Questions of Ownership in Maria Eichhorn’s Research and Artistic Practice: The Politics of Restitution, The Rose Valland Institute and Building as Unowned Property
PART A
I aim to clarify the different approaches to property and ownership in Maria Eichhorn’s practice, with a view to discussing our potential intervention in Athens. How might the concept of ownership be understood and troubled through Eichhorn’s work? I will trace the various conceptions of ownerships she explores in The Politics of Restitution of 2003 before moving to The Rose Valland Institute and Building as Unowned Property, the latter two recently executed for Documenta 14. Both The Politics of Restitution and The Rose Valland Institute focus on the restoration of ownership, on establishing provenance through art historical research, workshops, seminars and making the objects under question public through exhibition display. By contrast, Building as Unowned Property attempts to negate, or at least strain, private ownership, by taking the building out of the housing market, rendering it a monument under Greek law that prohibits use (unless applications are filed and granted by the relevant authorities (Minister of Culture) on a case-by-case basis). The condition for establishing the property as without function or use, its becoming aesthetic, is predicated on its ‘artistic merit’, and thus relies upon the framework of documenta and the existing legal framework of the state, which in turn centres on attributing ownership, and, thus, liability and responsibility.
The Politics of Restitution
Eichhorn’s exhibition The Politics of Restitution mounted 16 nineteenth-century German paintings in the Kunstbau in Lenbachhaus in Munich. According to Alexander Alberro, in his essay for the exhibition catalogue, ‘20,000 objects including 2700 paintings whose provenance either could not be determined or was confirmed to be in order, were legally declared to be property of the Federal Republic of Germany. Two years later the Federal Government presented 1800 of the remaining paintings and prints in an “information show” at Schloss Schleissheim and the works were distributed as permanent loans to 102 German museums.’
The paintings displayed in Eichhorn’s exhibition were from the collection of the Lenbachhaus. Placed away from the walls on wooden stands, the front of the painting and back of the canvases were exposed. Of the 16 paintings displayed, 15 of the works had passed through the Central Collecting Point in Munich, which was established by the Allies to collect art objects that had been confiscated, looted or improperly acquired by the Nazis. The show examined the entangled forms of ownership and how they intersect with institutional practices and cultural politics.
On the occasion of the exhibition, Eichhorn hired an art historian and expert on provenance to investigate the works. The exhibition featured documents regarding the provenance of the paintings, reprints of legal proceedings, two catalogues (which compiled detailed information about the exhibition), a selection of relevant books and a lecture series. The form of the project was typical of Eichhorn’s practice, it took a longer term, discursive approach to the material. Having failed to establish the provenance of the paintings, their official status was ‘on national loan from the Federal Republic of Germany.’ They effectively became property of the state, or the state became a placeholder for a possible future, restituted owner. What does it mean for the concept of ownership when the state is the default owner, or ‘owner of last resort’?
With regard to a more general concern for the politics of ownership and restitution, the FRG functions as a default or placeholder owner. Insight into the contested provenance of paintings on loan from the FRG, the paintings in this particular exhibition and others, is belied by a lack of transparency. Ownership is always asserted, and so the story of its looting and illegal acquisition is made opaque by the fact of its default ownership by the state; on the face of it, the status of works as ‘on loan’ reveals little, if anything, about their history. Eichhorn’s exhibition exposes the traces of previous ownership, thus highlighting the paintings contested provenance. Here we see what Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev refers to when she discusses the way in which Eichhorn’s practice explores the relationship between the symbolic and the real.* ‘Her work has developed since the late 1980s as an exploration of the relationship between the symbolic and the real, between the practice of art and direct - albeit limited and exemplary - actions geared towards the bettering of personal life, social relations and the human and natural environments. It demonstrates a strong sense of ethics and the belief that radical oppositional thought and action are still and will always be possible. Her work is rarely spectacular and most often discreet.’
The Rose Valland Institute
The concerns of the Politics of Restitution are expanded through the Rose Valland Institute. Initiated by Eichhorn for Documenta 14, the Institute researches and documents the expropriation of Jewish property during the Nazi regime and its aftermath. The Institute occupied a physical site in Kassel for the duration of the Documenta. The Institute accepts open calls for research projects, to assist with cases where provenance of an object, material or immaterial is disputed.
