The Museum and other Success Stories in Cultural Globalisation by Walter Grasskamp

CIMAM 2005 Annual Conference
“Museums: Intersections in a Global Scene”

Session 2

The Museum
and Other Success Stories in Cultural Globalization

Walter Grasskamp

Abstract

The museum was an early agency of globalization and has be­co­me, as in­sti­tu­ti­on, a globalized agen­cy it­self. Although the museum is a genuine theme of contemporary art sin­­­­ce documenta 5 presented “mu­s­e­ums by artists” in 1972, its dialectical role in glo­bali­zation is rarely in focus.

Already in its european origins, in the “chambers of cu­ri­osi­ty”, the collections were entwined with colo­nia­lism being one of their main frameworks. After the age of enlightenment se­pa­rated the mu­seums into spe­ci­alized institutions, the art mu­se­um turned out to be the “fas­test”, both in adapting new para­digms of collecting and by spreading over the globe - first as the modern museum of art and then as the museum of mo­dern art. As a globalized institution, does the art museum have global standards of collec­ting?

Globalization is a dominant theme in current discussions - not surprisingly worldwide. What dominates, how­ever, are the eco­no­mic and political aspects, at least in international best­sel­lers by authors like George Soros. Less attention is paid to the cultural aspects of globalization.

Do­cumenta X (1997) and documenta 11 (2002) did, however, as­sign central importance to the cultural aspects; already in 1989 had Jean-Hubert Martin exhibited the groundbreaking “Ma­­giciens de la terre”. These events pointed the way to in­tegra­ting aesthetic aspects into the discussion. But outside the art world the cultural aspects of glo­bali­za­tion continue to be seen as a collateral phe­no­menon.

Attention is paid, at most, to the globali­za­tion of consumer culture. So it was no coincidence that the only best­sel­ler con­cerning the cultural consequences of globalization – Naomi Kleins book “No Lo­go” – dealt with consumer culture, and not with music, fine art or literature.

Mass consumption has in fact left its mark on daily culture throughout the world and many of its brand products - in the areas of sports articles, cars or pop music for instance – at­tain true cult status. Art, on the other hand, plays a rath­er marginal role in this global consumer culture, as an expensive product for a small and elite market.

This market has insular centres all over the world, which are linked in a kind of informal data exchange. In his book “The Painted Word” Tom Wolfe estimated this worldwide art market and its re­fined staff – the “global village of art” - to num­ber around 10 000 inhabitants in 1975. Thou­sands of represen­tatives of old money and nouveaux ri­ches may have to be added in the meantime, but they still represent only a sideshow of glo­bali­za­ti­on. How­ever, artists throughout the world are work­ing on this theme and thus give us occasions for debate on the future of cultural globalization.

Of course, one should not talk about the future of globali­za­tion, without being familiar with its pre-history, the era of co­lonialism and imperialism. Then, the question was not about glo­balization in today’s meaning of the word but about the bu­siness interests of individual super powers. The most in­flu­en­tial of these super powers were european and the con­se­quence of their colonial enterprises was a nearly glo­bal Europe­a­ni­za­tion.

Even then consumer culture was the driving for­ce, as it was commercial goods such as pepper or tobacco, fragrances or plants, cotton or wood, sugar or silk, tea or coffee which were of interest to the European markets. Goods like these determined the colonial transport routes and bat­t­le­­fronts.

The colonial transfer of goods and slaves not only chan­ged the economy of the colonised world, it also changed the colo­nial powers themselves: migration and amalgamations marked the face of many former colonial power – in Holland, France and Great Britain, for example, and most dramatically, in the USA. On­ly recently, in his book “Colonialism in Question”, Frederick Coo­per called for more attention to this interaction, the con­sideration of which has long been prevented by a misconceived notion of political correctness.[i]

I speak consciously of interaction and not of a cultural ex­change, as that would sound as if partners with equal rights and gains were involved, which of course was not the case. This interaction has, nevertheless, great cultural historical significance for all those involved, colonies as well as the colonial powers.

