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Lothar Baumgarten (5 October 1944 – 2 December 2018) was a German
conceptual art
Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...
ist, based in
New York and
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
. His work includes
installation
Installation may refer to:
* Installation (computer programs)
* Installation, work of installation art
* Installation, military base
* Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...
and also film.
Early life and education
Born 1944 in
Rheinsberg
Rheinsberg () is a town and a municipality in the Ostprignitz-Ruppin district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is located on lake and the river Rhin, approximately 20 km north-east of Neuruppin and 75 km north-west of Berlin.
History
F ...
, Germany, Baumgarten attended the
Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe (1968), and the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová ...
(1969–71), where he studied for a year under
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...
.
[Lothar Baumgarten](_blank)
Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
.[Christopher Knight (April 13, 1990)]
'Carbon': A Moving History of Old West
''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
''.
Work
Baumgarten's body of work included ephemeral sculptures, photographic work, slide projection pieces, 16 mm film works, recordings, drawings, prints, books, short stories, as well as site-specific works and wall drawings and architecture related interventions.
[Lothar Baumgarten, October 21 - November 20, 2008]
. Marian Goodman Gallery, New York. Retrieved 2018-10-05.
Between 1968 and 1970, Baumgarten undertook a systematic photographic study of how several European ethnographic museums frame the viewer's perception through the manner in which their objects are displayed. The eighty Ektachromes that comprise Baumgarten's slide projection ''Unsettled Objects'' (1968–69) show artifacts at the
Pitt Rivers Museum
Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford in England. The museum is located to the east of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and can only be accessed ...
in Oxford, displayed much as they were when it was opened to the public in 1874.
Between 1977 and 1986 Baumgarten visited
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
and
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
.
[John Russell (November 6, 1988).]
'Art View; Lothar Baumgarten's Discreet Provocations
. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved 2018-10-05. Print version, p. 35. During an eighteen-month period between 1978 and 1980, the artist lived among the
Yãnomãmi people of Kashorawë-their and Nyapetawë-their in the upper
Orinoco region.
[Lothar Baumgarten: Makunaíma, June 21 - August 30, 2002]
. Marian Goodman Gallery, New York. There were about 85 people in this particular community, which at that time had had relatively little contact with the outside world. Baumgarten's visits resulted in works such as ''Terra Incognita'' (1969–84), a three-dimensional diagram of the frontier between the two countries.
Made between 1973 and 1977, ''The Origin of the Night: Amazon Cosmos'' is a 98-minutes film on the Brazilian rain forest and the creation stories of the
Tupi Indians; Baumgarten took the film's story from
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social An ...
's book ''From Honey to Ashes''. A later work, ''El Dorado – Gran Sabana'' (1977–85), juxtaposes photographs of the rich landscape of the
La Gran Sabana
La Gran Sabana (, en, The Great Savanna) is a region in southeastern Venezuela, part of the Guianan savanna ecoregion.
The savanna spreads into the regions of the Guiana Highlands and south-east into Bolívar State, extending further to the b ...
region, the site of the legendary
El Dorado, which Baumgarten took in 1977 with the names of heavy metals and minerals mined in the area during the 1980s; the names of indigenous animals being exterminated by the mining process are linked with the metals and minerals. ''River-Crossing, Kashorawetheri'' (1978), a suite of 15 black-and-white photographs, follows a group of Yãnomãmi on an arduous journey through a forest and across a waterway. ''Fragmento Brasil'' (1977-2005), a synchronized multi-projection piece without sound, is made up of paired sequences of 648 images from three sources: details from
Albert Eckhout
Albert Eckhout (c.1610–1665) was a Dutch portrait and still life painter. Eckhout, the son of Albert Eckhourt and Marryen Roeleffs, was born in Groningen, but his training as an artist and early career are unknown. A majority of the works attrib ...
's mid-17th-century paintings of Brazilian birds set in idealized landscapes of European provenance; the abstract drawings of Yãnomãmi people from Venezuela and Brazil, 1978–80; and in conjunction, black & white landscape photographs of the
Rio Caroni,
Rio Uraricoera and
Rio Branco regions in Venezuela and Brazil taken by the artist on a five-month walk in 1977.
