Iconic has to do with image and the creation/incarnation/representation of the Zeitgeist, the spirit of an era. An example is Just What is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? (1956), the small collage by Richard Hamilton that included some of the most representative elements of society in those years: the perfect housewife, the muscular man, the model, pre-cooked food, household appliances…
2017 could certainly be represented by many iconic works, which are still in artists’ studios, or which have been exhibited in museums, events or in the public sphere, but we are going to focus on one, by the Argentine artist Marta Minujín, which has been installed in Friedrichsplatz in the German city of Kassel, in the context of documenta 14, that great artistic event that legitimises and becomes a reflection (sometimes more theoretical than artistic) on the present. In the middle of the square, right in front of the Fridericianum museum, The Parthenon of Books has been erected for a few months. It consists of a metal structure measuring 35 x 70 x 22 metres that reproduces the Parthenon of Athens (a symbol of the aesthetic and political ideals of the first democracy) and is lined with hundreds of thousands of books that have been censored at some point.
The installation in Kassel is the second version of the Parthenon of Books, which was conceived by the artist in 1983 for Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires and included books banned during the Argentine dictatorship. In this context, the installation was conceived as a celebration of democracy.
Marta Minujín. The Parthenon of Books, 2017. Friedrichsplatz, Kassel. Documenta 14
Photo: Andreas M. Kaufmann
In 2017, the piece took on new interpretations. In a global scenario and a Europe suffering from inequality and an identity crisis, documenta 14 was articulated from the notion, Learning from Athens and was deployed in both cities, Athens and Kassel. The reference to the Parthenon is therefore no coincidence. On this occasion, the public, publishers and authors were invited to donate books that had once been the object of persecution. The location of the work is not a coincidence either: Friedrichsplatz is not only the most prominent location of documenta but in 1933, in that same square the Nazis burned more than two thousand books in an action called “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” (Campaign against the unworthy spirit). A few years later, the Fridericianum, which was used as a library, also burned down as a result of an Allied bombing.
Marta Minujín. The Parthenon of Books, 2017. Friedrichsplatz, Kassel. Documenta 14
Photo: Andreas M. Kaufmann
If in 1983, the Parthenon of Books was a piece of celebration, in 2017, a time of populism, fundamentalism, fear and violence, The Parthenon of Books becomes a wake-up call to the extremism, repression and loss of freedoms of our present. All this, together with its strong visual presence, makes it an iconic work today.
[Article published in Bonart, 2017]