I. Globalization and music

Music can be considered to be the prime example for such long-term cultural interaction. The migration of elements of Afri­can tribal music via the North American cotton plantations in­to jazz and blues can be regarded as an early form of cultural glo­ba­li­zation. It found its conclusion in rhythm ‘n’ blues sin­ce mar­keted throughout the world with its numerous bran­ches.

When North American jazz adopted elements from Cuba or Brazil, it provided a further example of this inter-cultural inter­ac­ti­on. And whatever can be said against the Christianisation of the Afro-American slaves – and certainly much can be said against it – this amalgamation led to the impressive gospel which in the 1950s turned out to be the blueprint for in­ter­nationally suc­cessful ballads and shoutings with singers like Sam Cooke changing frontiers from religion to erotism easily.

From the middle of the 20th century onwards, this cultural in­teraction began to lose its previously strictly European and North American dominated character. The economic gains of cour­se remain­ed on the side of the cultures commercialising this music and not on the side of the commercialised. On the other hand, the international recognition of musicians priorly known only on a national level also increased their importance in the coun­tries of their origin.

Finally, in the second half of the 20th century a marked re­s­pect developed in Europe and the USA for cultures previously only borrowed from. If a musician like Ginger Baker, the phe­nomenal drummer of Cream, lived for years in Africa to work along with native drummers there; if David Byrne, the singer of Talking Heads, studied the musical cultures of Bra­zil; if Wim Wenders and Ry Cooder finally made Buena Vista Social Club popular throughout the world – it might seem as if Europe and North America were now prepared to recognise the previously only cited cultures as being equal, if not superi­or.

But that is the advertising idyll of globalization which is sold to us as world music, while many of those involved still see it as cultural exploitation or even theft, if their eth­nical, regional or national music is traded on mass markets by international concerns. What some may regard as multi-cul­tural exchange, others see as one-sided commercialisation. Sin­ce Elvis Presley lent a white face to rhythm ‘n’ blues, which up until then had been labeled race music, this accusa­tion of cul­tural theft is in the world; only months ago, Otis Taylor, representative of Nu Blues, warmed it up.

The advertising idyll of world music and the accusation of ex­ploitation and theft are poles of a field of tension for which I can offer no similarly smooth formula to resolve the issue. As far as the colonial and global interaction in mu­sic are con­cerned, I have much more the impression of an almost un­decipherable ambivalence. That is, of course, a keyword, which sociologist Zygmunt Baumann used to describe the modern, and it also seems to fit here.[ii]

II. Museums, shops, and bars

But why am I telling this story about music? Some of you might have been thinking to sit in the wrong conference. I have told it, because it gives contrast to what was happening in fine art in the twentieth century. For a history of interaction can also be observed here, as European artists took their inspi­ra­tion from other cultures - and more than that.

We can cite here the role of the African mask for cubism; or the importance of the wooden carvings from the South Seas for the German group of Expressionists Die Brücke, or the exoti­cism of the surrealists, just to quote the best known exam­p­les. In fact, non European cultures were extremely important for the genesis and programms of the European avant-garde of the 20th century. This was already the case in the 19th cen­tury, for Vincent van Gogh, for example, when he took his in­spiration from Japanese colour prints.

But this intercultural transfer in art was never so skin-tight, as it was in music. No phase and no example is to be found in the history of modern art which comes close to the intensive and complex exchange which led from the slave co­lo­nies via jazz and blues to pop music, from Creole tra­ditions to jazz or from the Caribbean to a kind of international reg­gae.

During the 19th and in the early 20th century, ethnical and most of po­pular mu­sic had spread, so to speak, “by foot”: you could only learn about it by hearing and seeing it directly, and so understand it in its milieu. Such insights into the early history of the spread of popular music could be seen in the series of films which Martin Scorsese dedicated to the blues a few years ago.

