"Harald Szeeman: Documenta 5"

Curated by David Platzker and circulated by the New York-based nonprofit Independent Curators International (ICI), “Harald Szeeman: Documenta 5” is something of a time capsule as it brings together publications, critical reviews and other materials associated with the fifth edition of Documenta, a massive art exhibition organized every five years in the German city of Kassel. Under the direction of curator Harald Szeemann and officially titled “Questioning Reality – Pictorial Worlds Today,” that 100-day-long happening of 1972 questioned the confines of contemporary art, jarring viewers with provocative displays in which “‘individual mythologies’ were juxtaposed with ‘parallel visual worlds’: worlds of piety, political propaganda, trivial realism (kitsch), advertising and product aesthetics, and the ‘art of the mentally ill.’” And that’s not to mention a “nightmarish depiction of racist lynch-mob justice in the United States.” As ICI recounts, Documenta 5 “was criticized in 1972 as being ‘bizarre…vulgar…sadistic’ by art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer and ‘monstrous… overtly deranged’ by art historian and art critic Barbara Rose [but] resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history.” Also on view in the Southwest School's Santikos Building: Adam Schreiber: "Copywork" and Jessica Mallios: "The Shard."