “correct” and “apprehend” might actually mean.

I would like to offer a course that enables students to try out what things mean to them absolutely personally: what is a cube, a tube, a woman, a man, a child (a “nude” or a “figure” – what depersonalized, academic terms!) an animal, what are landscapes, spaces, movements etc. What seems important to me here is to show one’s relationship to what is being drawn, to place a personal significance in every sign drawn and to take this seriously, even if it is “merely” a scrawl or scribble and not a “finished” drawing.

Now, how might such a course be structured? I start here from my own experience. First of all, I would de-rigidify and change the ROOM SPACE in which we would be working. For example, by working out, together with the students, the significance of the easels, trestles, drawing boards, standardized sheets of paper, pencils and pens etc., by experimenting with them on re-arranging and discarding this stuff, and I would try to create an empty space, where we would try to find out, yes, what do I do with myself? This leads on into the significance of the BODY and into the posture of the body in the act of drawing, where it is decisive in determining the actual style and touch. At this stage in the course I could imagine that we would do, for example, the following exercises: drawing on the floor, drawing on the wall, drawing in small groups, “blind” drawing etc., so as to reduce “brain”-control in favour of one’s personal, individual movement. In this stage, I could well imagine strictly making students draw only cubes – it is astonishing how a cube becomes a personal sign if it is drawn in an unusual posture or drawn blind.

The next step would then be THE PERSONAL SIGNS. In this stage I would leave it to the students to decide what they want to depict and how. Through dialogue we would try to find out, yes, what do things mean to me and how do I represent them? Personal signs, after all, encompass all types – from those drawn exactly on smooth paper with a hard pencil to soft scribbling on large surfaces, from miniature depictions of things to unclear script-like signs. All of this cannot be judged except from the standpoint: Is this what the student WANTED? And from where might the norms come that guide him or her? For drawing is a never-ending argument between the rehearsed, standardized aesthetic conceptions and the wholly personal sign languages. Since the vocational school imparts a rigid aesthetic conception, such a “counter-course” could be only beneficial for a new debate on the subject: What is aesthetics? And it seems to me that this debate, this argument, should, after all, take place in the institutions of education, especially this one.

Actually, it is by no means clear to me where this course could be integrated: in the Preparatory Course, in the Graphic Arts Class, with the artists, the FFI,² the drawing instructors, the construction draftsmen, the photographers etc. Actually, it doesn’t matter where. It is absolutely clear that this is an experiment and that I do not know how it will turn out and whether I can manage it. I have, however, already gained experience in working with people: I have taught drawing at secondary schools and have for a time run a painting school for children and adults. I am confident that I can work with people. Only, I cannot offer a recipe for success: it would be a matter of giving it a try.

Looking forward to your answer,

Kind Regards,

Miriam Cahn

Miriam Cahn

cité des arts

Paris/France

Frau Keller, Department of Education, Basle

Paris, 6 May

Dear Mrs Keller,

I am writing to you on account of our conversation in April concerning the situation of the Paris studio. I have also spoken with Mr Stöcklin⁴ on the subject and he is also dissatisfied with the situation and has already sent you several letters on the matter. We are supposed to be paying around 20% of the “frais généraux” and both consider this to be not correct, especially after we have made a few comparisons with the situation of other artists within the cité. We have mutually decided to go on a payment strike. Mr Stöcklin will not pay for the next half year and I for the entire year.

I am not prepared to pay this sum, because there can be no talk of “artist sponsorship” if I have to pay additional costs here should I wish to stay here, or, in your formulation, “be allowed” to stay here. What you are forgetting is that I am here because of my artistic work and that when I apply for the artist’s studio I am only subsequently informed that I have to contribute to the “frais généraux” and otherwise – in your words – would have to renounce the scholarship. This contribution comes to about SFr. 500.- per year per studio, a sum which seems to me absolutely affordable for the City of Basle – if it already considers itself unable to pay for the artists’ stay here.

