This year, the trophy of the Bavarian Culture Prize went to 38 creative artists. These include the world-famous photographer and sculptor Thomas Demand, the actress Luisa Wöllisch, who was born with Down syndrome, and the cabaret artist Hannes Ringlstetter.
Awards ceremonies are great for the honored and bland for the guests. There are occasional exceptions to this rule. For example, a few years ago at the awarding of the Bavarian Art Prize, when the Prime Minister said he wanted a Bavarian Documenta. That tore the last one out of the twilight sleep in the red velvet armchair of the Cuvillièstheater.
The ceremony of the “Bavarian Culture Prize 2021” took place without Söder, but went comparatively quickly, in a television studio (the stream can be checked) and in front of a live audience. Among the 38 award winners there was a particularly rare guest: Thomas Demand, the conceptual artist who was born in Munich and has been on the lists of the most important contemporary artists for years – not infrequently ahead of Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney and Neo Rauch. He also received the golden statue, called the flash of inspiration. Demand, who now commutes between Los Angeles and Berlin and grew up in Schäftlarn, took over the award from Wilhelm Koch.
Koch recently made headlines himself as an artist because he erected an equestrian statue for Angela Merkel in his home village in Upper Palatinate. He and Demand were once in the same young Munich artist group. And afterwards, in the sociable part of the evening, Koch said: “What Thomas has achieved, only very few succeed.” And he doesn’t just mean its financial success. How Demand captures his own sculptural replicas of Saddam Hussein’s hiding place in photographs or the hotel room in which Ron L. Hubbard, the Scientology founder, wrote his “Dianetics” bible, is unique. And thus close to what Demand formulated as his goal on this evening: “To tell other people, detached from the times, something that remains”.
Luisa Wöllisch (left) received an award in the acting category, Hannes Ringlstetter received the special award.
(Photo: Alex Schelbert)
Many of the other cultural workers and young scientists who were celebrated no less that evening should see it similarly. Luisa Wöllisch, who today belongs to the ensemble of the Kammerspiele and was born with trisomy 21, thanks with the words “Art is freedom for me!” And Hannes Ringlstetter, who as a cabaret artist and musician receives the special award 2021 from the hands of Art Minister Bernd Sibler, is no less pleased. The culture prize has been awarded for more than 60 years by the private energy company Bayernwerk, and since 2005 in cooperation with the State Ministry for Science and Art. The prizes in the art category are endowed with 5,000 euros each, in science with 2,000 euros.