ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION Elisabeth Hartung

This book is about art: its visions, its aesthetic power, and its social importance. Not theory. You will become acquainted with artistic concepts from the period around 1972 and the early years of the twenty-first century. Moreover, you are invited to discover projects that have been forgotten and current works of art that point to the future. Interdisciplinary engagement with global reality and the role of art in shaping the future is integral to both.

The starting point for this publication is the prominent role of art and culture in the context of planning for an international sporting event: the 20th Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. The book project was begun on the occasion of the 50th anniversary in 2022; it activates nearly forgotten ideas, questions them, and brings their relevance into play for the current role of art in real and digital public spaces.

The period around 1970 was marked by decolonialization, political conflict, and the Cold War. The Club of Rome predicted that the end of nonrenewable resources was near. There was growing awareness of the consequences both of exploiting nature and of advancing capitalization. The younger generation in Germany was engaged in a distinctly critical debate over the country’s National Socialist past.

Fifty years after the games, our world has changed significantly. The idealistic concept that sports and art can playfully create a new, exemplary, international, cheerful, young coexistence hardly seems believable any longer in view of a war in Europe, social division, increasing radicalization, hate, and rabble-rousing, as well as international turbo capitalism. Immediately after the attack on the Israeli athletes on September 5, 1972, the president of the National Olympic Committee, Willi Daume, summed it up at the closing ceremonies on September 11, 1972: “In several months, in a few years, perhaps even only in a few decades, people will say that Munich was a historical event whose tragedy, confusion, and immaturity revealed the problems with which we have to live in this world today.”1

Fifty years later, these words, as well as the visionary impulses and plans for the games, convey the great topicality of the concepts of the time. Along with art, they were intended to make the world a better place and challenged people to imagine the coming fifty years in terms of current issues. The book at hand focuses on the present state of artistic conception and production; it conveys a sense of the conditions that art needs in order to have an effect within the social context in a lasting way.

This publication is divided into two parts and an intermezzo. It begins with a historical chapter, Part 1, which describes for the first time the significance of art within the 20th Olympic Games. The intermezzo follows with photographs by Jörg Koopmann of the 2022 Festival of the Games, Sports, and the Arts in the Olympic Park in Munich. In Part 2, more than forty designers and experts on art and theory look at contemporary artworks in order to develop ideas and thoughts about the role of art in the society of the future.

Visions and Reality: Art for the 1972 Munich Olympics

In the first section, thirteen authors shed scholarly light on the great value attributed to art, culture, and design during the 20th Olympic Games.2 From Otl Aicher’s concept for the graphic design, which replaced the pathos-laden colors of the participating nations with the cheerfulness of the spectrum of the rainbow, by way of the art and architecture for the Olympics landscape, to the official cultural programs of the Olympic Summer and the Spielstrasse (Play Street), experts outline a comprehensive image of visionary ideas, progressive concepts, and missed opportunities.

The first author begins by connecting the dots between the modules of artistic and cultural contributions located throughout the Munich region that motivated a new understanding of the effectiveness of culture. Kay Schiller, professor of modern European history, addresses the interactions between the planning, experience, and appropriation of the architecture of the Olympic Village and Park from the early 1970s to the present. Elisabeth Spieker, an expert in the work of Günter Behnisch, describes the interplay of architecture, landscape, and art in the Gesamtkunstwerk that the 1972 Olympics were intended to be. Under the title “Never Give Up!” the freelance art historian Corinna Thierolf presents concepts of American artists for the Olympic Summer Games in 1972 that largely went unrealized. Under the motto “Against Art,” Laszlo Glozer, an art critic for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 1972, and Christian Kandzia, responsible for percent-for-art projects for the firm Behnisch & Partner at the time, recall the conflicts over art. The art historian Daniela Stöppel shows in her “Control Circuits and Feedback Loops” that ideas of cybernetic control were adopted in the fine and applied arts around 1970 and raises the question of their utopian potential today. The present author illustrates the concept of interdisciplinarity and selected projects of the Spielstrasse against the background of artistic and social events in 1972. The work of the composer and program director for New Music during the Olympic Summer, Josef Anton Riedl, is introduced in the text by the author and musician Michael Lentz in “See-Hearing, Hear-Seeing.” Barbara Könches, director of the ZERO foundation in Düsseldorf, studies Otto Piene’s Olympischer Regenbogen (Olympic Rainbow) as a sign of hope after the attack. Maurin Dietrich, director of the Kunstverein München, considers the work of the artist Tony Cokes with reference to the visual identity of the games and their political charge, while the art theorist and critic Heinz Schütz examines the exhibition Weltkulturen und moderne Kunst (World Cultures and Modern Art) from the perspective of the current debate over postcolonialism. The responses of the co-initiator of the Children and Youth Center of that exhibition, Manfred Weihe, make it clear that Munich in 1972 stood for a revolution in art and museum pedagogy that is still relevant today. The role of the actionist art pedagogy of the KEKS group in developing the play concept for the Olympic Village is the topic of a study that Tanja Baar wrote for this publication.

Architecture of the Olympic sports arenas by Behnisch & Partner, 1972

Intermezzo: Festival of the Games, Sports, and the Arts

From July 1 to 9, 2022, the public space around the Olympic Lake was the venue for the Festival of the Games, Sports, and the Arts. Against the backdrop of the Olympic landscape and in the sports facilities, fully in line with the spirit of the cultural program of 1972, the public was invited to participate in a diverse interdisciplinary program. The program of the Opening Ceremonies in the Olympic Hall—under the motto of the anniversary year, “Munich on a Path to the Future 1972–2022–2072,” and featuring both current figures and eyewitnesses from sports, the public, and culture of that time—addressed critical remembering and cooperative social coexistence and was structured according to the program items of contemporary art. On July 2, a parade of current figures from culture, sports, and urban society took place, stretching from the Kunstareal (Art District) to the Olympic Park. In the neighborhoods around the Olympic Park, from the Olympic Village to the Press City, there were numerous participatory activities. Around the Olympic Lake, at the venue of the Spielstrasse of 1972, visitors could experience artists’ actions and productions that addressed concepts from 1972. In the Intermezzo, a selection of photographs by Jörg Koopmann conveys scenes, backgrounds, and atmosphere.

Art and Society in 2072

In 2022, interdisciplinary theoretical discourses recognized art as an important critical authority within society, as a medium for reflection, and as a way to provide new perspectives and insights. This has also been emphasized in economic, political, and social contexts. Art institutions are reexamining their roles and reinventing themselves as “third places”—noncommercial areas of encounter and exchange. It is above all the artists themselves who are searching for new contexts, tasks, and social influence.

The second part of the publication Art and Society 1972–2022–2072 brings together a diversity of voices and turns our attention toward the future. Space is opened up for new artistic practices and concrete projects. Theorists, curators, and scholars wrote texts on this issue: “Think about the future: What work of art, design, or innovative projects from the context of art, design, and architecture already reflects aspects that will be especially important in the society of the future?”

These essays are flanked by contributions by artists and designers from all over the world—from China to Bangladesh, Europe to the United States, Mexico, and Bolivia. The designers were asked to select one of their works for the book and to think about issues such as: What role does the cultural space in which you grew up play in your work? What specifically do you want your art to anticipate or achieve for the society of the future? What must be done today for that to succeed?

The responses of cultural figures and producers identify the central topics...