“Great emotions are currently in vogue”

adminonDecember 16, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Trump's rage: also an art object © Evan El-Amin (shutterstock)

The skinny torso of the dead Jesus – without a head and with dark holes instead of arms – or a snapshot with Trump's aggressive gestures: An exhibition explores the theme of art and feelings.

Who doesn't remember the scene when U.S. President Donald Trump appealed to the emotions of his supporters, claiming he could shoot someone in the middle of New York's Fifth Avenue and still not lose any voters? Martha Rosler's highly topical digital print "Point and shoot" captures the moment with Trump's aggressive gestures and facial expressions. The work can be found in the exhibition "Passion Passion. The Art of Great Feelings", with which Munster's Museum of Art and Culture, starting on Friday with 200 exhibits, will for the first time trace an arc to the present day – from the infanticide in Bethlehem to the propaganda of the U.S. president, which is based on instincts instead of arguments.

"Big feelings are in vogue right now, if you just think about the Corona deniers and conspiracy theorists," explained the director of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL), Mathias Lob, on Tuesday at the presentation of the show. "An exhibition theme could hardly be more topical."The LWL is the sponsor of the museum, which will be showing the exhibition until July 14. February 2021 shows.

Feelings determine life

Strong feelings are indeed as old as humanity itself. They determine life, influence thought and action. They are absolutely timeless and have also been depicted for centuries with the same stylistic devices. "Art is able to express passions most intensively," explains museum director Hermann Arnhold. "Therefore, we invite everyone to sympathize with what you see here."

In six chapters, the exhibition tells of joy and sorrow, devotion and fear, love and hate, and shows in exemplary fashion how these feelings are expressed in body language, i.e. in gestures and facial expressions. At the beginning, a copy of the Laocoon group is an eye-catcher. The sculpture in the Vatican Museums depicts the death throes of Laocoon and his sons, and has shaped the image of grief and pain in art for centuries. In the second part of the show, works of art from antiquity to the present are linked with source texts and related to art theories, with the reconstruction of an ancient theater mask attracting particular attention. The depiction of the Bethlehemite infanticide from the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens also shows the visitor the full drama of human affects.

The joys and sorrows of love

The heart of the show is the third room on the joys and sorrows of love, which focuses on Eros and physical love, but also on jealousy, horror, despair and sexual violence. An exhibition on the theme of "Passion" would be incomplete, however, if it did not take into account the Passion of Jesus Christ and its echoes in art. The Pieta by the artist Berlinde de Bruyckere, created in 2007/2008, has a particularly blatant, even shocking and provocative effect, showing the naked, gaunt figure of the dead Jesus without a head and with dark holes instead of arms, completely lonely and abandoned on a soft feather pillow. Hardly less drastic and impressive is the "Christ at the Scourging Pillar," carved from linden wood and created in the Alpine region in 1697.

Room five explores the meaning of feelings in a political context, such as Willy Brandt's genuflection in the Warsaw Ghetto or the brotherly kiss of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker. The last room brings together self-portraits of artists – mirrors of their own spiritual lives. At the same time, visitors can also examine their own feelings: The so-called "Passion Curve" asks whether love, hate, serenity or anger are predominant.

The facial recognition station at the end is thought-provoking: it uses a screen to analyze visitors' facial expressions and translates them into feelings. According to the exhibition's curator, Petra Marx, "Some people might find it quite frightening what the device brings to light."

Gerd Felder

A scandal at a congress of the Federation: Actually, the bishop of Mainz, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, wanted to discuss the society of values. In the end, he had to take offense instead. The background is the alleged discriminatory treatment of homosexuals by the Catholic Church. Lehmann himself considered himself to be in front of a "tribunal".

