Axel Lapp on Artmap.com

FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN FLICK COLLECTION @ HAMBURGER BAHNHOF (22 SEPTEMBER 2004 - 23 JANUARY 2004)

Walking through the first exhibition of the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection in Berlin is a strenuous task. The addition of the Rieck-Halle, an industrial unit at its side, has turned the Hamburger Bahnhof into a vast museum, and all of it has been used for this show. The whole set-up seems to aim at conjuring memories of the last Documenta: the architects employed to refurbish the Rieck-Halle were Kühn Malvezzi, who also did the Binding brewery in Kassel, and the spaces are used in a comparable sparing way, mostly dedicating one room to one work or to a series, with a few large spaces in which contrasting works from the collection could be juxtaposed. The scope of the collection is outlined in the main hall of the museum, where Jason Rhoades’ Creation Myth, 1998, is contrasted with nudes and portraits by Francis Picabia from the 30s and 40s. Four hundred works by 39 artists are on show in this first exhibition of Flick’s collection. It permits a cautious insight into his vast holdings of mostly contemporary art, which supposedly consists of around 2,000 works by 150 artists bought together over the past eight or ten years. The collection will be shown in its entirety over the next seven years in a series of exhibitions at the Rieck-Halle. From what can be seen now, it is a conservative collection, bringing together large works by well-known names, with an emphasis on the spectacular and visually striking.

Two years ago, Flick had proposed to open a museum in his own name in Zürich. However, this was heavily opposed by cultural workers in Switzerland and abroad. Even local government was not to keen to have a Flick Collection in their city, bearing the name of one of the few convicted German war criminals (Friedrich Christian Flick’s grandfather Friedrich Flick). Flick became a target himself after he refused to pay into the restitution fund for slave labourers, arguing that the family’s former companies had already paid and that he personally was without guilt. In due course the plans for a museum were shelved. It is deeply ironic that this collection now resides at the Hamburger Bahnhof, the State Museum for contemporary art in Berlin

In his speech for the opening of this exhibition, the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder lauded Flick’s ‘magnificent collection’ and ‘the idea of patronage that stands behind this loan.’ He thanked Flick for his commitment and attributed the ‘formative influence and substantial impetus which are exerted on Berlin’s cultural landscape’ by private collectors in recent years to their personal ‘sense of responsibility’. Schröder could of course not avoid mentioning the family history of Flick, but he did not think it appropriate to discuss the history of Germany in the context of this art exhibition.

Instead, he pronounced that it would be ‘a punishment for the people, if this marvellous collection were not to be shown’. The fact that only last December Schröder had been calling for the social ostracism of tax fugitives, added some party political poignancy to his bowing before the Swiss resident Flick, who now offers German society a temporary view of his artistic chattels (coincidentally, the collection is rumoured to be of a similar value to what Flick would have had to pay in German taxes). For seven years this loan will enrich the art scene of Berlin; no provision has yet been made for the time after that.

The beginning and the end of this story is money. The budgets of the State Museums in Berlin have been frozen at a very low level and their standing as educational institutions is under threat. All endeavours now seem to be subordinated to some sort of symbolic politics, to big monolithic shows that create bursts of publicity and obscure the underlying paralysis of the State Museums. Moreover, contemporary art seems to rank pretty low on the list of priorities of Peter-Klaus Schuster (the director of the three museums that form the Nationalgalerie and also the Director General of all State Museums in Berlin) and this can clearly be felt. The only exhibitions to meet with his approval are either fully funded or have the strong possibility of attracting high press interest. The success of exhibitions is measured in visitor numbers and media attention: the seven-month long presentation of a not very adventurous selection of 20th-century art from MoMA in New York drew 1.1m visitors; the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection has already had its fair share of press coverage and is developing nicely as a visitor magnet. But the concentration on these large projects is also sucking in the few available funds. Good exhibitions do not necessarily need a huge budget, but at the moment there is nothing left at all for anything else. Even though Flick has paid for the refurbishment of the Rieck-Halle, the additional costs for the exhibition of his collection – estimated at € 1.7m for the first presentation and € 400,000 for the half-yearly reshuffles – come out of the Nationalgalerie’s normal exhibition budget. The € 900,000 for the bridge that connects the Rieck-Halle with the main building of the museum were debited to the maintenance budget of all the State Museums. Thus a continuation of even the very restricted exhibition activity of late seems unlikely.

Where lies the benefit of it all? The presentation of this collection is certainly a gain for Berlin. Such art has not been shown here before – at least not on that scale. The spectacular installations by Rhoades and Dieter Roth are overwhelming in their complexity and scope, and the variety of work by Bruce Nauman alone would be enough to constitute a retrospective.

It is an exhibition worthy of a museum, but it should not be forgotten, that it is based on a very biased selection, mostly acquired via two art dealers (Iwan Wirth and David Zwirner) and thus representing only a very limited section of contemporary art. Their galleries in Zürich, London and New York will certainly gain from this exhibition.

For Flick himself the investment in the refurbishment of the Rieck-Halle might even pay off twice: not only are the dark areas of his family’s history lightened by his philanthropic gesture but the presentation of his collection in an internationally renowned institution accompanied by an extensive catalogue will also considerably increase the collection’s value. Theoretically, ie in accordance with the contracts, Flick and/or the Guernsey registered Contemporary Art Ltd, for which he signed the papers, could dispose of all these works in the collection that are not in the show. If the worse comes to the worst, the State Museums of Berlin will not only have handed over their authority temporarily to a private collector and his dealers, but they will have succeeded in turning the Hamburger Bahnhof into a commercial showroom for seven years.