Chris Reinecke - Haben Sie Zeit zum Lesen?
During a museum visit in the early 1970s, Chris Reinecke was suspected of wanting to set the building on fire. As was her habit, she was carrying some cod liver oil, a vitamin supplement, which was mistaken for petrol! After terrorist group RAF (Red Army Faction) made its appearance, a profound distrust of socially engaged art emerged. Reinecke, perhaps more than anyone from that period, embodies the ethical dilemma of an individual torn between art and activism.
“I am Indian, I am Vietnamese, I am German and I am Chris Reinecke”
Chris Reinecke (°1936, Potsdam)
In 1961, Chris Reinecke graduated from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. Afterwards she went to the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, continuing her studies until 1965 in the studio of Gerhard Hoehme, where Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Franz Erhard Walther were also in training.
Through her then-husband, Jörg Immendorff, she met Joseph Beuys. She considered it strange that he taught in military costume and would go down into the cellar with his students to drink schnapps in a warlike fashion. It was a confusing period. While the RAF was arming itself, Reinecke was teaching women to solder and men to crochet. She does not believe in aura or genius. Through her playful use of trivial household materials, she started tampering with prevailing moral codes in both the field of gender and the relationship between art and the public. Phenomenology, the positioning of people and things, runs like a common thread through Reinecke's oeuvre and is closely related to her critical questioning of the position of the artist and art in society.
After a local conservative politician declared that people ‘should just build their own houses’, she came to her conclusions. Art is powerless against political reality. She joined the Mietersolidarität (solidarity with tenants) and responded to the general cynicism with, among other things, a design for mobile residential units. She used wool and a crochet needle to make a cocoon which could be hung between two lampposts. In addition, she designed a one-person cabin on wheels. “This helps everyone - you have your home and others have their peace and quiet!”
An important concept for Reinecke is 'changeability’. She is not interested in art that legitimizes the status quo – or her own oeuvre – to perpetuate the prevailing conditions, but in art that can exert influence on existing social structures. In just five years, Reinecke developed an oeuvre based on merciless self-criticism that quickly processes the insights gained, starting with the spatialization of painting, about participatory objects and installations, actions, teaching and social criticism.
She abandoned her art for a while but picked up the thread again in the eighties. For Reinecke, art is not an opportunity for finger-wagging, but an agitating ‘firemouse’ that can play a powerful role alongside the economy, politics and the media.
With special thanks to Chris Reinecke and Sebastian Schemann. For Chris Reinecke, for Isi Fiszman - for, not against. With kind regards, Lotte Beckwé
Click here to view the 3D file of the exhibition.
Items
Towards the end of her studies in 1965, Chris Reinecke primarily made works based on the depiction of simple objects - such as an apple, a teapot, an armchair - and their spatial expansion through shadows. She abandonded the two-dimensional surface of the canvas and explored the relationship between the object and the space surrounding it. This phenomenological approach (which she undoubtedly encountered in Paris as a legacy of surrealism) would take on a more direct social interpretation in her later work.
Interview with Chris Reinecke in the magazine Alarm, Nr.2, Mietersolidarität, 1970
In 1968, Reinecke was no longer making ‘works’, but instead focusing on drawings and text on paper, which she sometimes called ‘Appetizers’ [hors-d’œuvre] and which were distributed free of charge to interested parties in the LIDL-room or during actions. As was customary among politically activist students at the time, from then onwards she carried a ‘transport bag’ to distribute her ‘work’ in the form of pamphlets.
Aschenbahn - Olympia (Mietersolidarität), 1970
Flyer (schaufensterblatt) met opschrift: Asfaltbaan / Olympia, Transport – wedstrijd. Hier op dit terrein moeten mensen met klompvoeten in de schoenen natuurlijk "het onderspit delven".
Baut Euch Eure Häuser selbst (Selbsthilfe Wöhnen), 1970
Posters (Schaufensterplakate) in response to a statement made by a city representative at the June 1970 City Council meeting.
As a protest against the traditional definition of authorship, Chris Reinecke attempts an interactive approach with the chewing gum images. The visitor is invited to stick his or her chewing gum over an exhibited image, in this case Cologne Cathedral.
Female doing, Male doing - Ich zeige Frauen das Löten, ich zeige Männern das Häkeln, 1969
Photos of happening, Lidl-Akademie, Greifweg, Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. In her actions, Chris Reinecke reflects on ideal beauty, on how women should look like (alter ego Minna Beuff), and she held seminars where she thought men how to crochet and women how to solder, reversing this kind of typical gender activities.
