Visual Arts in Germany: Exhibitions and Artist Portraits

In her work Regina Schmeken has achieved consummate mastery of the art of capturing the balance between the private and public spheres, between acts of state and intimate moments, between historical events and observations of everyday life.

In the words of the State Minister of Culture at the time, Julian Nida-Rümelin, speaking at the opening of The New Centre exhibition in October 2001 in Berlin, “Her vision is poetic, relaxed, laconic, occasionally melancholy. Despite a certain Mediterranean lightness of touch, her socio-political perspicacity never slackens for a second.”

Concentric circles – in search of the centre

A white stripe of helmets runs through the middle of the picture; it separates foreign legionnaires marching in dress uniforms in the foreground from politicians in the background. Shot at a parade in France in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the picture is part of the exhibition The New Centre – Photographs 1989-2000 presented at the German Embassy Information Centre in London on its tour of the world. One could hardly had picked a better venue: before German reunification, this neo-classical villa in central London was the seat of East Germany’s diplomatic mission in Great Britain. Politics, history and art are closely entwined here – as in the exhibition itself in its search for the “new centre”, the slogan often used to describe the political scene in Germany after reunification.

Black and white

Regina Schmeken has been working in black and white for over 25 years, initially as a freelance artist, since 1986 also as a photographer for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In her work for the daily newspaper she brings to bear her extensive experience in photography as an artistic medium – and her singular way of viewing things that has evolved out of that experience. The pictures in the New Centre show seem to have been shot without elaborate lighting and high-tech equipment; indeed, they seem to have materialized effortlessly. But Schmeken processes the enlargements using all the state-of-the-art methods of the “black” art of photography.

Her works from 1989 to 2000 trace myriad facets of the oft-mooted “new centre”. The photographs of Germany’s change of government or the chancellor with his international counterparts capture moments when these oft-photographed and media-savvy dignitaries strike a balance between their private and their public face. Federal President Herzog in front of the mirror, for instance, or Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who seems to be sinking in his ministerial leather armchair at the first meeting of the new cabinet in 1998.

Mirror images

The photographer continues playing with opposites in the arrangement of the exhibition itself by juxtaposing pictures of different subjects taken in various years, disregarding differences of time and space and thereby forging new associations. Schmeken also tears the images out of their context: her art consists in leading the viewer away from the events of the day toward the historical moment. The resultant associations make for commentary infused with soft irony, engendering a dialogue between the artist and her viewing public.

The old turn-of-the-century merry-go-round at the Oktoberfest in Munich (1991) bears a striking resemblance to the new cupola on the Reichstag in Berlin (1999). The oversized arm of German chancellor Gerhard Schröder points to the right (2000), whilst a plaster-cast arm in Munich’s Museum für Abgüsse klassischer Bildwerke nonchalantly points left (1991), over the plaster heads of the rulers of classical antiquity, inviting reflection on time and sovereigns.

Bill Clinton, a case in point, opens his arms wide to greet Schröder at the World Economic Summit in Cologne (1999): with a sweeping dance-like gesture and his jacket flapping in the wind, Clinton steals the show. Schmeken contrasts this scene with a fashion show in Paris (1993): here, too, fluttering garments predominate, outstretched arms command attention in the middle of the catwalk. The choreography is the same, the same showmanship is being shown up.

Latitudes

But in her shots of Kosovo and Bosnia after the war, the photographer shows that the “new centre” is more than just a political slogan in reunified Germany, that it also describes a geopolitical change that has catapulted Germany from the edge of “Western Europe” into its centre. Her portraits of artists and great men, moreover, are particularly striking, as of violinist Yehudi Menuhin, philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer or writer Günter Grass.

A white plastic chair, the kind you find in countless gardens and European cafés, seems to be leaning over, all alone in the middle of a field in Brittany, on the western edge of Europe. This manmade order is menaced by dark clouds looming up on the horizon. A fragile and moving moment. The centre, it seems, is everywhere and nowhere.

Various Goethe Institutes will be presenting the exhibition worldwide, including shows from Dakar (November/December 2006) Sao Paulo (December 2006/January 2007) Accra (January 2007) Quito (February 2007) Ask your local Goethe Institute for information about other shows. The Goethe Institute has published a show catalogue called Regina Schmeken, Die neue Mitte - Fotografien 1989 – 2000.

A companion to the photo exhibition, Regina Schmeken: Die neue Mitte - Deutschland 1989-2000, has been published by Knesebeck Verlag in Munich, ISBN 3-89660-091-5, € 68.