Questions of restitution
It may be productive to look closely at restitution within a general framework of ownership to establish its processes and function in society, and particularly in a capitalist society. In her article ‘The Restitution of Holocaust Looted Art and Transitional Justice: The Perfect Storm of the Raft of the Medusa’ (2011), Therese O’Donnell argues that the law is insufficiently equipped to deal effectively with restitution cases. Additionally, in 'The Scope and Significance of Restitution' (1988-1989), Douglas Laycock states that restitution remains a ‘Largely neglected and underdeveloped area of the law’. For O’Donnell, ‘law’s role must be re-imagined beyond the current adversarial/judicial paradigm which fails within its own limited understandings of restitution and hampers rather than enhances reconciliation processes.’ Restitution can be key to the legitimacy of societies; in other words it can function as a way to process collective guilt by suppressing it and displacing it into an economic sphere. O’Donnell states, ‘Restitution’s attractiveness for western liberal societies lies in its privileging of capitalistic, property-based understandings of rights. However, this potentially ignores complex questions regarding cultural identity. Nevertheless, if art ownership projects group and individual identities, then undoing the art looting process allows discussion of complex questions about cultural identities of victims, perpetrators, and beneficiaries. Restitution’s revelatory capacity is clear but is limited by court-bound adversarialism.’ This framework isolates restitution as, essentially an economic problem with a financial solution. Delimited in such terms, the cultural, political and ethical dimensions of expropriation are concealed. The process of restitution and not just the fact of restitution is, then, crucial in terms of establishing a framework for addressing the multiple, historically-specific dimensions of expropriation.
Building as Unowned Property
Standing in contrast to Eichhorn’s restitution projects, Building as Unowned Property symbolically critiques the concept of property. From the perspective of a capitalist social paradigm, it posits an oxymoron insofar as it asserts that this property is unowned. At work again is the movement between the symbolic and the real. Unlike the projects I previously discussed, this work is concentrated into a relatively isolated object. Although Eichhorn presents a number of legal documents along with the building, the project does not display the same scale of discursive material and research. The framework through which the property is deemed unowned is that of Greek law and Documenta, which brings a large amount of cultural capital. Given these points of difference, how does focusing on the politics of restitution shed light on Building as Unowned Property which involves considerably less research, consultation and engagement, is in many ways a short term and superficial engagement with the site in which the property is located? Additionally, it may be worthwhile to consider the status of a monument. To extract the use value from the building, the only condition under which the property could be taken out of the market in perpetuity, was to declare the house a work of art or as is stated in the legal proceedings, ‘a monument’. Given that monuments are generally erected by or for state powers, and modern states are founded on principles of property rights, how can its status as a monument be reconciled with its status as unowned?
PART B
Questions that aren't necessary predicated on being in Athens
• Question of symbolic versus the real to mine further. There’s something between the symbolic and the real, a symbolic arresting of gentrification. Perhaps a rigorous understanding of these relations, between the symbolic and the real in Eichhorn’s practice, may elucidate ways of navigating the Athens work and its context?
• Who decides what is a monument? Questions of representation? Linked to the last question. The bringing of an aspect under the domain of appearance. Makes the machine work harder to make visible. Questions of real abstraction…
• In the seminar we discussed applying to the Rose Valland Institute to examine the provenance of Building as Unowned Property. Given the concerns of the institute this may be sensitive ground to tread but the proposition of investigating the provenance of the building may be an interesting one? It’s curious that the approach to ownership in the two works, that stand in close temporal proximity are so radically different or are they? Perhaps both belie an approach to questioning ownership that works within and according to the logic of existing systems.
• Funding of Rose Valland Institute – The institute does the state’s job. Who funds the Rose Valland Institute? I was planning on emailing the institute in the next few days.
Questions that may be best explored in Athens
• Questions of care and ownership. And how is maintenance defined? Questions of invisible labour as related to the work of art may be interesting to investigate further. Labour artist from the 60s as a touchstone - Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Is there a private company that maintains the building for example? Or is it not maintained at all? Perhaps getting in touch with the department of arts and culture or Documenta? In the seminar we discussed the abstract gesture of someone who comes in and symbolically declares something as property. Shamelessly symbolic, the immaterial gesture that becomes maintained, managed, the material conditions that surround the property. Again here, the question of the symbolic and the real seems pertinent.
Update
As in Stephan's post Documenta and museum fridericianum are the custodians of the building, they are responsible for the upkeep and state of the building.
Stephan mentioned getting hold of the register of deeds for the property finding out if an inquiry into the state of the property was conducted.
To set the ball rolling it seems like we may need to somehow contact Documenta and those responsible for the deeds which may require the tutors sourcing a contact?
Also in terms of an inquiry into the state of the property, it would be worth contacting the ministry. I somehow doubt we'll get much but you never know. I have some contacts listed below.
https://www.culture.gr/en/SitePages/contact.aspx
https://www.gtp.gr/TDirectoryDetails.asp?ID=25893
However, since these are more 'official' contacts, I wonder whether it would make a better impression if the tutors do the contacting under the DAI umbrella.
