{"id":2760,"date":"2021-10-14T13:03:36","date_gmt":"2021-10-14T11:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/herito.pl\/?post_type=artykul&p=2760"},"modified":"2023-07-17T14:42:37","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T12:42:37","slug":"maurizio-cattelan-a-female-christ","status":"publish","type":"artykul","link":"https:\/\/herito.pl\/en\/artykul\/maurizio-cattelan-a-female-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"Kneeling Hitler"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Maurizio Cattelan, AMEN<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw<\/strong>
\n15 November 2012 \u2013 24 February 2013<\/strong>
\nwww.csw.art.pl<\/strong><\/p>\n

The taxi driver who is taking us to Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street says he will go with us as he wants to see Hitler, too. Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street, some two hundred steps long, is the last extant part of the Warsaw Ghetto. When I was here three years ago, both sides of the street were authentic \u2013 grim, grey facades with blind windows, in which some artist had installed large-scale photographs of people who had lived and died in the Ghetto, but in these three years the left-hand side of the street had been renovated, yellow plaster started shining, the ground floor in one of the townhouses was occupied by a bank, so the Ghetto had shrunk to a few buildings on the right-hand side. At the entrance to one of them, on a white wooden door with flakes of white paint pealing off, a hexagonal hole has been cut out at eye level, two hands high and one hand wide. And that is all, no trace of a poster, a sign or a caretaker; only occasionally a middle-aged man appears in these freezing cold days, in a sheepskin coat, usually grasping a bottle of beer, at first sight a local drunk or homeless, who, when you ask him where Hitler is, will point to the six-angled opening and take the opportunity to introduce himself as a guard, but no one will believe him.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 small figure of Hitler seen from behind, at\u00a0the\u00a0end of the\u00a0hallway before a\u00a0courtyard lit by the\u00a0light from the\u00a0cloudy winter sky, does not look like an\u00a0exhibit. We\u00a0do\u00a0not see his face, but his figure down in the\u00a0hallway is so clear that he seems alive. What we\u00a0do\u00a0not see, we\u00a0remember from photographs published in newspapers, political magazines and scandal\u2011loving periodicals, but also from exhibition posters in front of the\u00a0gallery where other works are displayed. Adolf Hitler is kneeling, with his hands clasped in prayer, his eyes heavenward, a\u00a0contrite Catholic praying to God. He is wearing the\u00a0unfashionable grey clothes in which we\u00a0know him, mostly in unofficial situations, the\u00a0mountain picnics in Berchtesgaden, or when he is speaking to Eva and friends in a\u00a0relaxed mood.<\/p>\n

Cattelan did not make a\u00a0caricature of him. Many people do. Caricaturing Hitler allows us to avoid disgust in confrontation with him, in fiction or in moral reflection. The\u00a0only thing Cattelan did was to adapt the\u00a0face to the\u00a0act of prayer. His is not grim, he is not furious as we\u00a0know him, but as such he also is not quite unfamiliar to us. We\u00a0know it is him, we\u00a0have seen him, although never in a\u00a0church. He was not a\u00a0practising Christian but he made sure a\u00a0concordat with the\u00a0Vatican was signed, which, among other things, guaranteed a\u00a0tacit acceptance of the\u00a0popes Pius XI and Pius XII for all aspects of his policies, and condoning them. As far as traditions were concerned, he was a\u00a0Catholic from an\u00a0Austrian backwater. It was not difficult for him to fall down to his knees.<\/p>\n

I look at him kneeling and something snaps inside me. The scene is moving, for we need it and for a moment we believe in it although it is impossible. Although Hitler has been dead for almost 68 years, although we know that he never ever expressed contrition in front of witnesses, although he never fell to his knees, for some reason we need this scene of repentance. We are well aware that it would not change anything if in the last moment of his life Hitler did what Cattelan\u2019s sculpture is showing. But the thought of expressing remorse is liberating, shakes us and forces us to believe in it. Perhaps it is imprinted in our cultural code \u2013 common for us and those who, not being Christians, are shareholders of the Euro-Asiatic civilisation \u2013 perhaps it is just our Catholic sentiment, which never leaves us, even if we are atheists, or perhaps it is just an ordinary human need for consolation and hope, even when it is not reasonable and when consolation is no longer possible.<\/p>\n

