The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, once again sharply criticized the discovery of further anti-Semitic images at the Documenta: “I could not have imagined such open anti-Semitism on German soil before 2022,” said Schuster on Thursday at the presentation of the Janusz Korczak Prize for Humanity in Munich. In his speech, Schuster recalled the poster of the “Taring Padi” artist collective, “on which Jews were shown as disgusting exploiters in the worst of strings.” Taring Padi described this as a protest against the colonization of Indonesia by the Dutch, and Schuster now referred to reports that only around 200 Jews live in Indonesia today. “We always knew that you don’t have to know a single Jew to be an anti-Semite,” says Schuster. In this context, the fact that artists from Israel were not invited to participate sheds a significant light on the work of the management of the Documenta.
However, as this week showed, the dismantling of the artwork and the later dismissal of the general director Sabine Schormann did not lead to the uproar over anti-Semitic tendencies at the documenta dying down: the interim managing director Alexander Farenholtz, who had been in office for a week, now had to go to new ones Respond to allegations that other problematic works appeared on Wednesday. Farenholtz rejected the allegations: The historical archive material in question was temporarily removed from the exhibition around three weeks ago in order to examine it more closely. “According to the investigation, while there is a clear reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is no depiction of Jews ‘as such,'” it said in a statement. The work was classified as not relevant under criminal law.
“This Documenta will go down in history as an anti-Semitic art show.”
Nevertheless, the partners of the documenta are now demanding that the drawings under discussion be removed from the exhibition “until they are appropriately contextualised”. “The handling of the drawings shows how urgently external expertise is needed when analyzing works for anti-Semitic (image) language,” they said on Thursday. They are supported by Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth. “It is good and right that the partners of the Documenta have now asked the artistic direction to remove these drawings from the exhibition,” said the Greens politician. The FDP even called for the art show to be temporarily stopped. “The recent allegations of anti-Semitism reveal an abyss. The Documenta must be interrupted immediately,” said FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai.
The President of the Central Council, Schuster, took a similar line on Thursday in a press release: “It’s hard to imagine that this Documenta can really run until September 25,” he wrote. Although the country has been discussing anti-Semitism, the anti-Israeli boycott movement BDS and hatred of Israel for weeks, the management of the Documenta is acting as if it doesn’t concern them. Obviously, it doesn’t matter who is in charge there, says Schuster. “This Documenta will go down in history as an anti-Semitic art show.”