Feuer-maus / Feuer-transport , 1970
Schaufenster-Plakat (shop window posters) on the theme of fire-mouse/fire transport.
"Transport under miserable conditions (South Pole)".
"What is the most important thing? The hand? The mouse? The key?"
"The secret of the grey mouse. Who sets a fire without recognising the culprit. The grey mouse slips into an open-cut boot, attracted by the bacon in the trap - the boot is filled with straw. Matches and a rubbing surface are attached to the bow of the trap.
The mouse touches the trap, the straw ignites and a fire starts."
"Mouse (wind up)"
"3 times faster. As fast as a flash. Roller skate. Turbine conveyor belt."
In 1968, Reinecke also introduced the bow as a motif. Men wear bows around their necks and women in their hair. The bow is closely related to her Packungen series, but came to perform a more ornamental function. By stamping sheets of paper with a bow motif, Reinecke invokes an ephemeral, situational work that is considered a gift to the public, while simultaneously putting pressure on the art market by imposing a period of validity of 8 months on the work. Can a work of art ever cease to be a work of art? It's an interesting performative contradiction. At that time, Reinecke was strictly anti-art market. She even broke off relations with Jörg Immendorff, because, while they had promised each other they would never market their work, Immendorff had secretly, during the LIDL-period, found a gallery.
Haben Sie Zeit zum Lesen?, 1968
The first thing I noticed about Chris Reinecke's early work was the large amount of text. Her oeuvre is made up of words of observation, acquired insight and conviction. The question ‘do you have time to read’ is twofold; on the one hand there is literally a lot of reading to do if you want to understand Reinecke's commitment properly, on the other hand ‘reading’ can be understood as a luxurious pastime, as laziness and a lack of action (cf. La liseuse de romans by Antoine Wiertz from 1853).
Accompanying her performative objects from the sixties, she made 'prescriptions' that invited the public to participate in the artwork. She also studied and documented the reactions of the audience. Eventually she developed her use of words further in a series of posters.
At the end of the sixties, Reinecke took on a desk job, doing 8 hours of repetitive and brainless work on a computer several days a week. This inspired her, among other things, to create ‘do you have time to read’. The work describes the expression of a machine that is alternately set to a coarse and fine pattern of circles. The sequence described is interrupted by pauses for perception (grabbing, hearing, feeling, moving), allowing creative moments to accompany the productive rhythm.
III Programm Veränderlich, 1969
During the action Zeit und Arbeit (performed successively in Trier, Copenhagen and Aachen, 1969) Chris Reinecke draws patterns with circles and lines for 8 hours. The monotonous action depicts her experience with computer work, and the aesthetic result of line drawings depicts the binary ‘thinking’ of a computer. For the third action, Programme III, she weaves a fabric from webbing and strips of wrapping paper, which is wrapped in cord and spread out like a net in the exhibition space. Underneath, there are sheets of paper on the floor. At the end of the work process, visitors are free to continue working. The actions are intended as a means of critically analysing working conditions and their compatibility with creative design.
Information No. 3. von Chris Reinecke , 1967
Newspaper with a text by Chris Reinecke about her own work, Überlegungen zu meinen Machwerken, and an analysis of her interactive work each time with a photo, the prescriptions and the reactions of the public.
Kaugummiplastik auf roter Bühne, 1970
In January 1970 the Lidl group performs some unplanned actions during the public rehearsals of Peter Weiss' Trotzki im Exil on the occasion of the reopening of the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus. During a panel discussion on the meaning of theatre (24.1.1970), Reinecke lies stretched out on stage and creates a 'chewing gum sculpture'.
Photo of the installation during Chris Reinecke: Cooperative, Galerie art intermedia (Helmut Rywelski), Cologne, 6.10-1.11.1967
With the Klima-Tisch, Chris Reinecke wanted to invite visitors to think about responsibility and self-determination. The message was: make your world yourself. The user of the table was able to simulate different climates by means of coloured light (illumination of colourfully painted landscape panels), a fan (wind), a toaster (heat), perfumes and cream sprays (scents).
