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A. R. Penck: sculpture<\/em><\/em>, essay by Donald Kuspit<\/strong>, American Art Critic and Poet<\/p>\n\n\n\n Exhibition catalogue no 4 Language: <\/strong>Swedish and English EXCERPT:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A. R. Penck: sculpture<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em> by Donald Kuspit<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTotem, fetish, and taboo remain effective ideas in the West since Freud, and still have a certain influence on life and ideas.\u201d A. R. Penck\u2019s sculptures are primitivist in method and meaning. They have the elemental, charged look that only the raw, irregular, crudely carved surface \u2013 sometimes incorporating a found object, such as the machine part of XRFKTKFR<\/em>, 1986 \u2013 can generate; and the deep emotional import of the totemic and fetishistic. While the majority of the works are of upright figures, gefiederte Schlange<\/em>, 1985 also has totemic and fetishistic implications. As is well known, the totemic figure can take the form of an animal. I will argue that Standart-Modell Antiatomkraft Gr\u00fcn-Gr\u00fcn-Gr\u00fcn<\/em>, 1987 is the paradoxical climax of Penck\u2019s obsession with the totemic, all the more so in that the work lacks the form and iconography of the totem. It is essentially a cluster of fragments, with the same immediacy as stones in a Zen garden, but symbolically implying the disintegration of the whole rather than its reintegration, as in the garden. Penck\u2019s fragments are annihilative rather than reparative in import. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To regard Penck\u2019s sculptures simply as neo-primitivist \u2013 as yet another eighties postmodernist revival art \u2013 is to misunderstand them badly. It is to give them a superficial, cursory reading.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n They undoubtedly have affinities with early 20th century primitivist art, especially the primitivism of German Expressionism in its heyday. But that primitivism tends to be optimistic and elated; Penck\u2019s primitivism has a melancholy, pessimistic cast. Penck\u2019s frozen male figures \u2013 their bronzing confirms their immobilized, passive condition \u2013 are far from Kirchner\u2019s fluid, dynamic female figures, both carved and painted. They have more to do with the iron totemic hermes figure in Beuy\u2019s Tram Stop<\/em>, 1977 than with Kirchner\u2019s wooden Nude Woman, Sitting with Her Legs Crossed<\/em> (on a piece of tree trunk), 1912. Early German primitivism was largely psychosexual \u2013 pansexual \u2013 in import. It idealized figures into a timeless pastoral\/paradisiac vividness antithetical to the vulgar, hard urban world in which the work was made. The figures symbolized sexual liberation; they were biophiliac antidotes to \u2013 imagistic amulets against \u2013 the anxious sexuality of the artists and the pedestrian bourgeois world. Penck\u2019s late 20th century Expressionistic primitivism is not without psychosexual implications, as his acknowledgement of the Freudian meaning of totem and fetish indicates, but his figures have more to do with the self. The apparent sexual meaning of his figures masks their narcissistic meaning. (\u2026)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":100532,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"77084,98783,98778,98780,98168,98772","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-32306","m3_publication","type-m3_publication","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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No of pages: <\/strong>36, color, illustrated
Binding<\/strong>: <\/strong>soft cover
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Year: <\/strong>1989 <\/strong>
Publisher: <\/strong>Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
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A. R. Penck<\/p>\n\n\n\n