Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, German, Der Reichstag?, 2013, Images courtesy of Stih & Schnock, copyright 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany
German artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, 2012–13 Washington University Freund Fellows, dug into St. Louis’ German culture during their time here and found some startling stories connecting their place and our place. Take, for instance, the enormous plaster model of the Reichstag parliamentary building in Berlin, sent by Kaiser Wilhelm II to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, then passed along to St. Louis because of the high number of German immigrants here. The mystery of its disappearance sometime after 1917 is described by Der Reichstag? (above), a 12- by 16-foot collage on canvas, featuring a digitally manipulated photograph overlaid with drawings and texts that talk about everything from Richard Wagner to the Berlin Wall. That piece faces Ich Bin Nicht Stiller, a series of blurred portraits of Werner Stiller, a German double agent who betrayed the Stasi and went underground as an MBA student at Wash. U.—because he longed to see the Mississippi River.
In Gallery 237, The Voyage of the Katzenstein Madonna describes how a 52-inch-tall Gothic Madonna, reclaimed from the Nazis by its rightful owner, Dr. F.C. Katzenstein, traveled to the art museum in 1949 from Southern Illinois in the back of an ambulance (it was laid on the cot). The artists made a connection to Joseph Beuys’ famous 1974 performance piece I Like America and America Likes Me, in which Beuys rode, swaddled in felt, to René Block Gallery in the back of an ambulance, sleeping on straw for three days next to a wild coyote. You can see that Beuys’ video in the new East Building; Stih and Schnock asterisk it with an oversize print of a lapdog that cheekily proclaims “I WANT TO BE A DOG IN AMERICA.” The exhibit’s subtitle, “The German Connection—Raft With Stranded Objects,” refers to a literal raft—a tiny one under glass, navigating a fabric Mississippi and bearing a re-creation of that Reichstag model. But the subtext is a scavenger hunt, one that sends the viewer through multiple galleries and both museum buildings to find those “stranded objects,” including a film installation, giant clothing, and fabric maps.
Through January 5. Free. 1 Fine Arts, Forest Park, 314-721-0072, slam.org.
