Modernist Memories in Dutch

My Texte zur Kunst essay on Günther Förg, which was originally written for, but not published in, the catalogue of the Stedelijk Museum’s current Günther Förg retrospective, has been translated into Dutch for the latest issue of De Witte Raaf. The essay was de facto rejected the museum: imposing unaccaptable edits, or an unacceptable editing style, is a sure way of making an author withdraw an uncomfortable piece. Why fire someone when you have ways of making them quit? Entire paragraphs came marked with the truly brilliant editorial comment “Difficult passage: please rewrite,” without further specification; other parts were deemed “too cryptic” and/or “too abrasive” for “an international public, but even for an average Dutch audience.”

The real bone of contention was of course my critique of the Stedelijk’s policies in the 1990s (when Förg was a mainstay there), as well as in recent times. Criticism and critical art history are site-specific, and for me the only way to contribute to this Stedelijk publication was to provide a form of immanent institutional critique, taking Förg’s presence at the museum over the years as my point of departure. Perhaps not suprisingly, this was a bridge too far; in fact, what happened eerily mirrored what befell a catalogue essay by Mark Kremer from the 1990s, which I discuss in my piece. However, my awareness of context-specificity also meant that the comments on the current Stedelijk were in fact far more condensed and less explicit in the catalogue draft than in the more abrasive version that was ultimately published (in English and German) in Texte zur Kunst, and now in Dutch in De Witte Raaf.