When he represented Germany at the 1984
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
, his work ''Señores Naturales'' consisted of the names of Amazonian peoples engraved on a marble floor and filled with resin.
At
documenta X in Kassel (1997), Baumgarten exhibited the archives of his stay with the Yãnomãmi.
In ''Accès aux quais (tableaux parisiens)'' (1985–6), Baumgarten displayed a
Metro
Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to:
Geography
* Metro (city), a city in Indonesia
* A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center
Public transport
* Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urb ...
line map, the names of the stations altered to refer to French colonial activity.
In 1976 and 1989, he spent six months traveling the United States by rail and residing on several Indian reservations. A ceiling piece made for the
Carnegie Museum of Art
The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...
in 1988 featured hand-painted letters from the
Cherokee
The Cherokee (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi, or chr, ᏣᎳᎩ, links=no, translit=Tsalagi) are one of the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, t ...
alphabet.
For ''Carbon'' (1989), an installation composed chiefly of bars of color and typographically crisp words, he mapped two overlapping histories around the gallery walls: The network of railroads integral to the settling of the American West and the homes of the indigenous tribes who were displaced, imprisoned or eradicated.
What remains are their names, which live on in the network of the railroads:
Cheyenne and Northern Railway,
Apache Railway,
Keokuk Junction Railway
The Keokuk Junction Railway Co. , is a Class III railroad in the U.S. states of Illinois and Iowa. It is a subsidiary of Pioneer Railcorp.
History
The present company was incorporated in 1980 as the Keokuk Northern Real Estate Co., formed in ...
or
Monongahela Railway
The Monongahela Railway was a coal-hauling short line railroad in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the United States. It was jointly controlled originally by the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central subsidiary Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Ra ...
. Other names continue to exist only as geographic designations:
Potomac River
The Potomac River () drains the Mid-Atlantic United States, flowing from the Potomac Highlands into Chesapeake Bay. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map. Retrieved Augu ...
,
Coconino County
Coconino County is a county in the north-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. Its population was 145,101 at the 2020 census. The county seat is Flagstaff. The county takes its name from ''Cohonino'', a name applied to the Havasupai p ...
, and
Chemehuevi Mountains
The Chemehuevi Mountains are found at the southeast border of San Bernardino County in southeastern California adjacent the Colorado River. Located south of Needles, California and northwest of the Whipple Mountains, the mountains lie in a nor ...
. The
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ...
commissioned Baumgarten to create a work that incorporated the photo documentation of his trip; however, the intended piece was never realized. Instead, the photographs were later published along with eleven short stories in an artists' book titled "Carbon." For his 1993 six-week solo exhibition at the
Guggenheim Baumgarten printed the names of indigenous North American peoples on the inner curves of the rotunda.
In 1994, Baumgarten landscaped the modern medium-sized woodland garden full of weeds and wild flowers for the
Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain
The Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, known simply as the Fondation Cartier, is a contemporary art museum located at 261 boulevard Raspail in the 14th arrondissement of the French capital, Paris.
History
The Fondation Cartier was cr ...
designed by
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and '' Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union for architects. He has o ...
. The garden's name, ''Theatrum Botanicum'', refers to the inventories of medicinal plants and herbs kept by medieval monks. In the late 1990s, he was commissioned with an installation at the
Bundespräsidialamt. In 2002, he received a commission for ''Seven Rings for Contemplation'', a permanent public artwork for Denning's Point State Park in Beacon, New York. For ''Concordance'' (2003-2006), a series of c-prints, Baumgarten conducted an extensive survey of the setting and botany of the
Serralves Park in Porto.
Since 1994 Baumgarten has been Professor at the
Universität der Künste Berlin
The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research universiti ...
, Germany. In 2011, he was a fellow at
Villa Massimo
Villa Massimo, short for Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo ( it, Accademia Tedesca Roma Villa Massimo), is a German cultural institution in Rome, established in 1910 and located in the Villa Massimo.
The fellowship of the German Academy in Rom ...
, Rome.
Baumgarten died on December 2, 2018.
Exhibitions
Since his first solo show at
Galerie Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf in 1972, Baumgarten has exhibited widely at a global scale. Important solo shows include the
Carnegie Museum of Art
The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...