This only changed with the industrialisation of the record and the economic concentration of radio stations. But even after this, direct contact still remained important – as when the Jewish American Paul Butterfield was welcomed as a har­monica player in black clubs in the days of segregation, or when Booker T. and the MGs formed the first and influential black and white rhythm ‘n’ blues group that still had to eat in different re­staurants and stay in different hotels. Much the same was true in the 1950s for the British scene of the Caly­p­sonians, about which a lengthy documentary has just been pub­lished with the title “London is the place for me”. So right un­til the 1960s, it was networks from local areas and small record labels which took care of musical amalgams.

If gospel, blues and jazz were predominantly formed and spread through per­sonal con­tacts, the intercultural exchange in art in the 20th century happened in a totally different way. For the European artists, who were oriented towards non European formulas, only had pictures in front of their eyes, paintings and sculptures. They circu­lated throughout the world as handy consumer goods and could simply be adapted in Europe without having to get to know their ori­ginal milieu.

The museum is regarded to be the main stage of this contact with non European pictures and sculptures: In fact it was in the South Seas section of the ethnological museum in Dresden that the Brü­cke artists found their inspiration around 1905; Picasso and the cubists saw the African masks and sculptures also in the Museum.

Such paths taken by art prove the theory of the birth of mo­dern art out of the spirit of the museum, advanced by Beat Wyss and Boris Groys; the latter in his essay on the logic of the col­lection („Die Logik der Sammlung“), which has also been pub­li­shed in English. [iii] Modern art, which is allegedly directed against the museum is, in fact, inconceivable without the mu­seum. However, Wyss and Groys are referring to the museum of mo­dern art, but for the cultural migration being discussed here other stages of contact were of decisive importance: If the avant-garde artists first got to know foreign sculptures in museums and exhibitions, then it was not in the museums of art, but in world exhibitions, colonial museums and anthro­po­logical collections. The theory of modern art’s birth out of the spirit of the museum must therefore be extended to the colonial museums and ethnological collections.

But even that extension is not enough, because there was an­other main stage of contact: It was in a Paris shop that van Gogh and other impressionists got to know Japanese prints. Thus, different kinds of shops have to be added to this inter­cultural scenery, shops for co­lonial goods as well as antique shops or flea markets, where pictures or sculptures from non Eu­ropean cultures were to be found. In as far as mo­dern art dealt with non European cultures, it was not born on­ly from the museum, but also from the multi-layered trade in co­lo­nial goods. It is even said that Vlaminck saw the first af­­rican car­vings from Dahomey in a french bistro in 1905; Eu­ropean pubs obviously belong to this scenario, too; especially those in har­bours.

In the European contact zones of the museum, the shop and the pub, the­re obviously was no chance of getting to know the exo­tic pictures and sculptures in their original milieu. And the ar­tists were apparently not interested in this. They were more interested in using these unusual forms for their own ends: exotic imports were modulated in order to develop a new, ra­dical art for urban, European markets. It is easy to see this as an early form of appropriation art. We still tend to see the individual avant-garde artists as heroes and supermen and overlook the context in which they were at work, in this case, the context of colonialism.

If European artists had little chance to understand their exo­tic mo­dels in the frame of their ori­gi­nal cultures, the ques­t­i­on must be asked as to whether they actually wanted to. Hard­ly any of them made the journey to the particular area which produced the items they admired. In 1914 Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein were the only German Expressionists to actually spend time in the South Seas. But their destinations (New-Gui­nea for Nolde, Palau  for Pech­stein) were German colonial ar­eas, so both had to interrupt their journeys prematurely, be­ing surprised by the outbreak of the First World War.[iv]

None of the Post Impressionists went to Japan, none of the Cu­bists went to Africa, none of the other Brücke artists stopped off in the South Seas in order to better understand what they had seen in the museum and what had been used to modernise Eu­ropean art. Paul Gauguin remains the much quoted exception, but in his ca­se, too, his exotic destination was already a colony. It is no coincidence that W. Somerset Maugham, the disillusioned chro­nic­ler of the colonial milieu of the South Seas, made the nai­vety of failure the main theme in his Gau­guin novel “The Moon and Sixpence”.

