Christine Mehring
@ The Art Institute of Chicago
111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603
Opening Wednesday, April 6th, from 6PM - 7:30PM
Leading up to the 1972 Olympic Games held in Munich, Germany, a number of German and American artists proposed site-specific art projects for the Olympic buildings and grounds designed by architect Günther Behnisch in collaboration with the engineer Frei Otto. While the proposals by artists associated with dealer Heiner Friedrich—Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Mathias Goeritz, Walter DeMaria, Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, and others—were ultimately rejected and remained unexecuted, they nevertheless critically addressed a series of vexed historical questions that the accepted and executed art works ignored: What did it mean for the Games to return to Germany, which had last hosted the event under National Socialism? What was the relationship between the architectural designs and their site, a hilly landscape that contained the rubble of much of the architectural fabric of prewar Munich? And what did it mean for German and American artists to work collaboratively in this context? This talk will present these proposals and begin to answer some of these questions.
« previous event
next event »