More than art

Translated from German http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/maori-portraits-mehr-als-nur-kunst.2156.de.html?dram:article_id=303584

Never before the "Maori portraits" by Gottfried Lindauer had been seen outside of New Zealand. Now they are for the first time on tour and can be seen in Berlin. However, this was linked to a condition.

Maori - Gospel singing

A procession of singing and dancing women and men, the men almost naked, some with some feathers in their hair and tattooed on their whole body, the women adorned with colorful robes. So it goes through the halls of the Old National Gallery, past the paintings of German Romanticism and Classicism, over the paintings of Gottfried Lindauer, all portraits of the ancestors of those Maori who here are now provided with a blessing image after image and producing therefore a connection between the place of the ancestors, New Zealand and the place of the creator of these images, Central Europe, produce.

Maori - blessing song

These pictures are more than images, says then a visibly moved Udo Kittelmann, the director of the National Gallery, they are like living beings who have made the trip.

"I freely admit that with the ceremony I just even got the idea of wanting to no longer hold the press conference at all, because it is very moving since it also makes it very clear that we are in just such in a different atmosphere, in an alien atmosphere. "

Living tradition

Such a spectacle has probably the  Old National Gallery really never seen, and although the Maori at their blessing ceremony are accompanied readily by a whole horde of media representatives, you can feel but that this is not about a folkloric event, but a living tradition , And just this in turn makes the Maori Portraits Gottfried Lindauer. So extraordinary.

The oil painting "Mrs Paramena" (1885) by Gottfried Lindauer - the picture is part of the exhibition "The Maori Portraits". (picture alliance / dpa / Auckland Art Gallery)

For the painter born in 1839 in the Czech Pilsen and educated in Vienna maintains in his paintings a recognizable European style of his time, a representative realism, as we know from monarch’s portraits. However afterwards Lindauer emigrated to New Zealand in 1874, made a career in the new environment as a portraitist. Curator Britta Schmitz:

"The professional portraits in the style of a courtly portrait type of court representation showed the rare and sacred feathers, the precious necklaces, traditional and new, modern weapons. The assimilation into the new clothes of the colonialists as well as achievements, as Maori could enter parliament and become politicians. "

The Maori long time oppressed by the white colonial discovered gradually ways and means to adapt to the conditions of colonial rule. These included not only careers in the institutions, but also images, which showed the leading Maori-style portraits of European domination. In this way Gottfried Lindauer was with his commissioned by the Maori self-portraits a part of their tradition.

Guardian of treasure

And Rhana Devenport, Director of the Auckland Art Gallery, which houses these pictures treasure, know that every museum that displays these images, is itself a part of this tradition.

"The works of Gottfried Lindauer  does not belong to us. The whole Maori resources of our collection does not belong to us. We are the guardians of this treasure, and this connection to the works is crucial. It concerns the entire holdings of the Auckland Art Gallery, and this is in the world of museums a unique concept. "

It’s also unique the Gottfried Lindauer's work in the apparent ease with which joins the European art history with the tribal traditions Oceania. It removes itself from the usual categories of reception; it does not live by the admiration of exotic beauty, as later the South Pacific Pictures Gauguin or Emil Nolde.

There is also no ethnological work that aims only about the tradition of a dying culture. For the Maori, it is still part of their present and as such relevant and actually more than just art, as art, at least in the traditional European sense.

Angelika Klüssendorf " The GDR was like a huge children's home "

Angelika Klüssendorf is a kitsch annihilator. A conversation about discarding, breaking away, the hideousness of Frankfurt and about her new novel "April". Interview : Wiebke Porombka

Three years ago Angelika Klüssendorf was nominated for her novel The Girl for the German Book Prize. The story about a cruel growing up in the GDR - between flogging, drinking mother and the children's home - was precisely of deep sadness because Klüssendorf renounced any kind of sentimentality . But only through this resignation was probably possible that this lean , nameless and constantly rebellious girl appeared never undignified.

The new novel by Angelika Klüssendorf , April, starts from a where The Girl ends . A young woman gets her first own room. Although this is only assigned to sublet by a gruff old man and the youth welfare, as well as her job as an office assistant at high-tension power plant it still feels like a step towards freedom- at first. For breaking away is not easy for someone like April. A suicide attempt and a subsequent stay in psychiatry show how desperately April is actually, even if she shows herself rough outside.

ZEIT ONLINE : After reading your novel April ,creeps the feeling that you shouldn’t be asked any questions . What is special about your book is precisely its laconic. Everything superfluous is deleted. That’s why questions appear suddenly a bit superfluous.

Angelika Klüssendorf : I like that ! I think anyways that a writer should rather be invisible. The questions that you open up should ask the readers themselves. But this is quite generally the case with April or with any other books In this respect: ask questions calmly.

Angelika Klüssendorf was born in Ahrensburg 1958. Since 1961 she lived in Leipzig, until she moved to West Germany in 1985. Today she lives near Berlin. She has published, among other things, the narrative volumes From all the heavens and Amateure, as well as the novels All live this way and The girl with whom she was on the shortlist for the German Book Prize 2011 . Klüssendorfs new novel April was published by Kiepenheuer & Petrovich ( 224 pp , € 18.99) .

ZEIT ONLINE : Is April a continuation of your novel The Girl of the Year 2011?

Klüssendorf : When I was about to write The Girl , I had not planned a sequel. When I had finished writing The Girl, I thought the story would actually need to be continued. Yet both books are self-contained. But is nice of course if you read both.

ZEIT ONLINE : The young woman , the protagonist of the novel gives herself at the beginning even a name : April . Why this one?