The Surrealists were the first avantgarde group to open up their artistic mi­lieu at least to anthropology, admitting field re­se­ar­chers such as Mi­chel Leiris. But the world travels of Max Ernst and Gala und Paul Eluard, which are are often cited as examples of the at­tempt to get to know non European cultures, are called into question after the research pub­li­sh­ed recently by Ro­bert McNab in his book “Ghost Ships: A Sur­realist Love Triangle” (Yale Uni­versity Press 2004). In any case, the com­plicated meeting of the love triangle of Paul and Gala Eluard and Max Ernst took place in 1924 in Saigon, that is on another colonial ground.

None of the visual artists seems to have sought so decidedly and conciously the challenge of understanding the exotic mili­eu as did some of the con­tem­porary writers, the French Victor Segalen above all. The few artists who did travel seem to have follo­wed the traces of ima­gery they could use. The others did not need to travel for the very reason that they could depend on the trading routes of colonialism to bring the exotic goods right to their European front doors.

This had been different, by the way, prior to the 20th cen­tu­ry, as many artists of orientalism and exoticism actually vi­sited the places and countries which they painted and sty­li­sed for a European public. The exoticism of the avant-garde, on the other hand, limited itself to the works flooding into Eu­ro­pe and adopted their formal contours without any knowledge of their original meaning and traditions.

One result of the colonial import of pictures and sculptures was of course, that the exotic sculptures were finally recog­nised as being art - admittedly a liberal progress on the part of Euro­pean culture, fostered by Art writers such as Carl Ein­stein. But in reality the exoticism of the avant-garde was the last peak of Eurocentrism. It exhausted itself in interest in form and renounced upon a more in-depth intercultural under­stan­d­ing. The non European sculptures were rendered aesthetic as works of art, and thus they were integrated into a European approach which tried the differences in form but neglected the cultural ones. This is precisely why Carl Einstein later be­ca­me one of the sharpest critics of the colonial eclecticism of the European avant-garde, but without any influence any more. The long-term formalistic approach has only been dis­pensed with officially since 1984, namely with the broad and justi­fied criticism that met William Rubin’s fine, extravagant New York exhibition “Primitivism in 20th Century Art”.

III. The chamber of curiosities

The aesthetic reception of non European cultures had of course a history which started long before the avant-garde, namely in the 16th century. Already the predecessor of the modern muse­um, the European chamber of curiosities of the late Renaissan­ce and Baroque, was much more closely linked to the history of colonialism than museum research normally cares for. This ta­kes me to the second station in my rather short art hi­st­o­ry of globalisation. Numerous examples could be given of how the re­turn of colonial goods to Europe inspired and for­ced the set­ting up of the chambers of curiosities; I will pass only two stages.

The first one has the advantage of being particularly exotic here and today – and also of being somewhat chilly for Euro­pe­an guests – as it is Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. This was previously the home to two authoritative chambers of cu­ri­o­­sities: the chamber of commoner Ole Worm based in the local Uni­versity and the courtly chamber of the Danish kings. The danish co­lonies in the North Sea and in the Ar­c­tic Ocean, Ice­land and Greenland, played an important role in both. It can be seen particularly well here how the colonies determined the collection areas.

(Both collections were not limited to the North or only to Da­nish colonies; other objects also found their way into the royal collection in Copenhagen Castle as, for example, a hat from Sumatra or a dagger from Java in the East Indian Chamber. At least two plumages from Brazil also belonged to it.)

It is worth noting that the Danish King obviously had first claim to see the exotic goods if they were brought in on Dan­ish ships, even if the expeditions had not been financed by him. The Swedish histo­ri­an Sver­ker Sörlin dedi­ca­ted an in­tri­guing es­say to this astonishing proce­dure, entitled “On Bring­­ing Home".[v]

There he describes how the very look the King bestowed on ob­jects from the colonies was celebrated as the highest form of attention, as ennobling through perception. The foreign ob­jects were integrated into the European context of collection in a courtly ceremony of wonder and curiosity, which apparent­ly could take place at the harbour. It is perhaps difficult to imagine a more significant embodiment of curiosity than this staged look of the king, of a royal curio­sity, which corre­spon­­ded to the cham­ber of curiosities.[vi]

My second example does not come from the cold North but is - in tribute to the location of our conference – inspired by the city Sao Paolo, which is known to have been founded and named by Jesuit missionaries. If the Danish example stood for the po­litical network of colonialism, then this example stands for its re­ligious network, which also had consequences for the landscape of European collections.

