MIRROR IN TIME

Michelangelo Pistoletto
Erinna König

A photo documentation from Erinna Königs archives shows moments from her student days as a master student of Joseph Beuys in the social environment of the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1967 to 1976. As active members of the '68 student generation, Erinna König and her colleagues brought art to the streets, organized “actions,” and fought for a student parliament, to which Erinna König was elected as the first president.

An office for organizing actions—the “Büro Olympia”—was founded, with Erinna König, Henning Brandis, Chris Reinecke, and Jörg Immendorff at its core. The group led projects such as “Tenant Solidarity,” which drew attention to the rental crisis in Düsseldorf; “Clean Squares, Dirty Housing Policy” saw Erinna König and colleagues scrubbing the main square in Düsseldorf in front of the city’s theatre. Several newspaper articles prove that the actions did not go unnoticed by society. “Büro Olympia” campaigned against the commercialization of the 1972 Olympics and for an end to the Vietnam War. They took part in demonstrations in the old town and also in Dortmund on May 1, 1971, with Albert Oehlen, Chris Reinecke, and Henning Brandis—where Jörg Immendorff photographed Erinna König next to Willy Brandt.

From the 1980s onwards, Erinna König wrapped socio-political ideas in elegant puzzles for the viewers to decode. The works exhibited here are rare moments in which she expressed herself more concretely. In “Untitled Red Flag” (1983), the rolled-up flag leans against the wall, posed on a red doormat. The miniature “Selbst mit roter Fahne” (Self with Red Flag) is a self-portrait of Erinna König in which she carries just such a red flag, with a glass full of paintbrushes next to her—this unique self-portrait from 1978 sums up herself as artist at the time.

“Das Ende der Rolle” (The End of the Roll), 1990, refers directly to the protests of that time: a round-framed work made of folded packing paper – the “end of the paper roll” used for demonstration banners, stamped with a red star in the center.

The polar opposite is the group of paper works “Schnittmuster” (Patterns), 1987. Tailor's patterns for a short sleeve, a jacket/shirt sleeve, and a child's jacket are newspaper collages painted over on a black or clay-red background or a night sky purple-black. “Schnittmuster Westen und Osten” (Patterns West and East), “Expressgut” (Express Goods), “Rote Erde” (Red Earth), and ‘Attentatsversuch’ (Assassination Attempt) refer to the content and the newspaper itself:
— “Rote Erde” or “rote Erde” is a term used since the Middle Ages to describe the historic landscape of Westphalia, where Erinna König grew up as a child. The “Westfälische Landeszeitung – Rote Erde” however was a combination of official gazette and party newspaper of the NSDAP and a propaganda paper for National Socialist politics from 1933 to 1945. Erinna König's series “Newspaper Patterns” tailors NSDAP party propaganda directly to the reader. Adults and children alike are thus molded, lined up, and dressed mentally and physically in party loyalty. The “Schnittmuster, Expressgut” (Pattern, Express Goods) is a children's shirt front cut from an auditor's balance sheet stamped “June 44,” alluding to the Third Reich's war-calculated family policy.

Finally, a documentation of the 1976 initiative that brought the topic of ‘women’ into public debate: as part of the exhibition ‘Frauen machen Kunst’ (Women Make Art), 1976, Galerie Magers, Bonn, Erinna König, Susanne Ebert, and Maria Fisahn painted billboards in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Berlin.

Archival material from the personal estate of Erinna König and the Rheinisches Archiv für Künstlernachlässe RAK (Rheinland Archive for Artists' Estates) www.rak-bonn.de

Clips: Jan Höhe