Klüssendorf : She was dissatisfied with all the names that have been applied from the outside. And April of Deep Purple is her favourite song. Of course you can also think of the month, which represents quite well her mood . She also calls later her own son Julius. With the seasons she has somehow a connection.

ZEIT ONLINE : Giving yourself a name is an act of emancipation ?

Klüssendorf : In any case is so. is above all Especially towards The Girl that hadn’t got a name. Now it’s also possible to put together the two names: The Girl April.

ZEIT ONLINE : But can this symbolic emancipation bring actually a real liberation? Will April ever be able to make really what she wants?

Klüssendorf : How far can a man ever do what he wants ? April has, I believe. Even more difficulties than other people because she has no idea or fewer ideas of herself than other people in her age. But I certainly hope that she can make it a day or will do what she wants. That is the task that you have in your life before you die, to find your own identity: Why was I there at all ? I have lived according to me? Have I fulfilled my dreams and desires?

ZEIT ONLINE : In this novel she still doesn’t reach them. Rather, one has the impression that April is caught in a vicious cycle. She has not been treated well as a child from her parents, has never experienced security. And now maybe not the same thing happens, but something similar, as it is mother. It seems that she cannot establish a real relationship with her son. Also, the alcohol problem of her parents continues in her life. Is that an inevitability, from which one can hardly escape, even when his own past was painful?

Klüssendorf : I do not think that you can generalize . And in April, there 's also this: you going on always two steps and one back. But she goes one step forward even at when she falls. That's the important thing: the ever - again - try. Then she gets back one on top or they are themselves one on top of it, but then it goes on. And at the end she is twenty steps forward and ten declined. But then remain at least ten steps.

ZEIT ONLINE : April once betrays her tactics to avoid having to cry : She analyses a man when he confronts her , into his component parts . She dissected him. Is that her narrative tactics? Disassemble, reduce, rather than embellish and illustrate ?

Klüssendorf : It is most important to me , not to judge . Any assessment of what I tell there should be eliminated from the outset. Apart from the reduced is also quite simple to me proper language for this figure. It can be just as life for right or wrong, so also the language of a figure can be right or wrong. Finding this correct language for a figure is my work.

ZEIT ONLINE : How would you describe this work ?

Klüssendorf : This is a discard. discarding and then again discarding. It has required at least thirty rewriting. I 'm like a sculptor who worked his stone . Here's something away and then again. I have deleted pages, omitted whole chapter.

ZEIT ONLINE : Where are all these things you discard ? Is there an archive?

Klüssendorf : This has all gone ! I do like this with all my books: If a book is finished, all the documents will be destroyed. Otherwise my whole errors would sometime come to light. Or my kitsch. Nope, everything away immediately!

ZEIT ONLINE : What a pity ! Her books are so, their just for their cool look - estimated brittle language - in the best sense. And then one day you find in your basement, the large Kitsch box. That would be great!

Klüssendorf : That would be horrible!

ZEIT ONLINE : Is the decision to write April in the third person connected with this ?

Klüssendorf : The third person allows a distance that is very important to me . From the outset , even when approaching a character , I need this distance , the same yes also allows a high degree of accuracy . It is much easier for everything that happens there and is said to check again.

ZEIT ONLINE : Is April a tale of Eastern Germany?

Klüssendorf : While I would say that the story of The girl could have been set anywhere , I think that for April, the figure in the West would have been another .

ZEIT ONLINE : April decides then to go to the West .

Klüssendorf : Not in the West ,to West Berlin . West Berlin, then in 1984, was not the Federal Republic, which was the only place where one has found a bit of the East. That was a great time. That was the best time in my life.

ZEIT ONLINE : In your life ? Now you have told us! As a reader, the throwing together of author and character indeed considered the biggest faux pas ever . In April you will be placed properly in this regard to the test. Definitely superior to many critics, whether they had better do so, as they would not notice the overlap with your biography.

Klüssendorf : April is fiction with many biographical details from me . That does every writer in one way or another. Otherwise we're a different person. But anyway: The most authentic moment is the one in which I wrote the book. This is more authentic than anything that has happened 20 , 30 , 40 years ago .

ZEIT ONLINE : Do you think that East Germans perceive the image of the GDR , they are characterized as too negative ?

Klüssendorf : Is not it the other way around ? My view is but a bright and positive. April has often damn lucky. You will be brought to justice. But then there's this Mr. Bluemel from the collective to help her. It comes in psychiatry, because it has a great doctor. Then she goes a bit to rack, then she meets Irma, who helps her out there again. These people are all flukes and at the same time also provide authorities, who belonged to the GDR. But it's clear East nostalgia in my view is not at all natural. I do not think also that April would have been easier in the West at that time with its toughness and all that she does.

ZEIT ONLINE : So, is no exemption for April , when she finally goes to the West ?

Klüssendorf : On the one hand , on the other hand . On one hand, she leaves her home . It is in the GDR that she really felt as home. On the other hand, it is because the tightness in her head is also a corner in this country. You just want to have the choice. That's just what constitutes freedom. With the idea of ​​the Western countries also was a bit scary. For me was so in any case as I went to the West.

ZEIT ONLINE: How so?

Klüssendorf : I thought at the time , I have to ask this departure from the GDR , because I want to develop myself . But at the same time I just imagined the West as cold. I thought the roads are all tiled, the people are cool - because I am facing the capitalist! The GDR was like a huge children's home when one is released from, then you have to find your way.

ZEIT ONLINE : Have you ever really over done , not only to West Berlin , but in the real west ? After Paderborn,for example?

Klüssendorf : Frankfurt am Main , twice three years. That was the horror. Even the sidewalks are somehow artificial. In the six years that I lived there, I was only happy when I closed my eyes and I imagined : I am now back in Berlin.