The artist Isa Genzken: A life dedicated to art, with few compromises

Isa Hanne-Rose Genzken is a German artist with a tremendous international reputation who has lived and worked in Berlin (and very often in New York) for decades. Born in 1948, she will turn 70 in 2018 (on November 27th), marking nearly half a century of artistic creation.

Internationally acclaimed German artist

For the German art world, Isa Genzken has been the “most internationally celebrated German artist” for several years; however, some of these art experts only discovered a body of work a few decades later that deserves increased attention from connoisseurs of contemporary art since the 1960s/70s.

Anyone who dismisses this as unbelievable should, for example, realize that the completely new information and communication world of the internet has existed for almost 20 years, but this fact only became apparent to our traditional media quite recently…

Furthermore, there are several reasons why Isa Genzken is among those artists who are vastly underrated in the public eye. Engaging with Isa Genzken and her work is absolutely worthwhile for every art lover; there is a great deal to discover in her art.

Isa Genzken's departure into the world of art

Isa Genzken's entry into the world of art was already decisive and, towards the end, unusually consistent: Isa Genzken was born in 1948, shortly after the Second World War, into a family with a sense of art and culture.

The father was a doctor, the mother worked in the pharmaceutical industry but had attended drama school; the family lived in Schleswig-Holstein in the peaceful town of Bad Oldesloe, near Lübeck and the famous Timmendorf Baltic Sea beach.

The former spa town in this prime location, where even the town hall (with its Goose Girl fountain, bit.ly/2BK6af3 ) and the tax office ( bit.ly/2A0hwv3 ) appear charming and inviting, offered ideal conditions for a wonderful (early) childhood. Her family background may have contributed as well; there were even said to be real grandparents who were interested in their grandchildren, with whom Isa Genzken is believed to have had a close relationship.

In 1960, the Genzken family moved to Berlin, placing 12-year-old Isa Genzken right in the heart of the events of the time, and from the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 onward, a very central location for these events. But Isa Genzken was never limited to a German perspective; she traveled to New York for the first time in her early teens to visit her aunts living in Midtown Manhattan (from the late 1960s to the present day, Genzken has been to New York almost every year, sometimes for stays lasting several months).

Genzken began drawing in 1966; at this time she also met the art historian, publicist and exhibition curator Benjamin HD Buchloh, who was a few years older and lived in Berlin at the time, later to teach art history at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, and who competently and critically accompanied Genzken's work throughout her life.

After graduating from high school, Genzken initially studied painting at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts from 1968 to 1971, then art history and philosophy at the University of Cologne from 1972, photography and graphic design in Berlin in 1973, and art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy until 1977.

Surrounded by teachers and fellow students who had shaped or were yet to shape the German art world (Marcel Broodthaers, Benjamin Buchloh, Gerhard Richter , Gregor Stemmrich, Joseph Beuys , Katharina Fritsch, Blinky Palermo , Thomas Struth, to name just a few), she achieved a premium degree that qualified her to attend a master class; in this case, the master class of Gerhard Richter.

From her beginnings in the cosmopolitan province, Isa Genzken's interest in art and her art education had thus continuously led her closer and closer to the heart of the German art scene.

What was certainly not meant at the time Berlin (which, although it already had quite a lot of sex appeal in 1973, was also cut off from the rest of the world and, at least in a sense, even further away from the honors of being the capital), but rather Düsseldorf, determinedly on its way to becoming fashionable and achieving higher artistic acclaim.

Perhaps because Isa Genzken wanted to delve deeper into the heart of the art world, she wisely married the man who, in the not-too-distant future, would almost single-handedly keep the heart of the German art scene beating for most Germans: her professor Gerhard Richter (at the time of the wedding in 1982, not yet quite on the art Olympus, but well on his way).

Marriage to Gerhard Richter and divorce

This relationship failed in 1993, which is why the marriage ended in divorce in 1994 (around 10 years seems to be a good average period for the “disenchantment” to occur when a woman marries the first man who really impressed her).

Isa Genzken had difficulties with the divorce and afterwards, but remained busy in the art world and soon moved back to her old hometown of Berlin.

Even back then, there was plenty for artists to do: Berlin had shaken itself up a bit after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but from the beginning of the 1990s onwards, it was increasingly on its way to becoming a city of independent artists.

Therefore, there is no need to discuss divorce and related topics in more detail today, not only because there is probably nothing new to add:

A search for “Isa Genzken” + “divorce” yields plenty of articles where you can find detailed information about the nature and duration of this divorce and its consequences. So we'll spare you the “touching insights” into the life of “the otherwise extremely publicity-shy artist,” and you haven't found the right platform for a more in-depth exploration of the topic of coping with separation.

