ART ─ a people’s spirit, disobedience, public discourse

Art collector Harald Falckenberg spoke today with Deutsche Welle Radio about art ─ and why he would

never hang a painting on a wall simply to look at it.

Excerpt and editing from Falckenberg’s responses with brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Visual art is so interesting because it can show you the spirit of a society, the spirit of people, the development of history at one glance. There is a direct impact.

I look at art as changing my mind, as thinking about things, as a discourse about something, Falckenberg says. Not as something to pray to, praying is forbidden in my collection.


Art as Public Discourse
If I look for the discourse then I have to look for the public because then people come into my collection and say this and that; and I say, ‘No, no, no, no!’ Then, in the end, perhaps we compromise. People who are real private collectors … prefer to have [art] on the wall and look at it three times a day. I can’t do that.

One of the most famous artists [Marcel Duchamp] just wanted to say, ‘This is art because you look at it…you regard it as art or disregard it as art. You discuss it, and the longer you discuss it, the more valuable it is.’


Art as Civil Disobedience
Everyone should have a streak of civil disobedience. If you see governments all over the world, yes, you should be disobedient.

Well then

Given the critical, human, spiritual and interactive value of art
globally and domestically

Why have state and country officials repeatedly

defunded it, often diminishing or eliminating this creative core

from
school curricula and other cultural, social, civic and “educational” programs?

Why destroy the spirit of people.

Is there insidious motive in this madness?

Sources and notes
Harald Falckenberg is described as provocative, unadjusted and out of the ordinary with a particular taste for modern and contemporary art, holding a private collection in Hamburg, Germany, that comprises nearly 2,000 open-to-the- public works of art. Dr. Falckenberg, a former lawyer at the Constitutional court in Heidelberg, golfer, dancer, tennis and hockey player, began collecting art late in his life. He is now 67 years old and is among Germany’s most famous collectors, specializing in the “art of civil disobedience.”


French artist Marcel Duchamp (b. July 28, 1887, Blainville, France; d. October 2, 1968, Neuilly) receives credit for breaking down boundaries between works of art and everyday objects, irreverence for conventional aesthetic standards leading to an artistic revolution.

“‘Art works are teddy bears for grown-ups,’ says collector” (Deutsche Welle interviewer: Peter Zimmermann, editor: Kate Bowen, July 22, 2010, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5825383,00.html