Artistic Labyrinths and the Tower of Babel. A Comparative Look at the Exhibitions: Documenta 5, Les Immatériaux and Labyrinth – an Underground Space

Abstract

In this article, I would like to compare three exhibitions: documenta 5 in Kassel (1972), Les Immatériaux at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1985) and Labyrinth – An Underground Space at the Church of the Ascension of Christ in Warsaw (1989). These exhibitions are different in terms of their scale, fame, works presented and venue, and marked by different local contexts. The visions of art that the organisers – Harald Szeemann, Jean-François Lyotard and Janusz Bogucki – wanted to articulate through them seem to me an ideal example of reflecting on the integrity or heterogeneity of contemporary artistic activity. It is clear that the exhibitions discussed here were based on a pattern of wandering with the inherent figure of the tower-labyrinth of Babel. Therefore, the topos of the Tower of Babel, revolving around the theme of unity and dispersion, is quite fundamental to these reflections. Bogucki and Lyotard were to some extent similar in their diagnosis of contemporary art, which they saw in terms of dispersion and a great diversity of styles, motivations and references to reality – just like Szeemann, in fact. While Bogucki was searching for some universal ground of understanding in a situation of "confusion of tongues" in the sphere of spirituality, Szeemann delved into and explored separate artistic worlds operating in the registers of triviality and spirituality. In comparison, Lyotard, like other postmodernists, described dispersion as a condition inherent in the present.