Gustav Metzger. History History

This retrospective made it possible for the first time on the European continent to examine the little-known work of Gustav Metzger (1926 Nuremberg, DE–2017 London, UK), who was a pioneering artist and activist in various fields. The exhibition spanned a chronological arc from the early manifestos and lecture/demonstrations to his art-critical and political activism, the Historic Photographs group of works and his current work with newspapers.

Metzger’s starting point was his concept of “autodestructive art,” which he defined in his first manifesto in 1959 as “a form of public art for industrial societies” and presented in a series of lectures and demonstrations. Nuclear energy, environmental pollution and, above all, the effects of criminal and destructive acts such as those of National Socialism were factors that fundamentally changed his understanding of aesthetics.[1]  His artistic work was closely linked to the numerous political and ecological initiatives he had been involved in since the 1950s.

In “autodestructive art,” the artist-subject is replaced by an automatism, by processes of destruction that are initiated biologically, chemically or technologically. In “autocreative art,” which Metzger also defined a short time later, it is processes of growth that generate a work and keep it in constant flux. The transformation processes that determine his works are highly diverse and range from discarded cardboards and textiles, acid-eaten canvases and sculptures that discharge their components, to psychedelic color projections generated by liquid crystals or drops of water suspended between two aggregate states. Metzger’s materials all originate from industrial production and mechanical manufacturing and, in their processual use, are understood as an attack on capitalist values, especially on the art market. He even used cars and their emissions for his art projects.

As much as in his artistic work, Gustav Metzger was also active as an organizer of exhibitions and symposia, but also in political forums and theoretical lectures. An important chapter of the exhibition was Metzger’s role as initiator and secretary of the legendary Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London in 1966, with which he helped new trends in art to gain international attention. Among other things, he gave the artists of Viennese Actionism, who were represented as the “Institute for Direct Art,” their first international appearance. In the 1970s, he became intensively involved with environmental pollution and committed himself to computer art. In 1974, he called for Years without Art 1977–1980, a three-year “art strike” that was intended to protect the potential of politically engaged art from being trivialized by the establishment and the art market.

The daily newspaper as a symbol of reality and its design, which functions as a mirror and repository of history, played a central role in Metzger’s work. In his group of works Historic Photographs from the 1990s, Gustav Metzger posed the question of how we deal with the images of humanitarian disasters documented in the media. By requiring viewers to perform certain activities if they want to see the historical photographs, he illustrates our ambivalence between voyeurism, trivialization and sympathy.

[1] Born 1926 in Nuremberg as the son of orthodox Jews, Metzger fled to England in 1939 with the help of the Refugee Children’s Movement and therefore survived the Holocaust.