In this connection, I would like to speak in general about the City of Basle’s funding for artists. In Basle, there is of course also the Art Scholarship and the Art Fund, of which the latter must be seen as indirect artist funding. Here, one must either create commissioned art, which has long been not to every artist’s liking, or one is reliant on works being purchased, which means that one must take part in the Christmas Exhibition and the Art Fund Exhibition, if they have a more or less open theme. Many artists who do not work in the usual media can participate only with difficulty, since the structures of these exhibitions still derive from conceptions of art with, on the one hand, sculptors with sculptural works and, on the other hand, painters with pictures hung on walls. Thus, the only thing that remains as direct funding is the Scholarship. Its great flaw is that it is attached to the Scholarship Office and subject to its rulings. This leads to a total lack of transparency: neither can one learn publicly who receives scholarships nor be told why, and in addition the works in question are not put on exhibition. Then there is the further point that it is an unhappy mixture of competition (or art prize) and social support, i.e. in “unclear” cases tax returns are consulted – which leads to the circular reasoning that artists doing part-time jobs (or dependent on parents, wives, husbands) are assessed as people with enough “income”, whereas they make their applications precisely to escape such dependence so that they can work in peace!

Moreover, for the size of a City such as Basle, SFr. 80,000.- per year is far too little, when one considers that each time some 100 artists apply, among them precisely the two Paris studio people with their claim for a minimum of SFr. 10,000.-.

That these two have to join the others and apply for a scholarship is something I consider fundamentally wrong – the City should give them funding automatically on the award of the artist’s studio and not, as hitherto, that we have to pay on top.

This regulation does not stand comparison with Aarau and Germany. The City of Basle likes to describe itself in public as a city of art – the reverse is the case if one considers its direct funding of art. In the case of the Paris studio, it becomes clear that although the City was prepared to buy one studio for SFr. 80,000.- in the years of economic upswing in the 60s (the other studio was bought by the Art Society), it had only a minimal desire to bear the consequences. Real funding would mean supporting the artists financially as well over the duration of their stay in Paris, and that became too much for the City – I assume because of the attitude that this was “lost” money, i.e. financing an idea and not necessarily something that could be boasted about like a new theatre building for example.

If when putting together its budget this year to be submitted to the Finance Department, the Education Department wants to demonstrate a greater will to support art, then it needs only to consider an item of SFr. 20,000.- for the Paris studio as natural and sensible – and to demand it. Then one could talk of the City of Basle funding its artists or at least making a start in that direction. As a comparison, I now give you a few examples that I have collected here in the cité: they may be perhaps not quite correct in detail since I have gathered them on the basis of oral information. GERMANY:

the Paris studios are financed by the cities and the Federal states, the states changing every two years. In this case, it is North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf.

1. An artist receives 6 months in the Paris studio free of charge + 1,300 DM per month + travel expenses + one-off material costs + allowance for apartment rent paid directly by the Ministry of Culture of the state concerned.

2. Three artists get 6 months in Paris, extension possible + 700 DM per month, artist’s studio free. The same goes for New York and both are for academy students. Ministry of Culture of the state, city and private funds.

3. one artist receives a studio in New York, 6 months, studio free, 1,500 DM per month + travel costs paid by the City of Düsseldorf.

4. in addition, the City of Düsseldorf has a budget of around 10,000 DM per year for the catalogue, if one can do an exhibition. Moreover, it finances an “artotheque” with leasing possibilities for graphic works.

5. the Franco-German Youth Office, based in Bad Honnef. 4 artists receive 6 months in Paris + FFs 2,600 + travel expenses + the cost of a catalogue.

6. Duisburg: 4 artists get a 2-year scholarship, artist’s studio free, 1,000 DM per month + collaboration with industry for large-scale projects.

The structures are of course different from in our country, but I want only to demonstrate that within the Düsseldorf area there are many more possibilities for an artist than with us.

AARGAU:

1. Paris: one artist gets an artist’s studio, free of charge for 3–6 months. In addition, a scholarship for which it is important into which category he/she falls:

Funding category: a maximum of Fr. 10,000.-

Sabbatical year category: a maximum of Fr. 20,000.- per person

2. In addition, one can apply for work funding for a particular project.

3. Acquisitions, for which the jury partly comes into the studios. Moreover, for all these things there is no age limit.

The annual budget fluctuates in line with the overall cantonal budget, since it is simply a certain percentage of the overall budget. Artist support is in the hands of an advisory board, a specially appointed commission.

Well, that’s it. Please excuse my poor typing skills and the state of my typewriter. A copy of this letter will be sent to the BASLE CULTURAL INITIATIVE,⁵ of which I am a member.

