Charles Esche has been director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven since 2004. He is also a professor at Central Saint Martins in London and teaches at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Esche advocates a shift in our focus: from the individual to the collective and believes it is up to the art world to drive this major social transition. 'People have always needed each other to achieve something,' he says.
In September 2021, the Van Abbemuseum opened its new collection presentation: Delinking and Relinking. With this display, the museum invites visitors to experience art differently, as a multi-sensory experience. With this exhibition, the Van Abbe also wants to tell art history from a different perspective, focusing not on the individual but on the collective. You have often emphasised the need for collectivity. Can you talk more about that?
That collective work is a new phenomenon is a naive notion. It has been happening since the beginning of time. So we have to ask ourselves why we in the West, for roughly the last two hundred years, have been so keen on looking at individuals. We feel the need to tell stories about geniuses and heroes to each other. We want to put people on a pedestal. This gave rise to the predominant history of Great Men. During the 1980s, this historiography based on the individual came to a head, including in art history. This was accompanied by a strong individualisation of capacity: art history tells us what a single person achieved. In the process, the network of people who 'helped' this person disappears completely from view.
Despite the fact that the history of art has given us all kinds of prompts to tell a collective story, for example within Cubism, Futurism or Constructivism, we have chosen to tell stories about individuals. Society is currently undergoing major transitions and rewriting art history can become part of that. What I find interesting about a focus on collective artworks is that it offers the possibility of rewriting the history of art, starting with the idea that people have always needed each other to achieve something. It would be good for human beings to start recognising and admitting that they are interdependent rather than independent beings.
Where does this idea of human independence come from?
This is mainly due to the commercial market - it has taught us that it is negative to be interdependent. We are told that we are a consumer in our own right: as consumers, we are entitled to make choices for ourselves, are allowed to ignore others - as far as possible - and if we have to compromise with someone else, we experience it as something annoying. This idea is also taught in art schools: you have to find your own language, work for yourself, translate your own experience into a painting. It is mainly about the self and the ego. That has to start changing.
What does this shift from the ego to the collective look like?
The cultural sector is often at the forefront of major social change and a new "story". Art gives energy, ideas, and new life to the cultural foundations of society. So it is partly up to the arts to think about the changes we want to see in our society. In the curatorial world, we are fortunate to be seeing shifts on that front. Many biennials, for example, are led by more than one person, like Sonsbeek. Documenta, together with the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, is also making a solid attempt this year to put on an edition focused on collective stories.
What is striking is that the press and critics find it complicated to grasp the story of this Documenta. In reaction to Documenta, the German press claimed that, by definition, art could not be made by collectives because it is an individual phenomenon. The influence of the environment is completely disregarded within this idea. The view that art is an individual phenomenon is a persistent one. Such an approach shows that many actually have no idea how art is expressed. This intolerant mindset is an example of contemporary conservative thinking. And, I want to stress, this applies to the entire political spectrum; on both the left and the right, many people are not open to new ways of thinking. I find that quite remarkable for our time.
Fortunately, on the other hand, artists and creatives continue to seek new perspectives. They regularly act as drivers of paradigm shifts. Ruangrupa, as well as other curators, are thus drivers of a new form of art appreciation. A positive consequence of this is that the old (art) history narrative is falling apart bit by bit, creating space for something new.
Despite the conservative thinking of our time, are you hopeful about the future?
Absolutely, even despite the fact that resistance to change is still strong among the majority of people. Recent years have shown that we do not change by just engaging with each other. So common events or issues must come our way that force us to work together on solutions and embrace change. And those issues are there. For example, we now face a global challenge around climate. We are living in a difficult period, but it is necessary to achieve a new social balance that no longer revolves around capitalist growth and the ego. A balance that I believe consists of multi-voicedness, differences and relationships.
In art, there are monochrome paintings and multicoloured paintings. Until recently, we have been exploring monochrome extensively, searching for its essence. In this way, you operate apartness in the literal sense: separating things that cannot be seen separately. Modernism has gone too far in this, culminating in elevating art to an autonomous object.
