Museums and Culture

I apologize for my delay in posting this blog.  So bear with me as I’m writing this more than a month after the fact.

The Godwin-Ternbach Museum and the Department of Comparative Literature sponsored Jue Loffelholz’s lecture on art, poetry, and nonsense.  From the title of the program, I had a preconceived notion that I would be going to a poetry reading.  I was in for a splendid surprise.  Loffelholz is more than a poet, and I would argue, he isn’t a poet at all.  But he isn’t an artist either.  I believe that he even said he’d rather not be categorized.  Loffelholz aims to make a statement – to be provocative in the most nonsensical sense.  He rejects the combination of politics and art – he is not anarchical and doesn’t aim to send any sort of political message through his works.  It was very difficult to hear Loffelholz at the lecture because he refused to use a microphone.  At first, I thought it was simply a mistake that there wasn’t any amplification.  But after conversing with Loffelholz, I learned that he didn’t use a microphone because, to paraphrase him, “that’s what politicians do”.  His rejection of conformity is extremely strong, and very present in his “art.”

-He published a book of absolute nonsense.  He changed the words of another author’s text completely, making it nonsensical.
-He reacted to a fence put up in Germany and created a 7 mile chalk circle around Kassel, Germany and was actually brought to court because of it – there were environmental concerns and it caused a traffic accident! He even gave the police FAKE documents saying that the “artwork” was authorized.
-He put up signs on museum walls that matched the curator’s labeling system. “Picture temporary unavailable” it said.
-He bought a used book and republished it with only the underlined and circled annotations (no words).
-He took a book and removed all of the letters and left only punctuations and quotations and such.
-He made sculpture out of clay by just mushing it around with his mouth.
-He bought a crappy rug off of eBay, stretched it like a canvas, and shipped it to a museum. It’s now worth a lot of money.
-He took an idea from Duchamp, replicating Rembrandt’s Nightwatch and used it to cover ironing boards.  He wanted to cut up the original painting, but quite understandably, was not allowed to do this.

What I really enjoyed was the fact that he didn’t attempt to constrain his work in the category of art.  He uses pseudonyms and refuses to have a website.  Jue Loffelholz may not even be his name, and probably isn’t!  He doesn’t have an urge to be found or remembered.  His work is temporary, seen by a lucky few, like me!  The only downfall to this was the fact that I came home extremely excited to tell everyone about the crazy things that Loffelholz had done, but could not find any images or news stories covering these events.  That being said, I was able to find humor in everything he showed us.  I didn’t need to be critical – I didn’t need to ask “is this really art?”  I could genuinely enjoy my experience, even if it was hard to hear him speak.

Marina B. Nebro