I aim to clarify the different approaches to property and ownership in Maria Eichhorn’s practice, with a view to discussing our potential intervention in Athens. How might the concept of ownership be understood and troubled through Eichhorn’s work? I will trace the various conceptions of ownerships she explores in The Politics of Restitution of 2003 before moving to The Rose Valland Institute and Building as Unowned Property, the latter two recently executed for Documenta 14. Both The Politics of Restitution and The Rose Valland Institute focus on the restoration of ownership, on establishing provenance through art historical research, workshops, seminars and making the objects under question public through exhibition display. By contrast, Building as Unowned Property attempts to negate, or at least strain, private ownership, by taking the building out of the housing market, rendering it a monument under Greek law that prohibits use (unless applications are filed and granted by the relevant authorities (Minister of Culture) on a case-by-case basis). The condition for establishing the property as without function or use, its becoming aesthetic, is predicated on its ‘artistic merit’, and thus relies upon the framework of documenta and the existing legal framework of the state, which in turn centres on attributing ownership, and, thus, liability and responsibility.
The Politics of Restitution
Eichhorn’s exhibition The Politics of Restitution mounted 16 nineteenth-century German paintings in the Kunstbau in Lenbachhaus in Munich. According to Alexander Alberro, in his essay for the exhibition catalogue, ‘20,000 objects including 2700 paintings whose provenance either could not be determined or was confirmed to be in order, were legally declared to be property of the Federal Republic of Germany. Two years later the Federal Government presented 1800 of the remaining paintings and prints in an “information show” at Schloss Schleissheim and the works were distributed as permanent loans to 102 German museums.’
The paintings displayed in Eichhorn’s exhibition were from the collection of the Lenbachhaus. Placed away from the walls on wooden stands, the front of the painting and back of the canvases were exposed. Of the 16 paintings displayed, 15 of the works had passed through the Central Collecting Point in Munich, which was established by the Allies to collect art objects that had been confiscated, looted or improperly acquired by the Nazis. The show examined the entangled forms of ownership and how they intersect with institutional practices and cultural politics.
On the occasion of the exhibition, Eichhorn hired an art historian and expert on provenance to investigate the works. The exhibition featured documents regarding the provenance of the paintings, reprints of legal proceedings, two catalogues (which compiled detailed information about the exhibition), a selection of relevant books and a lecture series. The form of the project was typical of Eichhorn’s practice, it took a longer term, discursive approach to the material. Having failed to establish the provenance of the paintings, their official status was ‘on national loan from the Federal Republic of Germany.’ They effectively became property of the state, or the state became a placeholder for a possible future, restituted owner. What does it mean for the concept of ownership when the state is the default owner, or ‘owner of last resort’?
With regard to a more general concern for the politics of ownership and restitution, the FRG functions as a default or placeholder owner. Insight into the contested provenance of paintings on loan from the FRG, the paintings in this particular exhibition and others, is belied by a lack of transparency. Ownership is always asserted, and so the story of its looting and illegal acquisition is made opaque by the fact of its default ownership by the state; on the face of it, the status of works as ‘on loan’ reveals little, if anything, about their history. Eichhorn’s exhibition exposes the traces of previous ownership, thus highlighting the paintings contested provenance. Here we see what Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev refers to when she discusses the way in which Eichhorn’s practice explores the relationship between the symbolic and the real.* ‘Her work has developed since the late 1980s as an exploration of the relationship between the symbolic and the real, between the practice of art and direct - albeit limited and exemplary - actions geared towards the bettering of personal life, social relations and the human and natural environments. It demonstrates a strong sense of ethics and the belief that radical oppositional thought and action are still and will always be possible. Her work is rarely spectacular and most often discreet.’
The Rose Valland Institute
The concerns of the Politics of Restitution are expanded through the Rose Valland Institute. Initiated by Eichhorn for Documenta 14, the Institute researches and documents the expropriation of Jewish property during the Nazi regime and its aftermath. The Institute occupied a physical site in Kassel for the duration of the Documenta. The Institute accepts open calls for research projects, to assist with cases where provenance of an object, material or immaterial is disputed.
