Maja Wismer, the curator of Andrea Büttner’s exhibition currently on view at Kunstmuseum Basel, has chosen to show approximately ninety works from the past fifteen years. The German artist (b. 1972) takes on complex social themes and anchors them in visually astute displays that create immersive experiences for her viewers. Büttner is best known for large format wood-cuts; in this exhibition she can be seen using a variety of other media, including books, textiles, and video installations. As part of the Art Basel week, Kunstmuseum Basel, in collaboration with Hochschule fur Müsik FHNW Basel, presented Büttner’s Piano Destructions (2014/2023), a 4-channel video installation together with a live music concert; this event was sold out.
The video part of the performance showed several artists, such as Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Ben Vautier in the act of destroying pianos. In contrast, Büttner brought together a small community of nine pianists playing live music in front of an audience. She carefully chose a repertoire that included pieces by Romantic composers (Chopin and Schumann), as well as Renaissance music (Monteverdi). As Büttner noted, she chose to include Monteverdi, because he was “the favorite composer of one of the founders of Fluxus, George Maciunas (1931-1978)”. The two excerpts from Monteverdi’s sacred works were transcribed for the piano and Buttner used them to make the engagement with the Romantic compositions more complex: they introduce aspects of communal action giving rise to polyphony in aesthetic production, being thus a counterpart to the notion of genius, that has come to be a stereotype usually associated with the Romantic tradition. The connection with Fluxus thus emerges, emphasizing Büttner’s dedication to the idea of (re)creating stronger artistic communities to move forward public debates through the power of images.
Büttner is a cerebral artist who uses a focus on community and social engagement to create the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). She researches the environment she has at her disposal and orchestrates a perfectly choreographed display, designing the wallpaper, showing her documentation and creation process, not only the works themselves. The large wood-cuts one sees on the walls are only a fragment the carefully thought-out installation. One result is that each art show presents things differently: a viewer could see the “same” works in one museum, but be surprised anew by their expressivity, due to a different presentation. This asks the art goer to take their time and read the large portions of text that accompany the display and to look carefully at the labels describing the works. We can see this in the room dedicated to the Beggars, which brings together material related to Büttner’s artist book of the same name (2018). She writes: “I’ve long been interested in the Liber Vagatorum. Published in numerous languages and widely circulated in Reformation-era Europe, this book warned against beggars, vagabonds and their tricks. … The Liber Vagatorum marks a turning point away from medieval notions of charity towards the concept of Protestant work ethic. At the same time, it introduces a distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate poverty, and between the local and the foreign poor.” (Reproduced from the text Büttner included on one of the walls of the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel — Neubaum).
The silk wallpaper, in a grey-green shade offers a stark counterpoint to the large woodcuts of veiled beggars that explore “the relationships between poverty and shame”. To one side, one can see, if one looks under its hood, the Liber Vagatorum, protected from the harsh rays of artificial light. The visitor must work with the artist to discover the message of the artworks; the result provides deeper satisfaction.
In the parts of the exhibition that are on display at Kunstmuseum Basel — Gegenwart, we are once again, charged with thinking about the displays in ways in which art historians and curators do. We must look at the wall, bare of any artwork: we see that Büttner designed the grid on which the woodcuts are displayed, and understand that she chose how to fill out the space between them, too. We see her engaging with themes of physical, poverty-keeping labor, that creates community around the fruits of that labor. On the walls, we see the Harvesters; in the middle of the room, we see a wooden, sculpted crop of white asparagus, something that is almost synonymous with April in Germany (when the spargel season takes over the food and drink menus in restaurants the width and length of the country).
The exhibition pamphlet tells us that Buttner “installs her works as sprawling “narratives” that the visitor are invited to explore step by step.”
I could not find the narrative key for Buttner’s “Dancing Nuns”, but I want to invite the reader to try and decipher it on their own, since the exhibition is open to the public until October 1st, 2023.