Signals of Tomorrow

It was startling to see shocking-pink monuments, paintings of mountainous breasts and blinking assemblages inside and outside the ornate, Graustarkian palaces. Once again it was time for the staid city of Kassel-in West Germany to come to hypermodern life. It happens every four years. The occasion is Documenta, an international exhibit that on three previous occasions established a reputation as the most comprehensive survey of new art anywhere.

The present Documenta IV more than lives up to its reputation--a particular triumph in troubled '68. The near recession in West Germany last year forced the show's budget to be slashed. The country's militant student New Left, encouraged by the success Italian youths had enjoyed in upstaging the Venice Biennale, threatened to disrupt the Documenta. Shipments from France were delayed by strikes, and artists labored through the night before the opening, installing exhibits. Still, the show began on time for a three-month run--and it was like wow.

Unity in Kinship. Documenta uses three castles to signal three trends. Striking the keynote in the Fridericianum are the signal-flag squares of German-born Josef Albers, who lives and works in the U.S. They are accompanied by the shaped, geometric and op canvases of his many European and American admirers. A room is lit with the disks of California's Robert Irwin (TiME, May 10). Highceilinged, cathedral-like galleries are filled with the gigantic rainbows of U.S. color-field painters and the authoritative sculpture of the U.S. minimalists.

Of all artists shown, 39% were born or are living in the U.S. But Documenta makes no case for a U.S. monopoly on styles. The sprightly satires of Britons Richard Hamilton and David Hockney hang in the same gallery with their better-known U.S. pop equivalents, such as Tom Wesselmann and Robert Indiana. Indeed, it is Documenta's unity that last week prompted Sculptress Louise Nevelson to remark: "Usually an artist works in loneliness. But here, one suddenly experiences the kinship one always suspects one might have with the rest of the artistic world."*

L.B.J. on a Cross. The zaniest segment of the show is reserved for the palace known as Schone Aussicht. Its entry hall is a jungle of huge works that illustrate the razzmatazz marriage of fantasy and technology. Peter Briining's 19-ft.-wide tangle of highways flashes with lights. Robert Rauschenberg's environment is a booth with eight panels, controlled by photoelectric cells so that they open and close for the gallerygoer. For some time now, he has been tinkering with art that moves in response to the viewer.

On the floor above, the visitor discovers a bizarre and even gruesome realism, one that may be the most important new trend signaled by Documenta IV. Edward Kienholz's grotesque nude on a sewing machine inhabits a macabre room furnished like a brothel. New York's Paul Thek shows a roomful of chunks of dead flesh sculpted in wax. Italy's Michelangelo Pistoletto presents sarcophagi and chest-high chamber pots. Sweden's Oyvind Fahlstrom is represented by Firing Squad, a plastic snowbank filled with cryptic symbols including L.B.J. on a cross, bugs and butterflies.

After such horrors, visitors fairly explode into the gardens outside the Orangerie -- to rest, if not in peace. For confronting them, among other sculptures, are the pink Concentric Disks by Thomas Lenk and a huge white Granny's Knot, tied by Japan's Shinkichi Tajiri. Those pondering what the new art is all about might contemplate a cheerfully blinking, 13-ft.-high cube by Hamburg Artists Klaus Geldmacher and Francesco Mariotti. Briefly, during pre-opening demonstrations, it sported the red flag of rebellion and the black flag of anarchy. Made out of light bulbs, wire and metal strips, it needs neither flags nor speeches to get its message across -- a genuine, if exaggerated, expression of the present artistic spirit, rebellious, mocking and dissatisfied.

End of the Dialogue. Most of the credit for creating Documenta goes to Professor Arnold Bode, 67. A longtime champion of avant-garde art, he was fired from a teaching job by the Nazis for advocating what they considered "decadent"; after World War II he talked city fathers into using Kassel's castles as a "100-day museum" to bring Germans up to date. Through successive exhibitions, he has avoided the pitfalls of the Venice Biennale, for which the nations pick their own entries, then logroll for the prizes. At Documenta, there are no national pavilions, no prizes. Entries are picked by a committee headed by Professor Bode, who considers the show essentially a "document" of significant trends (hence the name). This year virtually all of the 1,500 works on view were made since 1964; the average age of the 147 artists from 17 nations is only 35.

Until recently, Bode maintains, artists used their predecessors as a standard. The tools and media were traditional; their creations were destined ultimately to stand with older masters in museums. By contrast, today's artists work with industrial metals, plastics and electronics. Their work is likely to be installed as soon as it is finished in discotheque or public square. In other words, says Bode, "the artist is no longer engaged in a dialogue with the past. He works directly in and for the contemporary scene, occupied in creating the signals of tomorrow."

* Fairy-tale fanciers know it as a home of the Brothers Grimm, American history buffs as the capital of Hesse, whose prince hired out his mercenaries to Britain's George III.

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