Questions of restitution
It may be productive to look closely at restitution within a general framework of ownership to establish its processes and function in society, and particularly in a capitalist society. In her article ‘The Restitution of Holocaust Looted Art and Transitional Justice: The Perfect Storm of the Raft of the Medusa’ (2011), Therese O’Donnell argues that the law is insufficiently equipped to deal effectively with restitution cases. Additionally, in 'The Scope and Significance of Restitution' (1988-1989), Douglas Laycock states that restitution remains a ‘Largely neglected and underdeveloped area of the law’. For O’Donnell, ‘law’s role must be re-imagined beyond the current adversarial/judicial paradigm which fails within its own limited understandings of restitution and hampers rather than enhances reconciliation processes.’ Restitution can be key to the legitimacy of societies; in other words it can function as a way to process collective guilt by suppressing it and displacing it into an economic sphere. O’Donnell states, ‘Restitution’s attractiveness for western liberal societies lies in its privileging of capitalistic, property-based understandings of rights. However, this potentially ignores complex questions regarding cultural identity. Nevertheless, if art ownership projects group and individual identities, then undoing the art looting process allows discussion of complex questions about cultural identities of victims, perpetrators, and beneficiaries. Restitution’s revelatory capacity is clear but is limited by court-bound adversarialism.’ This framework isolates restitution as, essentially an economic problem with a financial solution. Delimited in such terms, the cultural, political and ethical dimensions of expropriation are concealed. The process of restitution and not just the fact of restitution is, then, crucial in terms of establishing a framework for addressing the multiple, historically-specific dimensions of expropriation.
Building as Unowned Property
Standing in contrast to Eichhorn’s restitution projects, Building as Unowned Property symbolically critiques the concept of property. From the perspective of a capitalist social paradigm, it posits an oxymoron insofar as it asserts that this property is unowned. At work again is the movement between the symbolic and the real. Unlike the projects I previously discussed, this work is concentrated into a relatively isolated object. Although Eichhorn presents a number of legal documents along with the building, the project does not display the same scale of discursive material and research. The framework through which the property is deemed unowned is that of Greek law and Documenta, which brings a large amount of cultural capital. Given these points of difference, how does focusing on the politics of restitution shed light on Building as Unowned Property which involves considerably less research, consultation and engagement, is in many ways a short term and superficial engagement with the site in which the property is located? Additionally, it may be worthwhile to consider the status of a monument. To extract the use value from the building, the only condition under which the property could be taken out of the market in perpetuity, was to declare the house a work of art or as is stated in the legal proceedings, ‘a monument’. Given that monuments are generally erected by or for state powers, and modern states are founded on principles of property rights, how can its status as a monument be reconciled with its status as unowned?
PART B
Questions that aren't necessary predicated on being in Athens
• Question of symbolic versus the real to mine further. There’s something between the symbolic and the real, a symbolic arresting of gentrification. Perhaps a rigorous understanding of these relations, between the symbolic and the real in Eichhorn’s practice, may elucidate ways of navigating the Athens work and its context?
• Who decides what is a monument? Questions of representation? Linked to the last question. The bringing of an aspect under the domain of appearance. Makes the machine work harder to make visible. Questions of real abstraction…
• In the seminar we discussed applying to the Rose Valland Institute to examine the provenance of Building as Unowned Property. Given the concerns of the institute this may be sensitive ground to tread but the proposition of investigating the provenance of the building may be an interesting one? It’s curious that the approach to ownership in the two works, that stand in close temporal proximity are so radically different or are they? Perhaps both belie an approach to questioning ownership that works within and according to the logic of existing systems.
• Funding of Rose Valland Institute – The institute does the state’s job. Who funds the Rose Valland Institute? I was planning on emailing the institute in the next few days.
Questions that may be best explored in Athens
• Questions of care and ownership. And how is maintenance defined? Questions of invisible labour as related to the work of art may be interesting to investigate further. Labour artist from the 60s as a touchstone - Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Is there a private company that maintains the building for example? Or is it not maintained at all? Perhaps getting in touch with the department of arts and culture or Documenta? In the seminar we discussed the abstract gesture of someone who comes in and symbolically declares something as property. Shamelessly symbolic, the immaterial gesture that becomes maintained, managed, the material conditions that surround the property. Again here, the question of the symbolic and the real seems pertinent.
Update
As in Stephan's post Documenta and museum fridericianum are the custodians of the building, they are responsible for the upkeep and state of the building.
Stephan mentioned getting hold of the register of deeds for the property finding out if an inquiry into the state of the property was conducted.
To set the ball rolling it seems like we may need to somehow contact Documenta and those responsible for the deeds which may require the tutors sourcing a contact?
Also in terms of an inquiry into the state of the property, it would be worth contacting the ministry. I somehow doubt we'll get much but you never know. I have some contacts listed below.
https://www.culture.gr/en/SitePages/contact.aspx
https://www.gtp.gr/TDirectoryDetails.asp?ID=25893
However, since these are more 'official' contacts, I wonder whether it would make a better impression if the tutors do the contacting under the DAI umbrella.
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