German art show removes major work after anti-Semitism claims

Germany’s Documenta, one of the world’s leading shows of contemporary art, has descended into chaos after a major work was ordered to be removed, accused of promoting anti-Semitic stereotypes.

The 100-day event, held every five years, is displaying 1,500 artists’ work over 32 sites in the western city of Kassel.

Three days in, however, Kassel’s mayor has demanded the removal of a large outdoor mural, People’s Justice, on the city’s central square.

Among its controversial images are a man with a hook nose, rat-like teeth, side-locks and an SS symbol on his hat.

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Another image shows a soldier with a pig’s face wearing a scarf with a Star of David and helmet containing the name “Mossad”, the name of the Israeli secret service.

Lord mayor Christian Geselle said he was “angry, disappointed and hurt ... by the anti-Semitic motifs” and said the work had done “immense damage to our city and the Documenta”.

“Given its history, Germany has a special responsibility for all people of the Jewish faith and for the state of Israel,” he said. “The Jewish community in Kassel, with whom I spoke today, also knows my clear position on this.”

On Monday evening, after 48 hours of controversy and condemnation from organisations including the International Auschwitz Committee, Documenta organisers first agreed to cover up the controversial mural.

Created by Indonesian artist collective Taring Padi, it said the images were not anti-Semitic but “culture-specifically related to our own experiences” in Indonesia, a majority Muslim country and traditionally pro-Palestinian.

Another Indonesian art collective, Ruangrupa, is curating this year’s Documenta with a focus on the global south. Though half of Documenta’s €42 million budget comes from the public purse, critics have alleged Ruangrupa has ties to the BDS boycott Israel movement.

It was branded anti-Semitic by the German parliament in 2019 and is barred from receiving federal funds. Opening the exhibition at the weekend president Frank Walter Steinmeier expressed his uneasiness with this year’s Documenta — less for the art but its boycott of Israeli Jewish artists.

”Freedom of opinion and freedom of art are at the heart of our constitution; criticism of Israeli policy is allowed,” he said. “But when [Israeli Jews] are banished from encounter and discourse ... this is a strategy of exclusion and stigmatisation, which then cannot be separated from anti-Semitism.”

Also under fire is federal culture minister Claudia Roth, who defended Ruangrupa and its guests as politically-minded Muslim artists from a country without diplomatic ties with Israel.

”I may not like that but that can’t mean that an artist or collective from Indonesia is under suspicion per se,” she said.

Documenta first opened its doors a decade after the end of the war in Kassel, with the aim of distancing West Germany from the past and returning the country to the cultural map.

A study last year revealed that 10 of the original 31 Documenta organisers were Nazis; six Nazis participated in the second show and 15 in the third.

Documenta’s co-founder Werner Haftmann, an influential postwar art expert, covered up how he was a wanted war criminal in Italy.