Blaue Bücher

In April 1970, art historian Martin Warnke gave a lecture at the twelfth Congress of German Art Historians in Cologne on »Ideological Motifs in Popular Literature of Art History.« In it, he criticizes the authoritarian and totalitarian ideas expressed by well-known art historians of the postwar period in Reclam’s art history publications and its educational »Blue Books« series. The work descriptions Warnke cites from the books unmistakably draw on the style and vocabulary of National Socialist propaganda.

Stephan von Huene himself studied art history in Los Angeles in the 1960s and was aware of Warnke’s linguistic and analytic investigation. In 1997, on the occasion of Warnke’s sixtieth birthday, von Huene extended the former’s critical commentary on German-language art history in his sound sculpture »Blue Books.«

In a dimmed room, paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Eugène Delacroix, as well as depictions from the royal portal of Chartres and from Naumburg Cathedral, are projected onto the rear side of two drums via a slide projector. A male voice (Achatz von Müller) provides commentary on the pictures from offstage, reading passages of text from Reclam books and the “Blue Books” series. Words and images sometimes seem to exist in an asymmetrical relationship, an impression heightened through drumbeats: A large drumstick on the lower edge of the drum introduces, emphasizes, or interrupts the quoted passage with loud blows. Three small drumsticks on the upper edge sound further rhythms. Along with the dual projection, the quoted work descriptions, and the clatter of the projectors, the drumbeats demand the entire attention of the audience in the exhibition space.