COMMISSION FOR ARTISTS’ STUDIOS PARIS

Basle, 12 June 1979

Dear Miss Cahn,

We answer your letter of 6 May 1979 as follows:

With our letters of 9 February 1978, we informed you of the conditions under which our Commission was able to cede you use of an artist’s studio in the Cité Internationale des Arts. At the same time, we gave you a règlement général that informed you about the obligations connected with a stay in the Cité Internationale des Arts. In sending back signed copies of the application forms for a Council of Europe identity card to be submitted to the Federal Department of the Interior you declared yourself to be in agreement with the conditions stated without any reservation.

From the very outset, you were aware of the share of the general costs that have to be paid by you.

At the beginning of your stay in the Cité, you had to sign the same règlement, thus confirming that you have taken note of the contents of the regulations, are in agreement with their requirements and are prepared to adhere to them.

Among other things, the regulations stipulate that the general monthly costs accruing are to be paid in advance at the beginning of every month.

We regularly keep the Cité Internationale des Arts informed as to which sum the City of Basle pays towards the general costs and which sum it must levy from the artists in person. It is hence a matter for the administration of the Cité Internationale des Arts to request from you payment of the sum you owe.

We will, however, inform the Cité administration concerning the refusal of payment which you have decided on and leave it to their discretion to decide whether, in the given circumstances, they choose to evict you in line with §13 of the règlement général.

Yours Faithfully,

Commission for Artists’ Studios in Paris the President: Peter Althaus⁶

the Secretary: S. Keller

How should I reply to you? Finally, I gave up my payment strike, since the stay here was more important to me than a power struggle which never had any chance of success. Yet I would not like to conclude without undertaking a short analysis. Our conflict, in my opinion, is one of the many small instances of how in recent years the relationship between the City of Basle and its artists functions, or rather, doesn’t function.

My first letter explained in detail the reasons for my refusal to pay. The idea behind this was to stimulate a dialogue that has been going around in circles for years now – about re-thinking and reorganizing funding for artists. What I wrote there was certainly not new to you: for years you have been receiving letters concerning the Cité situation, and regarding the remaining funding in Basle a variety of attempts have been made over the past years by groups and individuals to enter into a dialogue with the Department of Education.

Now the entire further course of our little story has shown me one of the reasons for this year-long paralysis in discussions between us artists and the City. It is, as I had already supposed, an utter failure to take artists seriously on the part of the state – there can be no other explanation for your bureaucratically aggressive letter in response. A pure letter of sanction, signed by your President. What particularly annoys me now is that the same Peter Althaus wrote to me in private: “I can give the City a sympathetic interpretation of your undertaking, but I have no instruments of power at my disposal.” He had the instrument of power of refusing to put his signature to such an unconscionable letter and thus to make his contribution and perhaps even to strike up discussions inside the Commission – a discussion, for example, about the relationship between artist’s studio + scholarship.

In addition, gentlemen, you might ask yourselves to what extent you are actually using your competences and powers at all – my impression is that you have not taken any action for years. Yet your Commission exists to represent the interests of artists to the City authorities, to inform yourselves about what our demands are, to check where the possibilities lie and to attempt to achieve as much as possible in the artists’ interest. This little episode with the thoughtlessly signed letter of sanction now shows clearly that you are not seeking any change at all: if you act in this way here (sanctions as the only reaction to a request that we for our part have been making for years), how do you deal with our other interests? Gentlemen, this behaviour of the Commission is of no help to anyone except the Education Department, which, through this ostensibly liberal delaying tactic is spared the effort of seeking solutions with regard to artist funding, thus saving the Finance Department from having to make funds available for the same – you get the picture: savings all round at the expense of the artists. And consequently, also sparing oneself the question as to the function of art today in our City; and hence in society.

Because good funding would mean having trust in art and artists – trust that what we do, even if it calls today’s society in question, in the final analysis does give something to society, the state and the City.