So the famous Museo Kircheriano - which for many is the epi­to­me of a Baroque chamber of curiosities - was by no means a pri­­vate institution, as it would appear from its title (which still usually includes its founder’s name to this day, though it was attributed only posthumously to the collection). In fact it was an institution of the Jesuit order, founded in Rome in 1651, which after the death of its founder, Athansius Kircher, continued for more than one hundred years until 1773, when the order lost its power and had to close the collection. It was only dissolved after 1874 and distributed amongst vari­ous scien­ti­fic museums till 1913. All the dispersed objects were reunited again for a few weeks in 2001 for the exhibition Il museo del Mondo in Rome.

In this collection were objects of Brazilian origin, for exam­p­le a belt and plumed staffs. Presumably they were not the on­ly objects from Brazil. It would, in any case, be good to know more about the collection work of the Catholic Church in the age of colonialism, but that remains a desideratum of museum re­search as well. One of the questions that led me here is, if traces of jesuit collections are still to be found in Brazil and if they were of any formative influ­ence.

It is generally surprising how negligent art history has been in dealing with this topic up until now with only few excep­ti­ons – the first being, as far as I can see, Oliver Impey with Arthur McGregor in 1985 and Krzysztof Pomian in 1986. The com­mon history of colonialism and the chamber of curiosities still remains to be written. It would have to be seen in con­nection with other things and goods which came from the colo­nies to European destinations, first of all with the botanical gardens flourishing at the same time, being the living and un­der-estimated twin of the museum world. But animal menage­ri­es should also be taken in­to account, which later led to zoologi­cal gardens and the cir­cus. Last but not least, the history of pharmacy also be­longs here, as it was not only kings and theo­logians, which set up such collections, but also merchants, doctors and phar­macists.[vii]

Like the botanical gardens and animal menageries, the chambers of curiosities included those colonial goods, which could not be con­su­med directly by eating, drinking or smoking (like, for examp­le, pepper, cocoa and tobacco), or through ceremonial wear (li­ke precious stones, perfumes and fabrics), nor by any other everyday use (like furniture for example). The more spi­ritual colonial goods, as it were, which could only be consum­ed by admiration and amaze­ment, by looking at and touching, end­ed up in the chamber of curiosities. Collecting constituted the hig­h­est and most permanent form of admiration as a form of con­su­merism, which miraculously does not destroy its goods by use. In ad­di­tion, these collections ensured that certain colo­ni­al goods of no obvious use value gained a market value, oth­er­wise they might have been lost.

So the Baroque chamber of curiosities were early agents of glo­balization, as they brought objects from the entire known world to Europe, from which images of the world were formed there. The museum, in this early form, was therefore already an in­stitution of globalization.

But that is not its only significance in this framework, as the museum itself soon became a glo­ba­lized institution in its own right: It not only acted as an inter­me­diary, but it spread as a global institution. The museum as a structural and insti­tu­ti­onal model of collecting and exhibiting is probably the most successful European export in cultural globalisation. Mu­seums can now be found all over the world and they have become such an accepted institution that their European origin could al­most be forgotten.

Of course, there were also traditions for making collections outside Europe – courtly and ritualistic treasure chambers, for example, or the ceremonial display of the booty of war or political insignia. But the museum as an institution with a public duty to educate and with political financing must be seen as a European achievement, which found its way from 18th century London and Paris nearly to the en­tire world.

As the museum began to spread throughout the world, the time of the chamber of curiosities was admittedly past; its cosmos was unable to keep up with the development of the modern image of the world. During the 18th century, the context for collec­ti­ons had already disintegrated as a sign of the Enlighten­ment, and the exhibits later were moved to the scientific col­lec­tions of the appropriate specialised disciplines: technical mo­dels to the technical muse­ums; mussels, stones and butter­flies to the museums of natural history; books to the libra­ries; exotic objects to the ethno­logical museums; arms and ar­mours to the National museums and so on.

