REANIMATION - HERMANN GERBER

The starting point for the exhibition *Reanimation* is the work of Hermann Gerber, an artist who remained unknown during his lifetime and who created over 2,500 drawings of a unique beauty. His subjects were masterpieces of the visual arts. Gerber’s fascinating body of work represents an essence of Western art history, beginning with early medieval panel paintings and extending to the Informel movement of the 1960s. Hermann Gerber, however, is by no means merely a dutiful imitator. In some of the works, an artistic intent is evident that goes beyond the mere approximation and penetration of the models. In the comprehensive selection of Gerber’s drawings presented here, we see the result of an extremely intense, perhaps even obsessive, labour: an imaginary museum created by an outsider who lived a passionate relationship with art.

Hermann Gerber grew up in Zurich and travelled to Munich and Berlin at a young age to study art. In the 1920s, he lived in Paris, where he worked as a fashion designer and illustrator. Back in Switzerland, he worked primarily as a graphic designer. In 1951, Hermann Gerber moved to Aeschi near Spiez, where he lived until his death in 1979. He led a very secluded life in the Bernese Oberland, and hardly anyone knew anything about his artistic work. Following Gerber’s death, his heirs discovered his extensive body of drawings and later donated it to the graphic arts collection of the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich. In preparation for the exhibition, the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich has generously made its holdings available to the Kunstmuseum Thun, enabling Hermann Gerber’s estate to be catalogued. This exhibition marks the first time his work has been made accessible to the public.

Reanimation places Hermann Gerber – or rather his artistic strategy – within a contemporary and international context. The act of taking up and appropriating existing works of art has been known in contemporary art since the 1970s under the term ‘Appropriation Art’. Particularly in recent times, new and exciting approaches have emerged, some of which are presented here. This comparison aims to further the fundamental discourse on authorship, artistic independence and originality.

Interesting contemporary practitioners of ‘appropriation art’ include Tom Hunter and Vik Muniz, who recreate well-known works by other artists or reimagine them using new techniques. Juan Araujo and Christine Streuli explore the old masters through painting, creating original works of great intensity. Bertrand Lavier reinterprets an Impressionist painting with his mosaic, thereby introducing a subtle wit, whilst Valentin Carron has images by Fernand Léger transferred onto leather, thus placing the icons of Cubism in a popular context. Thomas Schütte engages with motifs from art history that have been reproduced and appropriated ad infinitum. He combines Praying Hands and Hare, two motifs by Albrecht Dürer drawn with cool perfection, into a somewhat awkward but emphatically sketched figure, thereby appearing to attempt a highly personal appropriation without seeking to rival the patriarch of German art. Vaclav Pozarek suggests that not only the work but also the artist himself can become an icon, and with his forged artist portraits raises questions of authenticity and authorship.

Many of the questions that can be explored through Gerber’s work are relevant to contemporary art, even though Gerber’s working context was fundamentally different from that of the contemporary artists taking part in the ‘Reanimation’ exhibition. Hermann Gerber opens up the field for a discussion about art that is continued and ‘reanimated’ in the work of other artists, by inviting them to comment, critique or further the debate. Hermann Gerber shares with these contemporary artistic positions the realisation that repetition always leads somewhere else.