Instead, take a look at Isa Genzken shortly after her marriage and her painting of “Master Gerhard” (circa 1983) on moma.org and consider how seriously the work and public persona of the (at that time 35-year-old) artist are meant to be taken… and follow with appropriate cynicism the short but fascinating observation about search engine parallel universes and media-driven divorce scandals:

Isa Genzken and the online media

An internet search for “Isa Genzken” + “divorce” yields 558 results across 10 pages in the most popular search engine. With an average of 10 websites per page, this translates to approximately 5,600 articles about the artist's life-changing experience. However, the number of results appears to be 558, as it gradually decreases as you browse. On page 7, there are suddenly only 557 results, on page 8, 556, and on page 9, 89. Page 10 then disappears, as it is no longer populated.

This could be explained, for example, by the fact that the search engine's algorithm continues sorting even after the initial results are displayed, which certainly makes sense in terms of speed. However, if the first page promises 5,600 results, of which only 90 remain on the last page, then almost every search result provides a false impression of the general interest in the searched term, because almost no one clicks through to the last page.

Of the 89 actual search results, 24 articles are indeed about Genzken's divorce or its unfortunate consequences. Three articles deal with the awarding of the Goslar Kaiserring to Genzken 23 years after the divorce; six with Genzken retrospectives at least a decade and a half after the divorce; ten with Gerhard Richter (and only him); 34 with art in some way or something completely different, but the name Isa Genzken appears; 13 with something completely different, without the name Isa Genzken appearing: German-English translations, Eva Hesse, Martin Drescher, Tina Turner (who is getting married on Lake Zurich), Caritas winter packages, poisoned baby food, textbooks on language and literature, Veronica Ferres (who has also been divorced), event listings for the state of Brandenburg, a magazine called Siegessäule (Victory Column), the division of humanity into believers and non-believers, and Camill Leberer.

Four days later, the number of results has suddenly jumped to 900, shrinking to 114 on page 12; not a single new article on the searched topic appears among the 25 mysteriously added results. For the query "Gerhard Richter" + "divorce," the search engine promises a staggering 74,800 publications on the first page—more than enough to read in a lifetime—but of the 178 results remaining on page 18, not a single article actually deals with "Gerhard Richter" and "divorce," only the familiar articles about the "suffering of Isa G."

If the search query is not narrowed down by characters (which have apparently become irrelevant, although according to the FAQ they are still “valid”), but by “Settings”, “Search pages that contain all these words”, things don't improve: 858 results on page 1, 856 results from page 5 onwards, 119 results on the last page 12; the same motley, often far-fetched stuff.

In all these search results, one article addresses the fact that Genzken's art is difficult to understand – but what is obviously not at all understandable is the way in which the most well-known search engine reflects reality (meaning the actual performance of this search engine, apart from any conspiracy theory).

It's even more baffling why over 90% of people in the (former) land of poets and thinkers always use only one search engine, which only provides thorough information after a considerable investment of time and effort. Not even 10% of Germans use alternative search engines like Startpage – where a search for "Isa Genzken" + "divorce" yields 51 results across 6 pages, all of which can be accessed anonymously (and thus largely without risk to the user).

Until recently, articles about Isa Genzken's private life dominated search results, even when searching for "Isa Genzken" alone to learn about the artist. But media coverage is changing: since Isa Genzken was awarded the Goslar Kaiserring in 2017, or rather, since the news of this prestigious award was published, it has slowly become common knowledge, even among the most obscure, uninspired editors, that the artist Isa Genzken has long exerted a tremendous influence on the world of contemporary art.

Perhaps, in light of this embarrassing example, the message will spread further among journalists that there are productive people out there whom journalists must strive to cover, because these people's attention is focused on their work and not on publications about themselves or their work (and among readers, that they only get information when journalists are paid with the revenue from publications and not just media moguls or shareholders)?

Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie celebrates the artist's 75th birthday with a special exhibition

Isa Genzken, the artist, turned away from the orthodox principles of modernism early on. To mark her 75th birthday, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin an exhibition that shows how she shapes social space in a different way – playful, open, pleasure-oriented, and queer.

In this festive setting, the Neue Nationalgalerie is exhibiting  75 sculptures from all phases of the German artist's career, from the 1970s to the present day, in Mies van der Rohe's glass case "Blue-Gray-Yellow Hyperbolo 'MBB'" (1981), "Atelier" (1990), "Venice" (1993), "Nefertiti – The Original" (2012), and "Actor" (2013).

Presenting art in this space is sometimes a challenge, as the light inside depends on the sky over Berlin.

What might work in smaller exhibition spaces appears in the vast hall like flotsam washed up on the cliffs of postwar modernism. Nevertheless, the Isa Genzken 75/75 exhibition a calm and gentle atmosphere.

A review of this exhibition can be found in the culture section of Welt.de: ISA GENZKEN What the educated middle class doesn't allow into their home .

The next article in this mini-series on Kunstplaza ( Isa Genzken: An artist at the top ) also deals with the quiet but unstoppable rise of the world-renowned artist who, for good reason, shies away from the press.

Keywords: Best art in the world, Leading German artists, Gerhard Richter, Information quality of internet search engines, Understanding of art

Lina Sahne

Passionate author with a keen interest in art

www.kunstplaza.de