, Pittsburgh (1987); as well as
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1987); The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto and Tokyo (1996); the
Hamburger Kunsthalle
The Hamburger Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest art museums in the country. The museum consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869 (main building), 1921 (Kuppelsaa ...
, Hamburg (2001); the
Kunsthaus Bregenz
The Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB) presents temporary exhibitions of international contemporary art in Bregenz, Vorarlberg (Austria).
History
Commissioned by the State of Vorarlberg and designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the Kunsthaus B ...
, Bregenz, Austria; and the
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The ''Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía'' ("Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre"; MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It ...
, Madrid (2016). In 1984, he and
A.R. Penck represented Germany at the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
. He has also participated in
documenta V (1972), VII (1982), IX (1992), and X (1997); the 1991 and 1988
Carnegie International;
Skulptur Projekte Münster
Skulptur Projekte Münster (English: Sculpture Projects Münster) is an exhibition of sculptures in public places in the town of Münster (Germany). Held every ten years since 1977, the exhibition shows works of invited international artists for ...
, 1987; and the 49th, 41st and 38th
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
(2001, 1984 and 1978).
Baumgarten is represented by Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, and
Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris.
Collections
Baumgarten's works are held in numerous museum collections, including the
Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
;
Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...
, Dallas;
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York;
Migros Museum, Zurich;
MIT List Visual Arts Center
Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its admini ...
, Cambridge, Massachusetts;
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The ''Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía'' ("Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre"; MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It ...
, Madrid;
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art ( ca, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, , MACBA) is a contemporary art museum situated in the Plaça dels Àngels, in El Raval, Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The museum opened to the publ ...
;
Museum Abteiberg
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...
, Mönchengladbach;
Museum Folkwang
Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patr ...
, Essen;
Museum für Moderne Kunst
The Museum für Moderne Kunst (''Museum of Modern Art''), or short MMK, in Frankfurt, was founded in 1981 and opened to the public 6 June 1991. The museum was designed by the Viennese architect Hans Hollein. Because of its triangular shape, it ...
, Frankfurt am Main;
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York;
Hamburger Bahnhof
Hamburger Bahnhof is the former terminus of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway in Berlin, Germany, on Invalidenstrasse in the Moabit district opposite the Charité hospital. Today it serves as a contemporary art museum, the , part of the Berlin Nati ...
, Berlin;
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;
National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto;
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam;
Van Abbemuseum
The Van Abbemuseum () is a museum of modern and contemporary art in central Eindhoven, Netherlands, on the east bank of the Dommel River. Established in 1936, the museum is named after its founder, Henri van Abbe, who loved modern art and wante ...
, Eindhoven;
De Pont museum, Tilburg and
Vancouver Art Gallery
The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Franc ...
.
Lothar Baumgarten
Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne.
Recognition
Baumgarten's numerous awards have included the MFI Prize, Essen (2003); the Lichtwark Prize of the City of Hamburg, Germany (1997); The Golden Lion, First Prize of the 41st Venice Biennale (1984); the Prize of the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen (1976); and the Prize of the City of Düsseldorf (1974).
Literature
* Baumgarten, Lothar: Unsettled Objects. Edition of '' Guggenheim Magazine'' published in conjunction with the exhibition AMERICA Invention. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
, 1993. (Contains photographic documention of the Pitt Rivers' collection and essays on ethnographic collecting)
* Baumgarten, Lothar: Eklipse. With a text by Thomas Wagner. Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 1997,
* Baumgarten, Lothar: See Other Side / Imago Mundi (Unsigned). Kleve: Freundeskreis Museum Kurhaus und Koekkoek-Haus, 2005,
* Kersting, Hannelore (ed.): ''Kunst der Gegenwart. 1960 bis 2007''. Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, 2007,
References
External links
Lothar Baumgarten on Artcyclopedia
* Edward Leffingwell
''Lothar Baumgarten at Marian Goodman - New York''
''Art in America'', November 2001.
*Sabine B. Vogel
''Lothar Baumgarten - Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany''
''ArtForum'', January 1994.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baumgarten, Lothar
German installation artists
German conceptual artists
1944 births
2018 deaths
People from Ostprignitz-Ruppin
German contemporary artists