Theater of the absurd - photographic exhibition by Anna and Bernhard Blume at the Milwaukee Art Museum on Feb. 9-Apr. 21, 1996

"Photo-Works" is the first major exhibition in the United States by means of German artists Anna and Bernhard Blume Organized through Dean Sobel, curator of contemporary art, and Tom Bamberger, adjunct curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum was comprised of 10 large photography installations, 50 medium scale photographs and 40 Polaroid collages. Accompanied by dint of the Blumes' first English language monograph, the catalog contains 200 black and white reproductions, 40 replete color reproductions, essays by the exhibition curators, an interview with the artists and essays by the agency of German scholars Bazon Brock and Wolfgang Kasprzik.

The 10 photo installations are monumental, billboard-size graphic novels that fill a cavernous, round pillared long open hall of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The images document a performance of pathological disorientation and the ecstasy of the oblivious state of mind of tourists and the German lower-middle class. As the couple director and actor, the Blume dres up in the stereotypical garb of the lower-middle class and photograph themselves. Like any performance it is best to meeting the Blumes' work in one Though clearly necessary, since there is no English language documentation of the Blumes' work, the catalog is for the greatest in quantity part disappointing, visually and verbally. The images are reproduc with far more contrast than the original prints and the translation of the Blumes' artist statements is questionably arch and borders upon the simple-minded. For example, Anna Blume's assertion about domicile Sweet Home:

Today's observations, mental and visual, are again what we call a photo-document. Fundamentally it was produc in my kitchen, and in space. Quite casually, of course! Since the last kitchen rage, potato chaos, French fries disaster we have been prepared for extraordinary facts in other words: the camera was there this time as well!. .

Putting aside the artists' statements for a jiffy let us focus on the exhibition and the essays by the agency of Sobel, Bamberger, Brock and Kasprzik. In Waldeslust (Forest Pleasures, 1982-83) Anna wears a loud patterned floral dress. Her hair is a hair-sprayed helmet. Bernhard wears a plaid jacket, dres shirt (buttoned all the way up without a tie) and dres slacks, and clinchs Anna's large white pocketbook. They smile a big toothy grin as they attitude in front of an acid rain devastated forest for a snapshot record of their holiday. They have the appearance almost proud and clearly unaware of the death that encompasss them. Their inappropriate dress clearly points at their ignorance of and inability to relate to nature. The absurdity of their posture and expressions is mind-boggling and disturbing. The work's humor is angry and cynical, evoking an echoing laughter from viewers.

The monumental scale of the work (each photograph is 98-1/2x50[inches] and each installation is made up to six to eight photographs) points to the scale and weight of the make submissive matter, which is the los of and disconnection from nature. The Blumes' tableaux look to document a cult from a missing civilization; visitors to the museum draw near upon the images like murals in an ancient, awe-inspiring tomb. The grid combination of parts to form a whole format of the installations orders the chaotic composition within individual frames, thus emphasizing the notion of disconnection. The apocalyptic message is sobering. The los transmited is profound. The scenes of the tourist in the images are real. Forests are being devastated. family are oblivious. Now the laughter at someone else's expenditure evokes guilt and embarrassment as the characters of the viewer and tourist are revers Kasprzik's point is right upon target: "We are forced to play this game as drawn out as we have the hardy feeling that those people do not really think whereas we, being able to justice about them, do."

The absurd is also heightened through the Blumes' adept use of sight gags and physical humor. Hysteria crosse the line into neurosis greatest in quantity profoundly in Kuchenkoller (Kitchen fury 1985) where potatoes take flight of their hold volition and Anna (as hausfrau) displays an expression - like a housewife encountering talking scrubbing blebs in a television advertisement. The pageant is absurdly humorous and ridiculous - not frightening. The Blumes' consistent part as trickster is effective, granting at times they take upon the "holier than thou," outsider persona of a pantocratic justice In this sense their rule is often cruel, sophomoric and duplicitous.

The catalog characterizes the Blumes' part as artists/intellectuals who merely notice taking no responsibility for resolving the riddles they illuminate. Sobel states: " . the Blumes staged their dramas within the setting they knew best: the domestic realm of the German Kleinburger." Sobel also cooly intellectualizes and implies a hierarchy of importance to the social status of the Blumes: "Both taught at high gymnasiums in Cologne and Dusseldorf to earn a living [emphasis mine], a pursuit they would undertake, upon and off, over the nearest thirty years" and "In 1967 Anna gave birth to twin girls and devot a great deal of of the next 10 years to the domestic chores [emphasis mine] associated with raising a family." In other portions of the catalog there is a philosophical distancing and elitism implied in Bernhard Blume's 1985 statement to Joseph Beuys: "As an artist I really have no plan for the salvation of Nature . . no overview, no all embracing insight, as you have." The reader is l to assume that the Blume believe that their lives and work are earthed in everyday life, yet they constantly distance themselves from these realities and utilize an art-theory rhetoric to attempt to shelter themselves from criticism. This rhetoric is aptly illustrated in this passage: "The violation and destruction of Nature, [i]or[/i] part of to the other our attempt to subject it utterly to cultural patterns of perception and general [i]or[/i] abstract notions of use . . All the rest, says Bernhard Johannes Blume is the spare-time metaphysics of Nature worshippers and verdant Messiahs." This notion of the artist-as-alien is absurd, for the Blume must have a stake in the los they portray. Other make notess by the Blumes are equally absurd and sarcastic. As they say in their statement for Forest Pleasures, "In this spirit, have a nice day."