Many know the story of how Joseph Beuys Spent three days with a coyote in a New York gallery in 1974. Few know who organized the action. Many are familiar with Gerhard Richter’s painting “Uncle Rudi” with the blurred gentleman in SS uniform. Few people know that it belongs to the memorial in Lidice in the Czech Republic and was driven through the Iron Curtain in 1968 in a VW Bulli together with many other works of art without customs papers, and by whom.
Many know this VW Bulli from its later use in Joseph Beuys’ installation “Das Rudel”, in which 24 GDR sports sleds with felt covers and flashlights swell out of the trunk. But not many people know that with the sale of this new type of work on the Cologne art market in 1969, not only did the market for Beuys reach an international level, but for German art as a whole. When the American galleries next door 100,000 marks for Warhol’s and Rauschenberg demanded, then, Berlin gallery owner René Block decided, a Beuys should also cost 100,000 marks – not for reasons of making money, but for cultural policy reasons. And so Block waited for days at his stand. His colleague Alfred Schmela offered 40,000. Beuys urged Block to accept. He was waiting. Until the last day, the non-fiction author Jost Herbig and his wife Barbara certified the jump in categories – and art made from found or ephemeral materials, which the Fluxus pioneer had striven for for years, was something in front of everyone’s eyes.
Rarely did Block, who turns 80 this Tuesday, make such a grand gesture. In his gallery, which opened in 1964, he brought Richter, Lueg and Polke to still sleepy West Berlin, John Cage and Nam June Paik. Between 1974 and 1977, with his New York branch, he paved the way for the success of German post-war art in the United States. As head of the artist program of the DAAD in Berlin from 1982 to 1992, he promoted the international opening of the later art city of Berlin. At the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, he fought to also buy art from non-German artists. As director of the Kassel Fridericianum from 1997 to 2006, he broadened his view of Balkan art. And as a consultant for the Istanbul Vehbi Koç Foundation for many years, he was instrumental in initiating the success of numerous artists from Ayşe Erkmen to Halil Altindere. Many are familiar with the European traveling biennale Manifesta. Hardly anyone knows that René Block once gave it its name.
He democratized art ownership through favorable editions of his Edition Block
Block has always been devoted to small, fleeting forms and silent gestures. Only with this peculiar mixture of grabbing hold and restraint can it be explained that he initiated countless exhibitions in over 470 and made many visible, but rarely became a topic himself. Yes, it seems as if he managed the feat of disappearing behind his own historical figure – so that many who know him do not know that he still sits in the office of his Edition Block, founded in 1966, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf every day and sold self-published edition objects by Marina Abramović or Alicja Kwade. Because René Block also invented the democratization of art through favorable editions. He spends the summers with his wife Ursula in their own Kunsthalle 44 on the Danish island of Møen.
With the gifts from Gerhard Richter, Chris Reinecke, Blinky Palermo and many others, whom he drove to the Czech Republic in 1968 as part of the worldwide reparation campaign for the 25th anniversary of the German massacre in Lidice, Block demonstrated historical sensitivity and a sense of responsibility as a Eurasian, like Beuys’ companion named the continent. A museum has since grown out of the gifts, which were joined in 1997 by others from Karin Sander, Rosemarie Trockel and Maria Eichhorn.