Newspapers and Magazines

The art magazine Monopol has existed since January 2004. It is published in Berlin and has a young target audience. Attempt at a publicist categorisation after reading the issues 5/08 to 9/08.

As the art magazine Monopol, in addition to the political magazine Cicero, is the second product launched for Germany by the international Ringier Group from Switzerland, it seems evident that it is likely to be profitable. Publisher Florian Illies seems to have commercial experience as a recognised name in the media world (bestselling novel "Generation Golf"). The somewhat more renowned authors of the current publication range from Professor Barbara Vinken to publicist Ulf Poschardt to the literary figures Clemens Meyer and Ulf Erdmann Ziegler.

The search for more renowned art critics is unfortunately fruitless, so we have to make do with what we've got. Here is a quote from the article of an issue on "Interpol" on the Swedish trustee Daniel Birnbaum (issue 5/2008): "As an experienced trustee of numerous biennials ... Daniel Birnbaum is someone who does not merely use art to illustrate his world view, but always works closely with the artists". But what about Monopol?

Illustrated world view

Monopol definitely has a world view to illustrate. Its somewhat outdated formula is: Art is capital! But Monopol follows the trend when forms and strategies of capital change. And goes where heroes are today billionaires, sensational collectors and tough artists on the market who create a formula - art is big capital! Monopol is murmuring that the American capital artist Damien Hirst is meanwhile a billionaire (issue 7,8/2008), a hero of the New Age, someone who could have taught Andy Warhol a thing or two. But he is, after all, number one among the "Top 100 of the art world" in issue 7,8/2008, although his estate only added up to around 100 million dollars (Hirst: 15th place).

The other most important Monopol Top 100 artists, gallery owners, collectors and trustees are as white as Warhol's wigs, mostly as American as he was and mostly male. This isn't really a global illustration of the art scene, but a positioning of what Gesine Borcherdt in her commentary declared as the new role of trustees and "good art" (issue 9/2008): It is not only targeting the ratio, but also the subconscious in order to really stir people up. Art that merely reflects the consensus of an enlightened, left-wing liberal society has squandered this capability.

Sex is art - Art is money

The photo editors of the publication sometimes also resort to the subconscious because sex is an eyecatcher. But they find less the sublimated erotic of the muses or the left-wing liberalist or even radical physical emancipation of women as a subject in art but more the objective pornography. In the secret private rooms of the holy art galleries, this has existed since people began collecting art, and since Jeff Koon's depictions of his sexual act with the pornography diva Cicciolina in kitschy porcelain it has accessed the official spheres of the art world.

In the medium of the art magazine, the hormonal attention catchers come across as genital rather than ingenious revelations. Murakami's jubilating and ejaculating "Lonesome Cowboy" (issue 9/08) is as currently and unbeatably ironic as the comic girls with a penis in Henry Darger's art and psycho universe is tragic (issue 9/08). In the Monopol programme, however, it seems there is another formula: Sex is art and art is money and so this increases the circulation of an art magazine.

No Monopol on the magazine market

What makes a good art magazine? This is just as difficult to answer briefly as the question: what makes good art? But what does a good art magazine have and what does Monopol have? Monopol has the support of group funds and can afford to work together with expensive players in the art industry, (Jonathan Meese, issue 05/08), every month it has a practical CityArtGuide for the art metropolises of Germany - from Stuttgart to Hamburg, it has rousing stories, interviews and reports, as well as frequent articles by Ulf Erdmann Ziegler, an acclaimed novelist and just as much a candidate for an award as the interviewer of artist Philip-Lorca diCorcia (issue 9/08), it has a great layout, outstanding photographers and a catchy slogan - "A magazine for art and life".

But it lacks a programme. To express this metaphorically, the magazine massages the reflex zones of the art world, or to cite Werner Büttner, who was once an Angry Young Man himself (issue 5/2008): "Why should I say nice things about my colleagues? They're competitors who take the food from my kids' mouths". In spite of the irony, there is an imposing portion of zeitgeisty neoliberal cynicism, to which the Monopol magazine is generally subjected and thus doesn't hold a monopoly as an art magazine.