Given the current reality of our relationship, however, I gradually begin to ask myself whether I can give anything at all to such a blind and deaf society, to such a state and such a City, and hence have any debt to it?

miriam cahn

mörsbergerstr. 52

4057 basle

to Cantonal Councillor Keller

Basle, 21 March 80

Dear Mr Keller,

On 1 April I am to appear in court. The reason for this is a charge of criminal damage to property brought by the Basle Building Authority. In Nov./Dec. last year, I executed drawings in charcoal⁸ on the pillars and walls of the Northern Bypass in the vicinity of the Wiesen roundabout. This was an important piece of work for me, since I wanted to combine an extremely ephemeral material such as charcoal with an extremely hard material, concrete, built presumably to last millennia, and with a highly alienated form of construction, motorway architecture. I wanted to work with the contrast: individual drawing – anonymous construction.

Now I am being sued for this work of mine by the Building Authority. Strangely, precisely for this stretch of the motorway the Basle Art Fund is running a competition involving 7 artists, with 250,000 SFr. from the Construction Fund being available for the winning entries. Should the court’s decision on 1 April not be in my favour, I will be compelled to pay the same Building Authority a high sum of money for the cleaning costs involved in removing my charcoal drawings – which, as even a police photo shows, will weather and disappear of their own accord, as was my intention with this work from the very outset.

Mr Keller, I ask you: What is your relationship to art?

On the one hand, artists are subsidized, but on the other hand not only not left in peace but even criminalized – in my case, after all, it is a criminal proceeding. I am left with the suspicion that what is being practised here is a kind of state art, in the sense that decorative, sustaining art-in-architecture projects are highly subsidized, especially with building projects that are widely rejected by the affected inhabitants, as previously with the Heuwaage⁹ overpass and now with the Northern Bypass. And that experimental work, such as I have attempted to create, which does not seek to have any everlasting value and calls this value into question, is penalized with the argument that it is “criminal activity” …

Mr Keller, essentially you are suing me not because I drew on the wall with charcoal (to your mind: “damage to property”) in an area that is temporarily a vast building site – to be consistent, you would have to sue every child who makes chalk drawings on walls (from the technical process angle exactly the same as my works). You are suing me because I displayed my opinion with my own provisional means directly at the place concerned – in my eyes a basic right in any correctly functioning democracy. In expectation of your answer, I send you my greetings, miriam cahn

P.S. Please find enclosed an interview from the BAZ [Basle Newspaper], which explains my work in more detail.

CITY COUNCILLOR

DIPL.-ING. ETH (Zurich)

Eugen Keller

HEAD OF BUILDING AUTHORITY

CANTON BASEL-STADT

Miss Miriam Cahn

Mörsbergerstraße 52

4057 Basle

Basle, 9 April 1980

Dear Miss Cahn,

I refer to your letter of 21 March 1980.

In the meantime, the court proceedings of 1 April have taken place, at which we were represented by Mr Baumann, Head of the National Roads Bureau. I hope that you were able to see that it was not our intention to carry through an exemplary action here, but that we were concerned also to show our understanding in this particular case. The presiding magistrate understood our line of argument and suggested a compromise settlement, which you unfortunately did not accept. You will surely understand that nobody can accept uncommissioned paintings to be made on any structure. If they subsequently turn out to be a work of art, then the proprietor is at liberty to retain them.

Unfortunately, however, this whole business has a negative side. Graffiti sprayers who are not committed artists have completely different motives for presenting their statements in public. They carry out their night-time daubings using paint material that can be removed only with considerable effort and expense. The state has already had to lay out a great deal of money for this purpose. For this reason, I was also sad to hear that you were not prepared to refrain from uncommissioned paintings in future, although Mr Baumann’s intention was to offer you an easy way out.

We have stated that we are prepared to leave your paintings in all places where they do not constitute a nuisance. There are indeed surfaces that have to receive a coat of paint later on and for which a rough subsurface is necessary to make the paint adhere. Besides these there are sections that belong to the German Federal Railway [DB]. As long as the DB agrees to leave the works in place, here too no costs will accrue.

Matters concerning the Art Fund come under the remit of the Education Department. This Department is responsible for setting and publishing the terms of the competitions. The Art Fund – whatever one’s attitude to it may be – has repeatedly tried to support young artists, and so it is not quite clear to me why you refuse to enter for its competitions. It seems to me that this would be a better way to give visible expression to your views, because the painting of walls or pillars belonging to others cannot be left to the discretion of individuals. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that it was our intention to criminalize you. I think that we have demonstrated this by our actions before the magistrate and it remains for me only to hope that you can muster a modicum of understanding for our viewpoint.

