In 1976 the artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) entered the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. He proceeded to the painting, Der Arme Poet (The Poor Poet) by Carl Spitzweg (1836). He briefly stands before this small painting, then clips the wires from which it hangs, he clasps it under his arm and proceeds to the exit, his pace increasing until he is running full speed as he leaves the building. Outside he narrowly evades the pursuing security guards to reach his car parked nearby. He drives through the city to an apartment building at Muskauerstrasse, there he enters the home of a Turkish immigrant family and hangs Der Arme Poet above their mantelpiece. He returns to the street outside and calls the Neue Nationalgalarie Director and invites him to come and view the painting at the Muskauerstrasse apartment.
What is the cultural background to this work? Why Der Arme Poet?
The German Romantic-Biedermaier painter Carl Spitzweg was Adolf Hitler's favorite painter. Aside, this particular painting Der arme Poet, which Spitzweg painted 3 times, was for the German people a quasi "identity icon." It was so popular that it was the only color image reproduced in my first grade school book. I found it astonishing to find this particular painting, amongst other paintings from the German Romantic period, in the Neue Nationalgalerie. It was a shock for me, I hated this painting mainly because I knew the admiration and emotions with which the German population looked upon it. This surrounded me with horror.
The contrast between this super romantic painting and the city of Berlin at the time couldn’t have been greater. Berlin, the epicenter of the Cold War, was torn in two, separating one and the same people by a wall and “made enemies.” One half of the city was West Germany, a Cold War, geo-political island isolated in enemy territory, East Germany. After WW II, Berlin became a whore in very dirty political dramas. The human suffering on both sides created such an unthinkable inhuman atmosphere and environment. In the midst of this humiliating environment operated the Red Army Fraction and the Bader Meinhof terrorist groups.
(Not to mention that I myself was born in a bomb-shelter during WW II.)
Why the immigrant Turkish family, etc?
The Turks were the largest ethnic group in this isolated West Berlin and lived, but were much disliked, in the ghetto like district of Berlin-Kreuzberg. Imagine half a city fenced in by barbwire, a high wall, tanks, and military watchtowers, in which an ethnic group lives in a yet deeper ghetto. I simply couldn't bear this, and wanted to bring the situation to a more humane attention.
So I concluded that stealing the famous painting from the New National Gallery and dislocating it (not destroying it) into the living quarters of a Turkish foreign worker family might cause the effect I hoped for. As we know today, this action had an effect much like a socio-cultural bomb, so to speak.
(NB The painting Der arme Poet together with all other paintings from the German Romantic Biedermeier period were taken to Schloss Charlottenburg, an 18th century chateau in Berlin Charlottenburg. In 1989 the Poor Poet was stolen and never seen again.)
What was your reason for filming the event? Were you making reference to surveillance, and what way is the film an integral or extended part of the meaning of the act?
The act was too good not to be captured and recorded, either by means of photography or film, although I had great difficulty finding a cameraman who wanted to take the risk. Joerg Schmitt-Reitwein, the former cameraman of Werner Herzog, ultimately agreed to film the act, with the condition that a car with driver would always be available and that he would shoot only from the car. However, for the last shots he followed me into the Turkish foreign workers’ home.
I did not make any reference to “surveillance,” because it wasn't an issue at the time. The filming was really an integral part of the act, and as such I see it as an extended part of the work.
You refer to the socio-political impact of the work, do you think that art always has this possibility for change, and has that potential changed since the work has been made?
Yes, let's say since DADA art has always had such potential for change, but few have the urge and guts to get into that.
Art in general is “harmless” and intended to “reveal,” to “fulfill” other criteria and purposes. Although since the emergence and formation of post-modernism a shift has taken place towards more critical, cultural, and socio-political content. Intellectually there were, and are, good “critical intentions” but there are few artists who are blowing and surpassing the protectedness and justification of art.
The Berlin action made me disliked by many, which as an artist I had to bear for a long time, but I was aware of, and ready to accept, all the consequences. I threw a stone in a particular direction that caused an avalanche which is still rolling today. Perhaps my Berlin action has stimulated or inspired subsequent artists about art’s potential for change...yet I see that happening less and less today.
Today’s artists can make shocking works, like Damien Hirst, but, for most, such shockwaves become absorbed and legitimized within the protective field of art.
Your act represents a specific socio-political action. In making the work, what ways did you consider it within a discourse of art production and commerce (for instance, appropriation within art, the theft of paintings and artifacts by Nazis, museums holding works with questionable provenance, etc)?
First, my Berlin action was work, hard work, but I never claimed it as a “work of art” nor as a means for art production for commerce. It was really the opposite: according to the law it was a criminal act. Besides, I left the protected zone once I left the museum and entered the domain of “public territory.”
You see, at the time such thoughts like commerce, appropriation within art, theft by Nazi's, or questionable works of art in museum collections were not part of what I was implementing. Of course I was aware of such matters but my very purpose was to set something in motion then and for the times to come. The particular issues the work could trigger, and perhaps still can, are of a great variety, such as the connections you make in this interview.
As much as I can say today, the documentary film, which has been shown widely, is much liked and for the most part makes the viewers laugh.
What were the repercussions of this work both to you personally/legally and in relation to the work that you have subsequently made?
I was prepared to take all legal consequences and charges after the painting was displaced and had reached its final destination. After I announced, by phone, the location of the painting and myself to the director of the New National Gallery and the police,
I was arrested and imprisoned for 24 hours. After the 24 hours I was to face a prosecutor and a judge. Though the charges by the prosecutor were alarming, the main problem was that I was not a German citizen and did not live in Germany. Yet I was set free till the court case in Berlin some 3 month later. I did not appear for the court, whose verdict was: 36 days imprisonment or DM 3.600 bail. A year later, traveling from Frankfurt to Agadir, Morocco, via Munich, I was arrested at the Munich airport, and friends bailed me out.
On a personal level, this action set much in motion and became the subject of ongoing discussions. I made enemies in the art world, and on a larger scale people divided into “pro and contra.” The Berlin action brought a stigma with which I learned to live; but it also set criteria for my artistic intentions, with which I can still identify today.