Documenta 14, 2017

I just returned from a wonderful trip to Germany.  We started off with Documenta 14 in Kassel.  Every five years Kassel brings modern art to Germany.  We only saw a small part of it.  It was emotional art.  The image above is scaffolding in the shape of the Parthenon in Greece.  It is covered in books that had been banned at one time somewhere in the world.  That included "Harry Potter", the "Bible", "1984", Donald Duck, and many others.  It was amazing to see all the banned books towering like that.   Other art forms were:  A wall with names on it of the Mexicans that died trying to cross into the U.S. boarder and another was faceless people with their luggage traveling to another country to work (below).  It was called "Hop Scotch".  The piece was showing how these people was working but not really part of the country and are faceless to others.  It reminds me of a painting that I did from on of my Father's photograph of riding the ferry to work during the depression.  There is a loneliness and a sadness in each.

These images caused lively discussion in our little tour group of this exhibit.  It is different than what I paint.  I try to interpret the beauty that I see around the world.  My exception is the painting above. These artists paint the pain and suffering that they see.  

A good question to ask ourselves is why do we paint the genre we do.  What do we want other people to say about our work?