Yours Faithfully,

E. Keller

WATCH ROOM

a large square room, the ceiling low, artificial light from above, 12 beds, 3 beside each wall, in the centre the medical orderly at the electronic control panel. he won’t move away from his position since he must always be able to reach the alarm button.

– and what is this room called?

– observation room. Every ward needs its observation room.

onset of menstruation. having children, having a house, having husbands, and while the blood flowed out of me my legs overwhelmed by memory became weak, I pulled the blanket over my head …

the soldier sits by the border underground in front of his computer + waits for the command …

when i visited my sister in the clinic she told me about the effect of the depot injection: every minute had seemed to her like an eternity, she had been precisely aware of everything around her, every sound, every movement, everything, yet around her herself there had been an impenetrable mass, the inside had not been able to come to the outside, right down to the very simplest gestures and words. we held each other and cried. i wasn’t able to tell her any single reason that would have made living worthwhile, not a single one. the trees, the countryside? the city, home, country? our parents, friends? job? politics? – she was my mirror: i just knew a few more tricks to survive.

WATCH ROOM 1982

PRO HELVETIA

Hirschengraben 22

CH-8001 Zurich

Zurich, 6 April 81

Dear Ms Cahn,

Your letter did not surprise me – following our telephone conversation – but it did disappoint me greatly. And for a variety of reasons.

Purely personally and purely at first blush, I feel hurt because precisely what you denounce is something that I never intended and never in the remotest way entered my thinking and something that I never advocate to our foundation board. We are not a ministry of culture: we do not act for reasons of cultural showcasing, to use your terms.

I hope that the sole explanation for your decision is that you do not know us well: I would be most pleased to come to know you personally.

You know that Pro Helvetia is giving financial support to the exhibition in Regensburg and also to the exhibition in the Lucerne Museum of Art: both are giving rise to discussions, to debates with the works of art on display and to a dialogue with the gallery-going public at home and abroad. With very few exceptions we never seek to be a showcase for Switzerland: we seek debate over and beyond the language regions at home and across borders with countries abroad. Your letter calls into question my entire – exhausting – work.

And concerning the Drawing Exhibition: it was not Pro Helvetia that first had the idea of taking stock of Swiss Drawing in the 1970s – it was the exhibition organizers who approached us with this idea, an idea which we have gratefully taken up and supported with all means at our disposal. There is hardly any exhibition to which we devote as much time and effort as we are devoting to this one. Charles Goerg and Hans Christoph von Tavel are the initiators of the project and are also on the committee, together with Hans Hartmann, Dieter Koepplin, Martin Kunz, Pietro Sarto and myself.

All the artists will be receiving the finalized list of artists this week. The formulation of the thinking behind the exhibition is not included in this posting: the committee, with Charles Goerg in the chair, has tried to apprehend the phenomenon of “Drawing” in the 70s and in Switzerland. I can hardly imagine a more topical subject and am eagerly looking forward to their answer, the result, which will be on display for the first time in December in the Musée Rath in Geneva. *

I do not share your hope that other artists will join you in your attitude: so far, indeed, I have heard very different, highly positive opinions from that quarter.

In a committee meeting last week, we discussed your particular problem – that you hang your works yourself on site. Unfortunately, we cannot grant you this possibility at all of the exhibition’s destinations; but we do have the provision that some artists can be allocated a room space, or a corner of a wall 3m x 3m or more, a space which they can organize in line with their own ideas and which can be re-constructed in that way in each exhibition situation. So, you need only to determine such a space and to detail in a model or sketch how you wish your works to be hung.

Actually, I don’t want to talk you round to changing your mind at all. You are thereby making your statement and we are making ours with the exhibition. The word that provoked me into writing this long letter is just the showcasing at the artists’ expense. You can ask many artists in our country and you will find that this is not the case by any means!

Yours faithfully – and in hope of an early reply,

Christoph Eggenberger

* I don’t think that with this selection we are sparing ourselves debates and statements: quite the reverse. Many directions and many names are missing, and have to be missing, because otherwise you get an encyclopaedia but not an exhibition. I am convinced that this here does make an exhibition and a stimulating one, i.e. a good one too!

Dear Dr Eggenberger,

Many thanks for your frank letter. It shows me that my refusal leads to debate and controversy. I would like to expand a little on what I hinted at in my first letter. Art can scarcely be separated from politics if and when politics is experienced in individual terms.