At the end of the presentation, Reinecke habitually meticulously describes the workings of the Klima-Tisch in one of her protocols. "People didn't follow the rules, they sprinkled flour into the spinning fan and didn't take it seriously. They wanted to show off like little kids." That was not the desired result. The unrelenting self-criticism and analysis of her own work is an expression of the seriousness with which Reinecke works as an artist. On the one hand, she wants to open up the concept of the work; on the other hand, she thinks that the use of 'prescriptions' is necessary in order to arrive at new experiences. She does not regard the action as a failure, but as a phase in the learning process between the artist and the visitors to the exhibition, the end result of which is always an impulse to 'act differently'. Although she told me afterwards that in those days, female artists were taken less seriously anyway.
In the pamphlet ‘ART MUST BE’, Reinecke responds to the established order's recuperation of the anti-attitude. After the failed uprising of 1968, the ‘movement’ is reduced to a a scattered group of individuals that use the ‘revolution’ for personal gain. At this point, Reinecke no longer gained new perspectives from the politicized art scene, which had become entrenched in concepts such as progressiveness and authenticity, but from political work based on a democratic society in which art sheds its elitist pretensions.
The drawings in the margin represent men in an elevator, soaring to success. The man with the hat depicts Joseph Beuys. She told me that the distribution of this pamphlet was not met with enthusiasm. “What have you done?!” Immendorff had exclaimed, “this is your death sentence.”
Minna Beuff - Selbsthilfe Frauen, 1970
Schaufenster-Plakat Selbsthilfe Frauen, Minna Beuff
From the early 1970s onwards, Chris Reinecke operated within newly established platforms for political agitation: Büro Olympia, which had emerged from the earlier LIDL-activities, Selbsthilfe Wohnen and its successor Mietersolidarität Düsseldorf. From then on, Reinecke focused exclusively on the design of militant ‘posters’ to be displayed in the windows of their office on Neubrückstrasse. They are made in the style of the ROSTA posters of the Russian poet and artist Mayakovsky, dealing with current socio-political issues that revolve around power relations in the state. Like her Russian example, Reinecke strived for a closely interwoven combination of image and text. Reinecke called for solidarity against the status quo of power, money and property. This visual language is related to the paintings of Jörg Immendorff from that time, which will later be museumised as an example of ‘agitprop’ painting.
Reinecke created Minna Beuff, a strong, blonde woman with pronounced feminine forms. As a kind of superhero, she symbolises the struggle of women for autonomy and against socially established norms. Some drawings depicting Minna Beuff also show her sturdy Buffalo-like shoes. With this clumsy type of shoe, Reinecke wanted to protest against sporting ambitions, something that bothers her even more today, but which was triggered in the early 1970s by the imminent Olympic Games in Munich and the big money that was thrown at them. The sturdy shoes are also appropriate 48-hour footwear for occupations and marches, allowing Minna Beuff to march around the world.
The concerns expressed by Chris Reinecke with regard to housing shortages, transport and power imbalances sound strikingly contemporary.
Minna Beuff: Mischeis Trinken (Mietersolidarität)
With the pamphlet Mischeis Trinken, Chris Reinecke says goodbye to her colleagues at Büro Olympia and by extension to the entire art world. Minna Beuff (Reineck's alter ego) took the side of the people who have to drink their noodle soup in the corridor because so many of them live in one room. She decides to teach them to fight against the people who serve them the noodle soup while they themselves drink 'Mischeis'.
Ordnung von Raumgegenständen in Blau und Rot, 1966
Towards the end of her studies in 1965, Chris Reinecke primarily made works based on the depiction of simple objects - such as an apple, a teapot, an armchair - and their spatial expansion through shadows. She abandonded the two-dimensional surface of the canvas and explored the relationship between the object and the space surrounding it.
PACKUNG - weiblicher Körper, 1968
In 1967, Reinecke started creating the series Packungen, or ‘packages’, whose central theme is the relationship between visual perception and other sensory forms of perception, in particular feeling and grabbing. The package ensures a gift remains a surprise or offers protection during transport. The series mainly involves drawings or paintings of female and male nudes on wrapping paper. Here, the sensuality of the Umgebungskleider is more erotically charged.
PACKUNG 2 - männliche Anatomie, 1968
In 1967, Reinecke started creating the series Packungen, or ‘packages’, whose central theme is the relationship between visual perception and other sensory forms of perception, in particular feeling and grabbing. The package ensures a gift remains a surprise or offers protection during transport. The series mainly involves drawings or paintings of female and male nudes on wrapping paper. Here, the sensuality of the Umgebungskleider is more erotically charged.
In 1967, Reinecke started creating the series Packungen, or ‘packages’, whose central theme is the relationship between visual perception and other sensory forms of perception, in particular feeling and grabbing. The package ensures a gift remains a surprise or offers protection during transport. The series mainly involves drawings or paintings of female and male nudes on wrapping paper. Here, the sensuality of the Umgebungskleider is more erotically charged.