Clear criticism of the Catholic Church prompted an appearance by Cardinal Karl Lehmann at the 1. Congress of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency accompanied. The spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Association (LSVD), Manfred Bruns, called Lehmann a "grand master of discrimination" afterwards on Wednesday and accused him of hypocrisy. He indirectly drew a comparison with the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi era.The former chairman of the German Bishops' Conference engaged in a debate with Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann after delivering a keynote speech on the topic of "value society as an economic factor". Even before the final round of questions, several questioners interrupted the discussion with accusations that the Catholic Church discriminates against homosexual employees and fires them if they enter into a civil partnership.Lehmann said such questions would be clarified in concrete conversation. The church's labor-law guidelines stipulate "that there is not simply a hatchet, but a pastoral discussion". At the same time, he accused the critics of trying to turn the event into a tribunal. He was not prepared to do that, moreover, he did not know the concrete cases and could not review them now.

Criticism also of the anti-discrimination stela LSVD spokesman Bruns, one of the questioners, subsequently accused the cardinal of not having addressed the "severe discrimination" practiced by the Catholic Church at any point in his speech. If church employees entered into a registered civil partnership, they would have to be dismissed according to a decision of the Permanent Council of the Bishops' Conference. This is morally reprehensible and deeply anti-social. In view of such actions, homosexual church employees today would have to hide and adapt, the 74-year-old said. This reminded him of how he himself had had to behave during the National Socialist era and in the 1950s.At the same time, Bruns expressed criticism of the anti-discrimination agency. Lehmann's invitation showed how "flimsy" its work was. The institution was established at the beginning of 2007 in the wake of the General Equal Treatment Act, which was intended to implement the European directives on the prevention of discrimination.

Lehmann urges business to take ethical responsibility Earlier, Lehmann had appealed to the business community to take responsibility for society and to act according to ethical standards. If it wants to be part of society, it must also be judged by the values of the society in which it operates and skims off profits. The cardinal went on to emphasize that market rules only work in the long term if they are supported by a basic moral consensus.Rene Obermann, Chairman of the Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom, also called ethical principles indispensable for the economy. A "partly unbridled, partly anarchic globalization" needs ethical impulses. "Nothing works without ethics," he opined, otherwise companies would not be able to exist. Ethics, however, should not be confused with social romanticism.Obermann also spoke of the special responsibility of those who – as managers, for example – benefit greatly from globalization processes. Of course they should give more back to society. The Deutsche Telekom CEO continued to express his conviction that ethical orientations of the churches had significance far beyond the circle of church members. In his estimation, the church also provides the value framework for many who have turned away from the institution of the church.At the same time, Lehmann reaffirmed the role of the classic entrepreneur.In many cases, it is managers who have no stake in the capital or tradition of a company, but then cut jobs with reference to cost prere or with an eye on the share price.

Further steps: The German Catholic bishops have decided on several projects as a consequence of the study on the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Suggests reform of church and litigation laws as well.

Responsible for the implementation is the abuse commissioner of the Bishops' Conference, the Trier Bishop Stefan Ackermann, as the Permanent Council of the Bishops' Conference announced after its meeting on Tuesday in Wurzburg. Ackermann would coordinate closely with the federal government's abuse commissioner, Johannes-Wilhelm Rorig.

Common standard on personal records management

Bishops resolved to adopt common standards for priests' personal records management. In addition to diocesan contacts, there should be external independent contact points on the subject of sexual abuse in the future.

An independent review is to clarify who, beyond the perpetrators, was institutionally responsible for abuse incidents in the church. The procedure for acknowledging suffering will be further developed and inter-diocesan monitoring for the areas of intervention and prevention will become mandatory, it says.

By the next meeting of the Permanent Council, the bishops also plan to develop a work plan to reflect with experts in various disciplines on the celibate lifestyle of priests and aspects of Catholic sexual morality.

Reform of ecclesiastical and procedural law encouraged

Permanent Council also endorses proposal to establish interdiocesan criminal tribunals for abuse proceedings in Germany. For this purpose, the Bishops' Conference will contact Rome. Furthermore, ecclesiastical law and procedural law would have to be reformed.

"The focus of all efforts is to protect against sexual abuse of minors and those under protection," it concludes. "The Permanent Council has reaffirmed the demand for consistency, transparency and urgency, and urges decisive implementation."The current status will be discussed at each meeting, he said.

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