Emailed to me by a friend on Monday:
"A couple of images from the Menzel book because when I saw them I thought about you and the Hirschhorn banner.
My thoughts about them are not very original – more emotional really.
The drawing is of dead soldiers in a barn during the war between Prussia and Austria in 1860s when Menzel spent time behind the battle lines to document the war.
The other drawing is of the Prussian commander Moltke's binoculars, which is interesting in a different way.
…
[there were over 6000 drawings when Menzel died in 1904] engagement with interpreting reality.
I know we can't turn back time or deny the camera as a tool – that gives another truth – but one not filtered through the draughtsman's body.
Adorno said there could be no art after Auschwitz ….then more recently someone, I cant remember who, said there could only be art [ to make sense of experience] after Auschwitz.
But the celebration of the 'abject' …. with the elevation of the 'artist'…. and the experience so dematerialized…….
I always thought that the function of the 'artist' was in some way to be to transform experience…. [actually the word 'experience' is devalued now, as in the Imperial War Museum's 'First World War Experience' I saw recently]"
