Must Art Hang? Critical Ambivalence in Andrea Fraser's Exhibitions at Galerie Christian Nagel
(2025) Entangled Art Histories. The United States and the Two Germanies 1960-1990. — ISBN: [9789462704770], p. 79-101, published
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- This paper examines Andrea Fraser’s two exhibitions at Galerie Christian Nagel in Cologne, held ten years apart, in 1990 and 2001. I will argue that the two exhibitions, which mark pivotal moments in Fraser’s artistic career, address the historical, political, economic, and institutional conditions of the art world in West Germany—and more specifically in Cologne, as one of the world’s leading art scenes from the 1970s to the 1990s—to develop what I would call an aesthetics of critical ambivalence. On the one hand, Fraser adopts strategies of enactment, montage, distanciation, and de-propriation to explore the inconsistencies of the political and cultural relationships between the USA and Germany. On the other hand, she investigates the ambivalent position of the artist being complicit with the art system while simultaneously being expected to transgress or violate its norms and conditions.
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Streitberger, A. (2025). Must Art Hang? Critical Ambivalence in Andrea Fraser’s Exhibitions at Galerie Christian Nagel. In Valérie Mavridorakis, Alexander Streitberger, Hilde Van Gelder, Erik Verhagen (ed.), Entangled Art Histories. The United States and the Two Germanies 1960-1990. (p. p. 79-101). Leuven University Press. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/260728