This makes me rush through my third station, the dissolution phase of the chamber of curiosities, and the distribution of their con­tents to the scientific special collections of phy­sics, chemi­stry, history or ethnology. This phase has also not been suf­ficiently studied, but its importance cannot be over­estimated. For one of the most important results of this dis­so­lution was that the fine arts were left over, as it were, becoming an independent area of collection.[viii] Only now does the spe­cial case of the pure art museum begin: it is purified of all admixtures to content itself with the academic genera of pain­ting, graphics and sculpture.

(The classicism of the same time with its strict academic rules contributed to the strict iso­la­tion of the now fine arts from the original context of mixed collections. So when the avant-garde of the 20th century re­fer­red to exotic objects and propagated their languages of form, it was also to be under­stood as an anti-classi­cal reflex.)

Only after this process of differentiating the chamber of cu­ri­osities did the museum become a global ideal, that is: as an already specialised museum – specialising in science, history, poli­tics and aesthetics. As a specialised institution, the mu­seum proved itself to be easily adaptable worldwide, com­pa­tib­le with different cultures. What is the reason for this asto­ni­­sh­ing quality? The museum is a con­stant form of handling different objects, an identical structure for varying contents - open to any sort of object and content.

The na­tio­n­al museum, for example, was a model which various na­tions could use to present their various histories, regard­less of where they were and how they saw themselves. Even ho­stile neighbour­ing states could use the same institution in order to empha­si­se the differences. It is this enormous fle­xi­bility which made for the worldwide success of the museum as an institution.

This is true first and foremost for the art museum, as no mu­seum has proved itself to be as flexible as the art museum, both in time and space. In fact it must be seen as the qui­ck­est museum of all: fast in expanding throughout the world and fast in adapting the latest de­velop­ment of its item.

Once set free from the chamber of curiosities though, art has never become truly independent from what were once neighbou­r­ing areas of collection. It looks much more as if it has al­ways yearned for its former neighbours.

This can be seen, for example, in artists’ workshops of the late 19th century which in Europe, following the model of Hans Ma­kart, contained regular cabinets of curiosities. Also the ov­­er­­flowing and, for many imi­ta­tors, exemplary collections of an André Breton or Max Ernst demonstrate this. Above all the so-called ar­tists museums of the 1960s and 1970s can stand for this. The great Har­ald Szeemann – to whose memory I would like to de­dicate this lecture - exhibited them in 1972 as a de­part­ment of his docu­men­ta 5; in 1983 the late A.A.Bron­son publi­sh­ed a book togehter with Peggy Gale on “Museums by Ar­tists”; in 2001 James Putnam documented the latest deve­lop­ments in his book Art and Artifact - The Museum as Medium.^[ix]

The motivation of these museums by artists was not merely no­stalgic; in looking back on more complex landscapes of col­lec­tions they wanted also to be seen as criticism of the existing art museums, which was particularly true for the work of Mar­cel Broodthaers.

Modern artists’ studios, artists’ collections and artists’ mu­s­e­ums are impressive proof, of how long and how often art, on­ce set free, has longed for the original context of the curio­sity cabinets and still longs for it today – as if it wants to use the magic stored there in order to counteract the constant threat of anaemia of a pure and autonomous art. The classical purification of art from everything not artistic was reversed in modern times by encroaching on the non-artistic and exotic, as if autonomous art were lacking the context of inspiration which it once had in the chamber of curiosities and in colo­ni­al exoticism.

V. The universality of art

A particularly telling example of such re-contextualisation was provided in 1955 by the first documenta. Although it was a pu­re art exhibition, in the very first room - through which all the visitors had to pass - was displayed a series of pho­togra­ph­ic posters showing archaic and exotic sculptures, as a justi­fi­cation of modern art. Works from Benin and pre-Columbi­an Am­erica were assembled here in the same way as works from archa­ic Greece and the Mesopotamian culture.[x]

In doing this, Arnold Bode, who planned this visual introduc­ti­on, of course did not want to make any link with the colo­ni­alism of the chamber of curiosities, nor did he want to give a late echo of the avant-garde move towards the exotic. In ret­rospect it appears rather that he tried to reinforce modern art, having been outlawed by Nati­onal Socialism before, by other cul­tures and traditions, even by the most remote in time and space.