Cattelan has presented his Hitler in various ways, depending on the\u00a0occasion and the\u00a0exhibition in question. Hitler has already kneeled on a\u00a0gallery floor, hung from a\u00a0ceiling, appeared on a\u00a0photograph and on a\u00a0poster. But the\u00a0work shown in the\u00a0relic of the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto acquires many connotations \u2013 as soon as we\u00a0formulate one, at\u00a0least two new ones emerge from it \u2013 and a\u00a0gravity transcending the\u00a0artistic gesture itself and the\u00a0genre. In such situations, the\u00a0first people to comment on it are those who believe that such a\u00a0thing should be shut down as soon as possible. As could have been expected, this time the\u00a0censoring mantle was donned by Efraim Zuroff, who had not understood anything at\u00a0all, as is usual for guardians of places of memory and activists when they pass from assessing human evil and political intolerance to assessing works of art.<\/p>\n

In Warsaw, on Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street, Hitler found himself outside the gallery space, without concrete, glass and limelight, he found himself outside this artificial context which protects the viewer from any feelings of distaste other than aesthetic ones. Without posters, curators, guards \u2013 but with an accidental drunk playing the latter role \u2013 only with the indirect information that Hitler might be somewhere around, and he appears like a ghost. Or like an ordinary man, who really came to the Ghetto to kneel down and pray. In some probable imaginary sequence of events, we can easily imagine that it is really him, Adolf Hitler, who came here from somewhere and is now kneeling in front of a Jewish courtyard, in front of this invisible \u2013 from our perspective \u2013 monument to what is part of our common knowledge. The viewer has to tremble, has to experience an inner trauma when looking at the Nazi leader through a hole in a door.<\/p>\n

Can this scene offend the\u00a0silent memory of the\u00a0victims of the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto or of all murdered European Jews, as Zuroff believes? No, for there is no logical train of thought which would lead to that. There is no offence, there cannot be, regardless of what anyone thinks or feels. But at\u00a0the\u00a0same time the\u00a0scene is powerful, unbearable in its emotional intensity, ominous, for the\u00a0eye breaks into pieces in contact with it as if it were made of porcelain. Although we\u00a0deeply desire to see this contrition, it repels and abhors us, we\u00a0would like to escape from it, it would be easier for us if we\u00a0did not see it: Hitler in the\u00a0Warsaw Ghetto, kneeling and praying to God\u2026<\/p>\n

Here is a\u00a0more recent connotation of Cattelan\u2019s work. On December 7th 1970, during a\u00a0visit to Poland to lay a\u00a0wreath under the\u00a0monument to the\u00a0Heroes of the\u00a0Ghetto, German Chancellor Willy Brandt did something unexpected: he kneeled down and clasped his hands, not in prayer but in humility. He was an\u00a0atheist and did not have anything to pray to, but he was also an\u00a0anti\u2011fascist, who had never, even passively, served the\u00a0Nazis. Brandt, a\u00a0socialist, anti\u2011fascist conspirator, an\u00a0emigrant in Norway, had less to do\u00a0with Nazi crimes than most Europeans, who aided and abetted the\u00a0Nazis through their passivity. But in his own mind he bore responsibility for all the\u00a0Nazi crimes just because he was German. This Kniefall von Warschau<\/em> perhaps the\u00a0most adequately defined the\u00a0concept of collective responsibility. And not just the\u00a0German one. It attracted a\u00a0furious anger of unclear consciences but also of misunderstanding, human stupidity, imperviousness of spirit of the\u00a0commissars, also evinced by Zuroff, although he is not judging Brandt but Hitler.<\/p>\n

Here is the connotation: before arriving in Warsaw, Cattelan\u2019s work could hardly evoke associations with Brandt, but now, when we look at it through a hole in a door, it seems to us that it was created with the chancellor in mind. But even such a suspicion would be a mistake, Cattelan is not an empty-headed scandal-monger to use such indecent, improper comparisons. The comparison only arose when Hitler came to Warsaw. As the author wished it, the sculpture behaves as a living man rather than an artefact or an ideological and moral sign.<\/p>\n

But if it so happened that looking at\u00a0Hitler we\u00a0are thinking about Willy Brandt, we\u00a0might just as well say what the\u00a0second kneeling down changed in our perception of the\u00a0first one. What the\u00a0German Chancellor did in 1970 was of great significance for Germans and their memory of the\u00a0Second World War, for the\u00a0former Wehrmacht officers, socialised SS\u2011men, members of the\u00a0Nazi Party and the\u00a0party youth, in that period still in their prime of life. The\u00a0year 1970 was only slightly more removed from the\u00a0Second World War than 2013 from our\u00a01991. Brandt made some happier and more at\u00a0peace with themselves, but he offended and probably also angered others more than anyone else in the\u00a0entire history of Germany. Willy Brandt ensured a\u00a0peaceful future for Germany.<\/p>\n