Schutz gegen Anfassen is part of a series of small works on cardboard hidden in pieces of denim that are sewn up and written on with felt-tip pen, stamped 'REINECKE' (1969-70). In addition to 'protection against touching', the following words feature in the series: leafing through, scratching, pricking, folding, creasing, cracking, greasing. Although they were carefully stitched up, described and stamped by Chris Reinecke, these pieces of material undermine every form of artistic virtuosity. This work struck me as a concrete poetic harbinger of punk and the general shift from auratic 'art-can-change-the-world' ideals to a disillusionment in a rough and trivial society. The sensuality stemming from phenomenology that had led to an interactive art practice was suddenly widespread and as early as 1969, Reinecke noticed the annoying tendency among the audience to touch everything. She considered sensuality exhausted and no longer a sufficient method for social change.
From an interview with the artist on the 22nd of January 2021: “I was very angry and I no longer wanted people to touch things, as had become the fashion in art. The idea was to not see and not touch. The fabric is from one of Jörg Immendorff's shirts.”
Sie haben die Macht (Mietersolidarität), 1970
From the early 1970s onwards, Chris Reinecke operated within newly established platforms for political agitation: Büro Olympia, which had emerged from the earlier LIDL-activities, Selbsthilfe Wohnen and its successor Mietersolidarität Düsseldorf. From then on, Reinecke focused exclusively on the design of militant ‘posters’ to be displayed in the windows of their office on Neubrückstrasse. They are made in the style of the ROSTA posters of the Russian poet and artist Mayakovsky, dealing with current socio-political issues that revolve around power relations in the state. Like her Russian example, Reinecke strived for a closely interwoven combination of image and text. Reinecke called for solidarity against the status quo of power, money and property. This visual language is related to the paintings of Jörg Immendorff from that time, which will later be museumised as an example of ‘agitprop’ painting.
Sport + Transport (Mietersolidarität)
Schaufenster-Plakat
Strategische Zeichnung (Mietersolidarität), 1970
Affiche (Schaufensterplakate) van een strategische tekening gesitueerd aan het centrale park van Düsseldorf, Hofgarten, omgeven met het Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, de Chase-Manhattan-Bank en het Thyssenhochhaus wiens architectuur gestalte geeft aan het economisch wonder van het naoorlogse Duitsland.
Wir machen die Stadt in der Stadt (Mietersolidarität), 1970
Affiche met onderstaand opschrift, gesitueerd aan het centrale park van Düsseldorf, Hofgarten, omgeven met het Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, de Chase-Manhattan-Bank en het Thyssenhochhaus wiens architectuur gestalte geeft aan het economisch wonder van het naoorlogse Duitsland.
Wij maken de stad in de stad
Tegen woning-, grond en bodem-, luchtspeculatie
Wij tonen de eerste stap naar de realisatie van de stad van het volk
Het land moet van iedereen zijn - zonder voorbeschikking van de bouwleeuwen, de bankleeuwen en de stadsleeuw!
Lucht is nog steeds huur- en belastingvrij voor hoelang nog?
We hebben meer schoolpsychologen nodig! We hebben meer en goede jeugdcentra nodig!
Wij hebben veel ruimte nodig voor kleuterscholen, kinderdagverblijven, centra voor kwetsbare en verstoten kinderen en jongeren!
We hebben geen dure flats nodig, maar goede en goedkope woningen!
We hebben gratis kleuterscholen nodig!
De werkende huisvrouw heeft gratis kleuterscholen nodig!
We hebben recht op genoeg kleuterscholen, speeltuinen, jeugdcentra, bejaardentehuizen...
Iedereen heeft recht op goede en goedkope huisvesting!
Bouw mee aan de STAD VAN HET VOLK!
During the action Zeit und Arbeit (performed successively in Trier, Copenhagen and Aachen, 1969) Chris Reinecke draws patterns with circles and lines for 8 hours. The monotonous action depicts her experience with computer work, and the aesthetic result of line drawings depicts the binary ‘thinking’ of a computer. For the third action, Programme III, she weaves a fabric from webbing and strips of wrapping paper, which is wrapped in cord and spread out like a net in the exhibition space. Underneath, there are sheets of paper on the floor. At the end of the work process, visitors are free to continue working. The actions are intended as a means of critically analysing working conditions and their compatibility with creative design.