Hans Haacke

Abstract

This chapter gives an account of the work and conceptual underpinnings of Haacke’s art. It starts with his early work using physical and natural systems, and describes how he rejected mimetic representation and sought to use reality itself as the art medium. It describes Haacke’s transition to social systems for his medium in the late 1960s. It gives the background to Haacke’s engagement with the Art Workers Coalition and its oppositional politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of the general social unrest and anti-war movements of the time, including confrontations with the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, and uses these events to spell out the transitions underway in the fundamental reconceptualisation of art and its relationship to art institutions. It discusses the Shapolsky and Goldman art works in detail, and also the 1974 piece Manet-PROJEKT ’74, which was rejected for an exhibition in Köln, Germany. It also explores in detail the arguments around the 2000 work commissioned for the German Bundestag DER BEVÖLKERUNG. It examines the relationships between these works and journalism research practice, and opinions on the merits of Haacke’s work as journalism and sociology by the NYT’s Grace Glueck and the sociologists Howards Becker and John Walton, Frederic Jameson, and Pierre Bourdieu. The chapter concludes by specifying the elements of Haacke’s art that amount to journalism and therefore invite further theoretical interrogation as journalism in the following chapters.