Europe did not seem much interested in his act. It was still a\u00a0matter for Germany only; Germany still deserved only punishment \u2013 and contempt \u2013 of entire anti\u2011fascist Europe. In later decades, many heads of states and governments were busy apologising for historical crimes but it was all lame and often misunderstood. The\u00a0problem is not that the\u00a0Kniefall von Warschau<\/em> cannot be repeated or that any successive act like that would only be a\u00a0poor imitation of the\u00a0great original, but that no one will ever mean what Brandt so clearly and unambiguously meant. In his gesture there was no coma followed by the\u00a0word \u201cbut\u201d.<\/p>\n

How did the Holocaust survivors take it? As a German apology or as a testimony that Brandt was one of them, that he was theirs despite not being a Jew? The latter seems more likely. For Willy Brandt did not apologise, but felt responsible, and this is greater and more important than any apology. By the way, the story of Polish\u2011German apologies did not start with him: a\u00a0 few years earlier Polish bishops sent a\u00a0letter to German bishops containing the\u00a0famous \u201cWe\u00a0 forgive and ask for forgiveness\u201d. In terms of moral force and risk this gesture is unequalled: they apologised for everything Poles had done to Germans after the\u00a0Second World War.<\/p>\n

Cattelan\u2019s Hitler in Warsaw speaks about something Brandt could not do; about the futility of trying to remove from humanity, from Europe or perhaps from Poland and Germany the burden of responsibility for what has been done on our behalf or \u2013 as the Croat fools propose \u2013 casting the Second World War and Nazi crimes into the dustbin of the past and oblivion, so that only historians would be bothered with them while nations and citizens would simply live on, slightly more free from thoughts about the Holocaust and collective responsibility. This is what the scene with kneeling Hitler is about. This, in fact, impossible image shows what should happen so that we can live on free from our responsibility. And our being moved and shocked \u2013 unfortunately not everybody can experience that for there are dummies among us too \u2013 shows how much we desire it and how tragically human this desire is.<\/p>\n

Cattelan\u2019s exhibition entitled Amen is held in a\u00a0beautiful castle, now housing the\u00a0Contemporary Art Centre, a\u00a0few kilometres from Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street, where Hitler is displayed. Cattelan\u2019s works occupy half of the\u00a0gallery, the\u00a0other half is taken over by the\u00a0exhibition of Artur \u017bmijewski, a\u00a0visual artist, photographer and film director, besides the\u00a0fascinating Katarzyna Kozyra, perhaps the\u00a0most important contemporary Polish artist. It is worth noting that these two exhibitions quite unexpectedly, and unintended by the\u00a0curators, correspond with each other.<\/p>\n

Most of the\u00a0 works shown by Cattelan are already known. In the\u00a0entrance there are two stuffed dogs with a\u00a0 stuffed chicken between them. And once the\u00a0animal lover experiences a\u00a0feeling of disgust caused by ethical doubts concerning the\u00a0use of taxidermy for artistic purposes, in the\u00a0entrance to the\u00a0central room his eye goes upwards towards a\u00a0strange image of a\u00a0woman spread on a\u00a0cross in a\u00a0large box hanging on a\u00a0wall. With freshly depilated, swollen legs \u2013 from standing or a\u00a0kidney disease \u2013 she is partly attached to the\u00a0box \u2013 like a\u00a0precious product, to avoid damaging it during transport \u2013 and partly nailed down with thick wedges going through her palms. She is facing the\u00a0wall \u2013 in contrast to Christ facing people \u2013 she is wearing a\u00a0nightdress and her hair is pulled together with an\u00a0elastic band.<\/p>\n

If two stuffed dogs and a chicken look realistically, for every stuffed creature is realistic, from a fox and a bear through Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Cattelan\u2019s female Christ (title: Untitled<\/em>) looks just like that: as if stuffed. As if she was nailed down alive, in the posture of crucified Jesus, facing the wall, with her head inclined as on the majority of the iconographic representations, and then hollowed out, cleansed of all traces of blood and impurities, and stuffed. Perfectly aseptic and pure, with no name or title, free of preordained connotations, it shakes the viewer just like the kneeling Hitler. And again, just like in the case of Hitler, it is a very subtle treatise on Christian self-reflection.<\/p>\n

A few steps from the female Christ, the story will be told once again but directly and very brutally: lying on the gallery floor is a beautiful horse, a chestnut, shot through with a ring to which a plaque with the inscription \u201cINRI\u201d was attached. The only photograph featuring in the exhibition hangs on the opposite wall: a black-and-white picture of a fresh grave, from which hands clasped in prayer are sticking out.<\/p>\n