Pro Helvetia supports projects involving cultural work abroad. Since Switzerland, as a so-called neutral country, is not very active in foreign policy, it shifts the latter to other levels, e.g. to economics and industry, developmental aid and, precisely, culture. With the help of Pro Helvetia, Switzerland not only promotes Swiss art abroad but also operates the cultural and political showcasing of Switzerland. Where it is no longer primarily a matter of mediating Swiss artists abroad but of organizing showcase events, I speak of showcasing at the artists’ expense.

For some years I have noticed that there is an increasing number of exhibitions that are assembled under largely nationalist criteria and are passed around between countries as a “multi-pack”: the “young” Italians, the “new wild ones” from Germany, the “open-minded” Swiss (?) etc. – a tendency that is linked to the so-called “trend reversal”, the political reaction of the past few years. These exhibitions often perpetrate a falsification of history: the 70s are damned as image-less, over-intellectual etc., politico-cultural utopias such as left-wing radicalism, social sculpture and feminism have suddenly disappeared and a general sigh of relief goes around the art world – there are “pictures” again (to be sold). Now, the Lucerne exhibition – despite its cumbersome title¹¹ – is neither a consciously historical or personal statement by Martin Kunz on the past 10 years, nor, with a few exceptions, could the artists show their work as THEY wished. Martin Disler’s letter in the Tages-Anzeiger points this out. The result is a national Christmas exhibition with more elevated pretensions. I emerged from the exhibition with a sore head and with the feeling that here good artists – from Dieter Roth to Martin Disler – were being put through the mangle.

This exhibition is now travelling abroad. The image of Swiss art will once again be a mediocre one; again, quantity is being shown rather than quality. If even one of the better ones, namely Martin Disler, backs out in horror, that just goes to confirm my doubts on this type of exhibition-mongering from above.

I feel, unfortunately, that the Drawing Exhibition will be similar. 45 people are simply an imposition, if they are assembled merely for reasons of technique and medium (drawing).

I still have unhappy memories of the Pavilion of Drawings at the documenta¹² as far as the artists’ drawings are concerned. Precisely drawings are often a PART of an artist’s work. I have visions of 45 partial works travelling around and being misunderstood as wholes. And soon we will have again reached the point where artistic work is classified primarily in line with technical and medial criteria and no longer as intellectual work in this or that medium. There is no such thing as “drawing as a phenomenon”, but only works in which more or less drawing occurs.

The exhibition in Regensburg, however, did convince me: it had a modest theme, “Aspects of Young Swiss Art”; after consultation with us artists,¹³ the number of participants was kept low; we were able to set up the exhibition together with the exhibition organizer and so had specific debates on making art and making exhibitions – which is much more interesting than structures firmly fixed in advance. That brings me to my ideas concerning the support and promotion of Swiss art abroad: emphasis on WORKING abroad: guest lectureships, studios, studio exchanges, travel scholarships, exhibitions set up by artists and exhibition-makers on site, exchange projects of all kinds.

Well, I hope that I have been able here to make my standpoint somewhat clearer for you. The fact that the majority of artists does not share my opinions tells me only that the “majority” is, as always, on the wrong track and at the same time – unfortunately – determines what goes on.

Greetings from the various movements,

Yours, Miriam Cahn

miriam cahn

mörsbergerstr. 52

4057 Basle

Basle, 10 October 82

dear Hella Santarossa,¹⁴

many thanks for your letter. unfortunately, i will not be able to come to Berlin. however, i think your initiative is a very good idea, and so i will try here to put in writing what my thoughts are on this matter. “Zeitgeist”¹⁵ is a sequel to “Westkunst”,¹⁶ documenta 7¹⁷ and the Venice biennale¹⁸ – all exhibitions in which the male artists and the few women artists are no more than stooges of megalomaniacal exhibition-makers, who want to make a name for themselves. in the case of “Zeitgeist” this was even taken so far as to order pictures in certain formats! (as can be read in “Der Spiegel”¹⁹). these exhibitions are really not taking any risk at all. if i look at the list of the artists invited, i can divide them into two groups: “safe” older artists such as Beuys, Kounellis, Penck etc.,²⁰ who make very fine works, but don’t entail any risk, since they are very well known, and “safe” younger artists such as Chia, Clemente, Schnabel etc.,²¹ who also make very fine works, but are members of this over-hastily launched painter generation, so that they too are already so well known that they don’t entail any risk for exhibition-makers. women artists, however, do entail a greater or lesser risk, depending on the individual case, because they create works that cannot be pigeonholed – except politically.