Autonomous art is nonsense, art cannot be captured in one essence. Now it is time for the multicoloured paintings to come to the fore. The still prevailing blue monochrome is making room on its canvas for other colours. In doing so, the blue does not give up its space, but offers the opportunity to others to add something to the canvas. All the colours in the painting have their own story. So do people. If we make space for each other, start to truly listen to each other and appreciate our differences, we can establish good relationships with each other and expand the story of history.
If we as a museum can add anything, it is to show relationships and their depth. Delinking and Relinking, for instance, is about relationships with and between artists, but also between the public and the museum. In this way, we break with the modernist laws of "autonomous art". No more white walls and floors, no more strict protocol on how art should be shown.
Does art always have a responsibility to bring about something in reality?
I don't know if it has so much to do with responsibility. I believe that art has a task; as art professionals, we have our task in society. And that task includes, for example, meeting the transitions of the moment. Artists (collectives) can fulfil their task in society in their own way with their art, but it is always important that they use imagination, give new ideas a chance, or give old, forgotten ideas a chance. Here, the museum acts as a tool. The artist is and always will be part of a society, that cannot be denied. That is why I have difficulty with disconnecting art from its task, in other words, making art autonomous. Society is dependent on the artist, and vice versa, the artist is dependent on society. We need to be able to discuss that.
In one of your essays, you warn against the idea that we as humanity are on our way to a utopian endpoint in the future. Does this mean that you reject utopian thinking in art?
Utopia is a dangerous phenomenon, a dogma almost. Especially in art. Utopia comes from the Greek Ou-Topos, meaning "non-existent place". Utopia is thus an impossible reality, an imagination disconnected from reality. This utopian thinking in art is comfortable, because in doing so, you need to take little or no responsibility as an artist. Of course, fantasy and imagination in art is possible as an exercise, to arrive at an idea. Then it is important to make a connection with reality and the audience. Through that putting into perspective, you come back from utopia, to topia, topos: the existing place.
Speaking of places - what is your take on globalised art versus telling local stories?
The global economy demanded a global culture. The globalised art market needed art that could travel the world and be readable - and thus saleable - anywhere. That art therefore had to be not too place-specific, not too local. Alongside globalisation, individualisation flourished at the same time. As a result, we began to feel both less connection with our immediate geographical surroundings and with our own social stratum, those above and those below. We lost the idea of connection, and with it the idea of responsibility. That has made us lonely. Now we are running into a limit in terms of globalisation and individualisation, in terms of the economy and the arts and on a personal level.
The question now is where to find that sense of connection and responsibility. Are we going back to a local story focused only on the people living in our area? I don't think so. I think we are moving into a time when we establish specific relationships with specific places, anywhere in the world. We as a museum no longer have a responsibility only for Brabant, but also for Indonesian Sumatra, for example, since we chose to establish an artistic relationship with it when making an exhibition. So these new relationships are global, but not globalising. Establishing that kind of relationship is something art can do quite well. So a museum has the challenge of no longer looking for the universal value of art but rather its local embedding. From that solid local embedding, you can then establish specific global relationships.
What are you and your curatorial team currently working on?
We are working on the project The Four Soils, inspired by the work of Palestinian theorist Munir Fasheh. In his work, he talks about four soils: the earth soil, the cultural soil, the community soil and the affective-spiritual soil. Through this idea of The Four Soils, we want to explore the human relationship to his soil. We need to nurture the four soils to achieve a healthy relationship with the world. A brief analysis of the current status: man is not dealing with the earth well, we can be brief about that. The affective-spiritual soil has been neglected by individualisation and extremism within religions. The community soil faces an issue: how do we build global relationships between different local communities? The cultural soil is in transition: it is up to artists to come to the realisation that becoming colourful is not such a bad thing. That it is possible to come together in all our differences.
Can you share anything that might contribute to this realisation?
We need to stop measuring our successes by numbers, and - I'll say it again - start focusing on relationships. And admit that we are interdependent. Check with yourself: how many relationships have you strengthened in your own environment? How many relationships have you strengthened with people from other environments? How many people have you touched, spoken to, asked a question? When those values of human relationships and collectivity start to materialise in our lives, I believe we can bring about great change as humanity.
Published on 19 May 2022.
Photos: Florian Braakman
