Politics & Art - Art & Politics
Since 1999 Jens Liebchen has photographed artists like Georg Baselitz, Christian Boltanski, Jenny Holzer, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and many others, who had been invited to create artworks for the Berlin Reichstag Building. Politics & Art – Art & Politics has been published as a book in 2004, including essays by Wolfgang Thierse, Andreas Kaernbach and Boris Groys. The exhibition became part of the international art programme of the Goethe Institute and has been exhibited worldwide.
»Jens Liebchen has photographed many prominent artists in front of their works in the Reichstag Building. The results are unique portraits of these artists that reveal the individuality of each artistic personality and, at the same time, explore the tense relationship between the imposing public architecture and the artworks placed in this political environment. Taken as a whole, the portraits provide a fascinating survey of the current art scene, from its recognised international ‘stars’ to a younger generation of emerging artists.
What gives Jens Liebchen’s project its particular significance is the fact that it documents and photographically interprets an extraordinary moment in German parliamentary history. Never before has the German parliament devoted so much attention to the presentation of art in its own buildings in a comparable way. Never before has it shown such willingness to embrace the risks involved in engagement with artistic creativity.
And this is not just a one-way street: never before have such significant artists been prepared to enter into dialogue with politics. Thus, the planning and construction of the German Bundestag’s buildings in Berlin opened a new chapter in the often problematic history of encounters between the two spheres of art and politics.«
Andreas Kaernbach, Curator of the Art Collection of the German Bundestag
Consult book version