Cattelan made it to the front pages of European tabloids, to television news programmes in the more primitive provinces of the Christian world, and to the scandalised sermons of faithful Catholics with his famous work \u2013 which has probably entered the imagination and breviaries of exorcists, the texts and anti-debauchery magic of Zvjezdan Lini\u0107[1]<\/a> \u2013 presenting Pope John Paul II with a pastoral in his hand and crushed by a meteorite. This work is not here \u2013 the exhibition Amen <\/em>is too serious for that and Wojty\u0142a died long ago \u2013 but it would be interesting to see it here, in Warsaw. For Polish people are still enchanted by their pope, just like Croats are by Gotovina[2]<\/a> and are longingly waiting for the promised canonisation, which, God willing, Joseph Ratzinger should finalise in the autumn, but it would not occur to them to censor an artist. Christ is closer to them than the pope and yet they did not even touch the woman spread on the cross facing the wall. Newspapers are full of photographs of this work, and Cattelan is spoken and written about with respect. You can sense it in Warsaw: a greater respect for suffering and art than we are used to in the southern provinces.<\/p>\n

It is a\u00a0mistake to present Catellan as a\u00a0scandal\u2011monger, exhibitionist and a\u00a0godless person. He is preoccupied with God as few other artists in our times are, and he is sensitive to suffering and repentance. And this is what a\u00a0Christian should do: respecting the\u00a0suffering of others and his or her own repentance, and not the\u00a0other way round. Cattelan is not an\u00a0exhibitionist but he puts people, animals and objects in situations and contexts in which they rarely or never find themselves. His works are preceded by texts, with new texts starting from a\u00a0finished work. In front of the\u00a0gallery, on one of the\u00a0three flagpoles (the\u00a0middle one) a\u00a0boy is suspended, perhaps twelve years old, respectable, clean and humble. Pigeons are trembling from cold on the\u00a0windowsills of the\u00a0second floor, in an\u00a0atrium visible from the\u00a0gallery rooms. If you do\u00a0not take a\u00a0close look, if you do\u00a0not notice that the\u00a0pigeons are not moving, you might think they are real. Or even overlook them. But also inside, in the\u00a0gallery, there are dozens of such pigeons on the\u00a0cornice, under the\u00a0freshly whitened ceilings. They are standing there and not shitting. This is one of the\u00a0few works which have a\u00a0title: Others. This is how Cattelan\u2019s pigeons are called.<\/p>\n

It is not easy for me to leave; this is my last day in Warsaw. In the adjoining room, opening onto the atrium on the other side, \u017bmijewski exhibited dozens of pages doodled over with pastels, with figures of animals glimpsing from under poorly controlled pencil strokes. Drawings perhaps of a child, perhaps of a grown-up. He gave paper and crayons to blind people and asked them to draw a horse, a fly, a cat, a dragonfly\u2026 People who do not see drew things as they would look like if they were not blind. A bit further on drawings with unusual signs, bombs, burning houses, crescents\u2026 The artist was in Israel and in the Gaza Strip, and asked ordinary people to tell him who is to blame for the last war between the Israelis and Palestinians. Once somebody started speaking, \u017bmijewski gave him paper and pencil and asked him to draw the answer\u2026 In a room with about 20 screens, where the end of our world is constantly going on, with all screens simultaneously hissing, screaming, shooting, sermonising, on one of the screens we see \u017bmijewski, who started marching through Warsaw with a group of friends dressed in the stripes of Auschwitz inmates. Young nationalists, football fans and right-wingers arrived from the other side. They carried Polish flags, they shouted threats and chanted. They would have ripped them into pieces if the police had not separated the two groups. The fear on the faces of people wearing concentration camp stripes was identical to the fear of Auschwitz prisoners. At last I felt like at home, in Zagreb.<\/p>\n

February 2013<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Zvjezdan Lini\u0107 (b. 1941) \u2013 a Franciscan, organiser of spiritual renewal, healer and exorcist, extreme right-winger, formerly in a Franciscan monastery in Zagreb, now in the countryside.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>*Ante Gotovina (b. 1955) \u2013 Croat general, accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague (1995, commanding Operation Storm, in which about 200,000 Serbs were expelled from the Croat Krajina, and at least 150 were killed), in 2011 sentenced to 24 years in prison, a year later pardoned because of insufficient evidence; in Croatia he is regarded as a hero.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":3238,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[331,359],"region":[],"kraj":[],"magazyn":[231],"class_list":["post-2760","artykul","type-artykul","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-art","tag-review","magazyn-herito-10en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKneeling Hitler - herito<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The taxi driver who is taking us to Pr\u00f3\u017cna Street says he will go with us as he wants to see Hitler, too. 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