This intercultural reinforcement was based on the then fashio­n­able theory of the universality of art, which represents my fourth station. This theory on the universality of art is a pro­­duct of the early 20th century and had its climax in the influential anthology “5000 Years of Modern Art or King So­lo­mon’s picture book”, published in London in 1952 by Lud­wig Gold­scheider.[xi] The approach intended to prove a con­tinuity of creative form from the archaic to the modern, from the ear­li­est stone idols to Brancusi’s abstraction, from the Stone Age to Picasso.

This approach included a global claim for recognition along with a historical claim for continuity: the so-called primitve and archaic art was no longer seen as a mere source of inspi­ration, but were included in a now universal notion of art, which of course is a European invention.

The theory of the universality of art was the climax of the globalization of the European notion of art. It had begun much earlier with the worldwide success story of the art mu­se­um, in which the european notion of art was globalized. It took some time till suspicion grew that this notion of art remained eu­r­o­­pean - and eurocentric - even after it spread, so to speak, under cover around the world, that is under the cover of the museum.

The second documenta in 1959 provided decisive proof of this, and is therefore the fifth station in my short art his­to­ry of glo­ba­li­zation. The first documenta in 1955 had been a purely European exhibition. Of the 130 artists, only one, Alexander Calder, actually came from outside Europe. (The three other North American participants were German emigrants in first or second generation - Josef Al­bers, Kurt Roesch and Lyonel Fei­nin­ger, who was even listed in the catalogue as representing Germany).

In 1959, Wer­ner Haft­mann, the mastermind of early documenta, invented the enticing slogan of “abstraction as a world langu­a­ge” for the second exhibition in Kassel. Thus documenta ap­pe­ared to be interested in extending the geogra­phi­cal area of inclusion to a global dimension, in exactly the same way as the then successful artist Victor Va­sarély had spoken of ab­strac­tion as a „planetary folk­lore“. [xii]

Although one could have expected that under the slogan “ab­stra­ction as a world language” more non European artists would have been invited to Kassel in 1959, that was not the ca­se. The slogan was not intended as the valorisation of non Euro­pean art but rather as the ennobling of the art of the ab­stract, which was still finding it hard in Europe, although it had been developed there. In hindsight, the slogan “abst­rac­tion as a world language” appears as offering ov­erseas coun­tri­es the licence for the latest Western recipe for success, but without any guaran­tee of imports.

Thus, apart from very few exceptions, artists from Africa, Asia, Australia and South America remained excluded and were clearly under-represented in the so-called “world exhibi­tion of art” for over thirty years until the 1990s. Only the number of north american artists increased con­­si­derably from 1959 on­wards. With the invitation to US-ar­tists documenta only half-hearted­ly gave up its eurocentric image of the world in favour of a North Atlantic one.

This was also true of the internationally renowned exhibition “Westkunst” (western art) which Kasper König and Laszlo Glozer organised in Cologne in 1981 and which is to be my sixth his­to­­rical station. The title “Westkunst” was an aggressive ex­pression of what had tended to be unspoken until that time, the commercial basis of the north-atlantic art bu­siness, in that only the home-grown artistic production ap­pea­red rele­vant. The “Westkunst” exhibition handled this so nonchalantly that it provoked a question from a Yugoslavian curator, as to whether you had to be a member of NATO i.e. the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to be exhibited under the “Westkunst” la­bel.

The exhibition title had been intentionally provocative and

provided in this way a handy concept for a somewhat complica­ted and also rather embarras­sing fact: Europe may have expor­ted the museum as a culture model throughout the world, but it was still reluctant to ac­cept in its own art museums exhibits produced as museum art in non European cul­tures. That was also to be the habitude of docu­menta for a long time.

