Deutsches Historisches Museum - Verf�hrung Freiheit. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 - Blog

They hesitate a bit. You quickly reach the boundaries of freedom. Where does freedom begin and end? What began for the students as a thought and association process, is now to put into writing. The group sits down on the floor in the exhibition’s second to last room, ‘Self Experience: Testing the Limits’, in front the Dubuffet’s Le Géographié ( 1955) [The Geographied]. They don’t know the artist or title of the work. What associations does the work bring up? And how do you write about them?

The Geographied reminds the students of war, his body makes them think of a map, and his effect is one of coldness. The associations range from pictorial descriptions to specific feelings and abstract references. Now they have to turn it into text. The students are asked to describe how the Geographied sees himself and the world.

‘I’m the ‘Geograpied’. I live in every era and am always present. I have experienced the entire course of the existence of the world and stem from nature. I draw boundaries between countries. I limit people and wait for war—until they want more and their greed for land and power gains the upper hand. I am bitter, for what I manage to create gets destroyed. I am alone and lonely. I am damned and foreign in this world.’ (Shirin)

‘I experienced the First and Second World Wars. I fought on both sides, for the liberators and for the oppressors. I have seen what people can do to each other. I have seen the faces of the dead, the living, the sick, the strong, the great, the small, the women, the men, and the children, but I have never seen my inner face. Am I capable of causing suffering to others? I know myself, know what I am capable of, and what I cannot do, yet I am still alienated from myself, and do not who I am or what I am actually capable of. We humans define ourselves through the people around us and that makes me afraid, because we humans are capable of horrible things.’ (Leo)

Now the students are finally told the name of the artist and work. Dubuffet had his first exhibition at the age of twenty. He stopped working as an artist and became a wine merchant, but returned to art in the 1940s. He drew his inspiration from the ‘non-academic’ art, coined the term ‘art brut’, and wanted to know why people who are not artists paint.

The workshop uses creative writing to help the students gain access to and discuss the ideas presented by the exhibition. The Berlin gymnasium (high school) students were positive in their conclusions about the experience, from ‘exciting’ and ‘informative’ to ‘you don’t deal with such subjects every day’ and ‘it’s good to talk about where the boundaries and freedom of the others are.’