Cultural theory: Strong with poodles and pussyhats

Everyone knows him, but not everyone likes him. Culturally critical opinions differ when it comes to Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog.” While some people delight in the shiny chrome perfection of the monumental balloon dog, others see the inflated poodle as mindless kitsch. Reason enough to brush the fur of the most prominent four-legged friend in recent art history and see what is caught in it. In this case, Wolfgang Ullrich takes on the job of dog groomer. The art historian and former professor at the Karlsruhe University of Design is considered one of the most prominent image interpreters in the Republic, whose journalistic contributions reliably and provocatively challenge established categories of interpretation.

Most recently, the Munich native made a name for himself through his love of the banal. This is also what Ullrich’s book “Identification and Empowerment” is about, in which the commercial icon Koons plays a central role. Because the American “offers people something as art that they have long known and liked as non-art.” In the carefree fair world of animal sculptures one finds one’s own childhood motifs (“identification”). At the same time, the familiar mascot-like nature of the works provides emotional reinforcement and backing (“empowerment”). It’s okay to be playful.

The argument is based on the polemic “Art after the End of Autonomy” from 2022. Ullrich observed a kind of twilight of the gods in it. The purposeless, independent nature of beauty, which the 18th century established as the basic value of aesthetic objects, is beginning to crumble. Contemporary art opens its borders. On the one hand about design (Takashi Murakami), on the other hand about political activism (like Ai Weiwei or the “Center for Political Beauty”). At the time, Ullrich did not want to mourn the loss of autonomy. He was aware of who was defending the Schillersch-Kantian ideals the loudest. Vulgar liberals and neo-fascists who do not want to have their hate speeches banned by citing artistic freedom.

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The current volume is not presented as an essay, but rather as the minutes of a podcast that takes up theses from the “Autonomy” book. What post-autonomous works look like is less important than how they function. The arts, which are no longer liberal, are receiving a boost from social media and their tendency to form bubbles. In Koons’ case, the changed attention economy triggers interactive mechanisms that are reminiscent of fan fiction from Star Trek or Harry Potter circles. For example, people make small versions of the “Balloon Dog” out of grapes or in a crochet look and proudly post the results on social media. The farewell to the idealistic understanding of work is illustrated by another phenomenon from the image universe of Instagram and Co.: artists put their work at the service of political movements. Be it in the fight against the climate catastrophe, racist violence or social inequality. Ullrich refers to feminist empowerment through the “Pussyhat”. A pink cat-ears hat, which became the identifying symbol of participants in 2017 during protests against sexist statements by Donald Trump (“grab’em by the pussy”). Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, the creators, distributed the craft instructions freely accessible online.

Developments that Ullrich once again defends against noises of decadence from the educated middle class. His sympathies for what is easily accessible arises, among other things, from sociological observation. As is well known, high culture often serves as a pure status symbol with which consumers differentiate themselves from mass taste. The annual ticket for the museum is the better Porsche. In addition, Ullrich has a few nice words about Socialist Realism, whose paintings anticipate visual empowerment by showing workers not as downtrodden, but as proud, free people.

The fact that the whole thing was created in an audio format ensures crisp formulations, but the overall argumentation suffers from the loose conversational framework. Without subdivision, one stumbles now over this, now over that new aspect, without the autonomous concept of art losing its semantic slipperiness. When it comes to key questions, Ullrich seems even more perplexed than he was two years ago. The author himself no longer seems comfortable with the structural change from disinterested complacency to cuddly art and political accessory.

The author warns that the fact that art is limited to encouraging one’s own bubble threatens to turn into a “conservatism of the most problematic kind” that entrenches itself in one’s own identity. Identification turns into over-identification – and ultimately the collective autism of a digital culture of outrage that has already noticeably undermined the democratic system. However, no concrete examples of this slide are mentioned. Ullrich understandably shys away from calling right-wing hate memes on X or Telegram a form of art. But something more fundamental remains open: which images can actually help us out of the dilemma of polarization?

Wolfgang Ullrich: Identification and empowerment. Art for the seriousness of life. Wagenbach, 225 p., br., 24 €.

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