VII. Global Players of the art world

If documenta was not interested in globalizing art for deca­des, other ag­ents came earlier. In conclusion – as the seventh and penultimate station – let us not forget that there were al­ready two splendid attempts in the 1970s and the 1980s to build up international museum empires of art. The first at­tempt was made by a global player in the chocolate and cocoa market, the West German art collector Peter Ludwig, whose un­dertakings, as is generally known, were followed closely by the artist Hans Haacke.

Since the 1960s, Peter Ludwig had been buying art on a large scale from countries with which he had already had or wanted to build up business re­lations – first from Great Britain and the USA, then from Persia and Hungary, and finally from the Soviet Union, as well as from China, from Bulgaria and from Cuba.

For a rigid capitalist, this was a highly stran­ge mix­ture, as there was soon a majority of communist countries. Ludwig also exported blocks of his collection of western - or rather north atlantic - art to these com­munist countries, where local bran­ch­es of an in­ternational Ludwig Museum were set up in Budapest or Peking, Havana or Leningrad. This international Ludwig Mu­seum could finally have achieved universal recognition, if the wind had not been taken from the sails of the company be­hind it due to the evolution of prices on the cocoa market in the 1980s.

Ludwig could indeed have seen himself as the first great dis­tributor of contemporary art with a global dimension, who would certainly also have included art from other continents if it had served his business interests. He could also pride himself that national cultures which were sealed off from one another by the cold war could now learn about each other’s art. But his art collection remained tainted by its dependence on his business interests: above all he was criticised for his willingness to collect only the official art permitted by the state in communist countries and to put it on the same level as the free art of the West.

This cannot be reproached of the second global player of the art world, the Guggenheim Museum and Thomas Krens’ plans for expansion. There was – and is - an openly avowed business in­terest behind those plans and the meanwhile existing branch-establishments, namely to capitalise on the unused works in the New Yorker De­pot, the icebox, and to reduce accumulated depts by franchising the label. But the claim of art’s freedom is respected, although considerable concessions were made to commercial partners like fashion designers Hugo Boss or Gior­gio Armani and to the German automobile group BMW.

For this reason, Krens had to put up with international cri­ti­cism, too, about the internationalisation of his museum, which his business-partners could not understand: Why should a col­lec­tion such as the Guggenheim, which can be seen as the es­sence of international style, not also have an international presence? This was discussed intensively in the 1990s – stran­gely more intensively than the activities of the busy art dip­lomat Peter Ludwig – and at least one argument re­mains valid for our discussion: The International Style of the Classical Modern, which the Guggenheim may possibly be able to prove bet­ter than any other museum, is not international art, but North Atlantic Western art.

But Guggenheim is not the only agent trying to promote north atlantic western art worldwide. The market-places in the glo­bal village of art have spread and grown and attracted an in­ternational elite of collectors who see that most of their items are equipped with the north atlantic modern art tradi­tion and charisma. Also the museums are criticized for favou­ring the same hundred artists world-wide, so they become more similar than diffe­rent.

At the end of this zig zag journey in seven mile boots, which was intended to guide us through the art history of globali­za­tion and the globalization history of art, this and other que­stions remain open: Has postmodern art finally become a world language? Is it a suitable forum of dispute about economical and political glo­balization? Is the context for producing art in Africa or Asia no longer different from the conditions in Europe? Or do we have an only apparently global art, in which around one hundred artists from Europe and the USA are col­lec­ted and exhibited worldwide?

It may amuse us today that people in the Baroque period belie­ved that the newly discovered world could be represented in chambers of curiosities. And yet we are confident that our own museums, our documentas and biennials, can meet the chal­lenges of the globalized world. This may perhaps amuse future genera­tions.

Maybe the demands of globalisation on art, to which it has con­tributed greatly, are too great, and music is much better pla­ced. So allow me a final conclusion: Although modern art re­garded itself as being univer­sal, it probably can only be in­­ternational; and although po­pular music is anxious to be au­thentic, it really can be in­tercultural.