Continuing the theme of art in the feminist movement, today we looked at the works of Rosemarie Trockel, and in particular the pieces entitled "Knit works."
Rosemarie Trockel was born in 1959 in the German town of Schwerte, a suburb of Dortmund in the north-Rhine -Westphalia region. She therefore grew up during the 1960s & 70s, - a quite turbulent part of Germany's history, after fully emerging from the Second World War. She now lives and works in Cologne, not far from her birthplace & roots, some 60 or so Km to the north east.
What Dr Rowley finds particularly interesting in Trockel's work is the seemingly un-fathom-ability of it.
The first piece of art to be scrutinised today is "Two balaclavas" 1990, machine knitted balaklavas fitted onto manikin happens. The design for both these balaclavas has been taken from the works of Bridget Riley, and her particular designs which were created and then duplicated by a machine knitting process. Trockels work is about the feminist sexuality, the explotation of women, and here, the femininity of the knitting process, but on an industrial scale. It also brings in the concept of crafted items and the handmade history in art (going back to William Morris on one level), but then introducing its industrialisation as a contemporary artwork and hence pushing it into "high art" status.
Other designs that Truckel has used in her works include the Comunist Soviet Union's hammer and sickle as a knitted item, placed onto a red striped background as found on the stars and stripes flag of the USA, together with another machine knitted work of the swastika, both items being created in 1987, a time when Germany was becoming much, much more stable from the turmoil of the 1970s, whilst it was undergoing huge political reform.
Rosemarie Truckel quite often uses iconic designs as the basis of the knitted work, which for example, also include the classic "wool mark" and also the Hugh Heffner "Bunny-Girl" logo.
In the work, entitled "Continental divide" created in 1994, Truckel creates a 'feminised' style of the two headed jumper, which has been photographed with twin models wearing it. This is an allusion to the Berlin Wall coming down, and also the reunification of Germany as a whole.
Switching back to the symbolism of the balaclava, this alludes also to the 1972, Black September gang, when balaclavas were extensively used by terrorists, and the murder of the Israeli Olympic team whilst they were residing within the Olympic village during the Munich Olympics of 1972.
Another iconic image may be that of Patty Hearst, the rich American millionaire's daughter, who was taken hostage by the Symbionese liberation organisation.
There is also a reference to the Bade-Minehoff gang, which the German artist Gerhart Richter created a "Youth Portrait" of in 1988, an oil on canvas, which was in fact a portrait of the younger Minehoff prior to her fame during the seige, some 10 years earlier in 1978. (The graphical history of the Baader-Meinhof gang was recreated by Gerhart Richter through his series of works entitled "October" some 10 years later. (This has been shown recently at the Tate modern in London too)). Richter's work is ostensibly about the imprisonment of the dying Baader-Meinhof gang. Richter's work is a very different feeling or response to that of Rosemarie Truckel. Both have a quality of a feminist view, but are very different within their structure.
An interesting article is an hour-long video on you Tube entitled "Baader-Meinhof in love with terror". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnUnR9S4vLo
This video starts with footage in Somalia in Mogadishu on 18 October 1977, which to some was the climax of a war against capitalism through the acts of terrorism. This war against capitalism reached a peak, particularly in Germany in the 1970s, where an attempted communist revolution was in full swing. In fact, this communist revolution originally started in 1968, during the Berlin riots, and was a communist backlash against the German authorities which still seemed to maintain a number of ex-Nazi party leaders within its government.
Truckel often seems to play on a feminist position and this can be seen quite clearly in an untitled works where she has placed a model in front of the George Baselitz's painting, which alludes to an earlier piece of feminist exploitation, where the designer Cecil Beaton created a photograph for Vogue magazine in 1951. By placing a model in front of a painting by Jackson Pollock. In both these works, the feminist political point is being made about models being exploited and juxtaposed with art for art's sake.
Rosemarie Truckel also parodies a number of earlier modernist and post modernist artists, for example, Carl Andre and his works "Satier", which were made from a sheet of lead placed on top of a sheet of copper.
In Truckel's parody, this is depicted in "hotplates" (1991), which is a piece of work that is made from steel and black lacquer, together with real electric oven hotplates, in order to represent the hotplates of an oven.
Another parody, this time being that of the very masculine work by Robert Smithson entitled "Spiral Jetty" (1970) takes the reference of Smithsons' work and turns into a feminine item, almost alluding to the womb and together with fallopian tubes.
Truckel also writes and makes books such as "my films just make me laugh." (1992) on title.
Within this work she has referenced Brigette Bardot, a 1960s and 70s film icon of the beautiful Frenchwoman. This has been later parodied by Truckel by making a cast of North-sea grey seal, which appears to be dead and hanging upside down, but also wearing a blonde wig. This is an extremely effective and affected charged symbol of death and in my opinion hints at the death of the exploitation of the typical blonde model such as Brigette Bardot.
Another drawing which alludes to Truckels' feminist tendencies, is that of the late Jackie Onasis, or Jackie Kennedy, who is depicted within this drawing with horns, like the devil.
At the 1997 dOCUMENTA X exhibition Rosemarie Truckel collaborated with Carsten Höllier, in her works entitled "a house for pigs and people." (1997). I wondered if this is a piece of works about the anxiety of the German Bougiuose, but it may equally be about the treatment of pigs held in captivity? There is also a suggestion of the juxtaposition between clean and unclean? These are often seen as troubled regions of how humans exist, and creates an uncomfortable position. Truckel may be creating a track or a path back through the green movement (which she is also interested in), through to the history to the Baader-Meinhof?...
Rosemarie Truckel's themes and works are never "didactic". They do not hit you over the head with their meanings. There is always something hidden and ambiguous about what she creates. This can be seen quite vividly in the works "A Cosmos" (2012 to 13) exhibited at the new Museum in New York. Within this work there appears to be a palm tree suspended upside down from the ceiling. Within the room with its back wall completely tiled in small white 4"x4" clinical white tiles. On the wall to the left-hand side is a small photographic image of the spider, in fact, a large tarantula, covering the genital region of a woman lying on her back semi-naked. On the right-hand side of the room are fixed to the wall appears to be a large nugget like object, again painted white, which at first sight looks like a piece of volcanic lava or perhaps an alien meteorite. So, what do these images allude? Is the upside down palm tree, a reference to Yggdrasil and the tree of life being turned upside down similar to our new culture in the new millennium? Are the white ceramic tiles on the back wall, a reference to the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Nazi Germany? What does the strange object, the meteorite alludes to?
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