why exclusively painting and sculpture? today, when making art includes each and every technique? i see it like this: painting and sculpture are traditionally embedded and hence “usable”: in the living room, in a collection, in the traditional gallery, in the museum, in group or mass exhibitions. no more headaches over: how can i hang, collect this type of thing (installations, videos, performances, conceptions), how can i mediate it (installations, which need room-spaces, videos, which need machines, conceptions “without any images” etc.), how can i store it, how sell it, and anyway: what are these male artists and women artists out to achieve actually? the discussion concerning the interlocking of making art, living, mediating art, viewers and sales is suddenly as it were blown away, to make room once more for the traditional distribution: the artist produces, the gallerist sells, the art society director exhibits, the museum and the collector store and preserve, the media are satisfied because they can once again reproduce pictures and the lords and masters of the world are happy.

and the best way to keep this system alive and kicking is to puff up traditional techniques into THE means of expression in art and to devalue all others. in this way, painting and sculpture sell very nicely. so the discourse is no longer about why does this male artist/ woman artist choose this or that technique in connection with his/ her work, life and environment, but: which technique is most easily exploitable. and accordingly the old myth of the artist is revived, the myth of the male painter, the male sculptor who – in solitude, in seclusion, and in suffering – paints away at his pictures with a grand gesture, chisels away in fury at the wood, and for heaven’s sake doesn’t concern himself with his function as an artist in today’s society – that could, after all, hinder him in the process of creation, that divine myth of the genius sustained by a patriarchal cultural tradition. women have no place here.

involuntarily and, one supposes, more out of cynicism, the makers of the “Zeitgeist” exhibition have chosen exactly the right name for it, so manifesting a cosily dangerous acquiescence in the current situation, instead of submitting it to critical analysis as befits their function as exhibition-makers.

in this context it is clear why no women artists (one = none) have been invited. it is a conscious falsification of history: in the last 10–20 years, after all, women artists have brought a good many things into the open with their works. with their means (painting too, drawing too) they have taken a stand against their societal function; they have confronted and opposed traditional, patriarchal art and any over-cheap marketing of their work and have sought for new paths: as material, they have used their biographies, going to work on the non-history of women and using their bodies and spaces as their centre; as techniques they have used whatever is appropriate and as a weapon feminism.

what all these women artists have in common is that they are experimenting right across the established lines of all techniques, often viewing their woman-ness as the focus of their work.

the real question is whether exhibitions such as “Zeitgeist” make any sense. should a woman artist strive at all to take part in such exhibitions? basically, yes, for reasons of equality of opportunity and artistic freedom. but, following my experience at documenta 7, not at all costs. at d7 i came across cynicism and deep-rooted contempt towards women artists and male artists and their works, that is, the sheer opposite of the officially stated attitude of those running the exhibition – that they wished to provide a worthy framework for art. i also maintain that this unhealthy situation at the exhibition was recognized and i was surprised that more women artists and male artists did not decide to pull out. for me, pulling out of the exhibition was a logical consequence deriving from my work.

we women artists should definitely demand equal representation in exhibitions. precisely if and when i as a woman artist am sceptical towards current exhibition-making, i should definitely have the opportunity to try this out in situ, as should our male artist colleagues also.

i also think that exhibitions would look very different if women artists were treated on an equal footing with male artists.

well, i hope that your initiative will achieve something (even if it is only an undermining of old certainties).

warm regards, Miriam Cahn

miriam cahn

1970–1980

completing training

travelling

forgetting training

travelling

occupying kaiseraugst²²

women’s movement

travelling

forgetting training

art

travelling

women’s movement

art

going away

art

1980–1990

coming back

art

career

travelling

deployment of pershing II²³

career

fulda gap²⁴

art

travelling

career

going away

art

staying away

chernobyl²⁵

career

schweizerhalle²⁶

art

travelling

career

travelling

art

coming back

art

fall of the wall²⁷