Serious? The painter Leon Löwentraut exhibits in Munich – culture

It has something of a pastiche, a comedy about artistic clichés. Leon Löwentraut, 23 years old, is in front his works in the neo-Gothic hall of the Bavarian National Museum (BNM) and looks meaningfully into the cameras. Behind him hangs a series of common charcoal drawings, in front of him lies a folder with his edition: prints, reworked with acrylic paints, available for purchase. He is asked how he gets inspiration. Well, it breaks out of him at night, there is such an urge to paint, which he gives in to, quite intuitively, without much planning. It is “abstract-expressive”. He just had a Diego Velázquez phase, he says, he has respect for old art, the result can be seen in this show. He once said that he wanted to be as famous as Pablo Picasso, a journalist starts, Löwentraut interrupts: He was wrongly quoted, only his works should be as famous as the Picassos. There is no trace of irony, let alone self-irony, he means it all.

And it is this overconfidence that has made him famous, this reenactment of the gestures of long dead masters: Löwentraut, who, like Jackson Pollock once, allegedly presses uncontrollably on the tube of paint. The young genius for whom the female models undress. Löwentraut, the child prodigy, rejected by the Düsseldorf Art Academy, but loved by Picture, colorful and 223,000 followers on Instagram. Even as a schoolboy he made such a fuss that his art teacher had to justify herself to the local press for only giving him a grade of three.

Comedy has other actors as well. There is the omnipresent artist father who poses harsh questions to the employees shortly before the press conference; the large-format acrylic paintings of the young Leon Löwentraut are not all finished yet. The external curator, who knows all prices by heart, up to 70,000 euros, allegedly said that the vast majority of the large formats have already gone, the edition is cheaper. The museum director, who wants to give the whole thing some meaning and then starts a speech that love and violence were the driving forces of art as early as the Renaissance, and that the works of this young star also announced it. Again Löwentraut looks meaningful.

He presses on the tube, a lot of gold and pastel, but you don’t feel the will to form

It is an achievement that no one bursts out laughing. The violence that is conveyed in the acrylic paintings is only directed against painting, against its ability to create moods, to be ambivalent, to set the imagination of artist and audience in motion alike. On a randomly primed background, Löwentraut uses a tube to apply acrylic circles and lines, wildly mixed in color with lots of gold and pastel, mostly you can see heads staring blankly in front of them. There are no flowing transitions, surprises, psychological insights, or any kind of noticeable will to form. The love that may drive these works is more likely to be self-love, the love of quick fame with the means of shallow trash. The world doesn’t have to feel meant by so much frosting; Löwentraut’s works celebrate nothing but “a little bit of decoration”, as the fashion man Wolfgang Joop once put it. In the junk racks for wall decorations, as they are in some furniture stores just before the cash register, they would not attract any further attention.

Now nobody, not even an artist, is obliged to aesthetic subtlety or an interest in the present, and if discotheque owners, lawyers or other people with enough money like to brag about an overpriced piece of Löwentraut on the wall, that’s their business. A museum, however, should have standards as to which art contributes to some form of knowledge and which does not. And it should differentiate between art and commerce, if it doesn’t want to jeopardize its credibility.

The museum would have to explain cultural history, then a young audience would also come

The General Director of the Bavarian National Museum, Frank Matthias Kammel, has promised the private Edition Minerva, which organized and curated the exhibition, not only this presentation, but also other shows by other artists over several years. The aim, according to Kammel, is to attract young people to the museum, and you also benefit from the fact that Edition Minerva pays for the trimmings such as the receptions and a catalog itself. The owner of Edition Minerva, Manfred Möller, was apparently given a free hand as curator – which goes so far that even the sales edition can be displayed at the press conference.

Open detailed view

That Bavarian National Museum is a museum with a cultural and historical claim, which means that it should show art in a larger historical context. Unfortunately, it is often not too specialized, and large parts of the permanent collection are too poorly classified. This lack of ambition, which has been cultivated for years, means that although many important works of art and cultural-historical objects are united here, the house is not even really known in Bavaria – let alone that it would be perceived nationwide as it would be appropriate. Kammel, who was appointed only two years ago, would have to remedy the shortage of visitors with a firework of ideas. Instead, he is now giving up the museum rooms in order to beg for attention on the boulevard.

It would have been safe to show individual Löwentraut works in a cultural history museum like the BNM – namely in a well-founded, diverse, critically distant and self-responsible group exhibition on the phenomenon of media hype. Then a young, art-loving and socio-political audience would also like to come. Unfortunately, the museum has decided to give up on its own instead.

Leon Löwentraut: Leonismo, Bavarian National Museum in Munich, until September 26th.