Opening Speech at the Exhibition of Leta Peer in Ettlingen on 12 March 2004

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Heinz, dear Leta,

Just imagine that the gallerist had sent a questionnaire along with the invitation to this exhibition and urgently requested that you answer three questions before coming and send the answers back to him. How would you have reacted?

Perhaps you might have been indignant, thinking "What else do I have to do?". But you would certainly have looked at the questions, because you are essentially the curious type.

With some surprise, you might have read under "First":

"Is 7 much?"

What kind of a question is that supposed to be? "Is 7 much?" How is a question like this to be taken? That is the way children ask. How should one answer? Okay, let's go on reading first. Question two:

"Does the moon exist if no one is looking?"

For goodness sake, what kind of a game is this? Of course the moon exists if no one is looking! So quickly on to the third question:

"Is Leta Peer a good artist?"

Aha, you might have said, now I see what's going on. I am supposed to decide something that, in principle, cannot be decided.

And you would be absolutely right with this suspicion, that is exactly what you should do. Because this exhibition is not merely a casual offer for perceiving; like every exhibition, this exhibition raises – the question of the quality of the works. And we can decide this question, because it belongs to the family of questions that are undecidable, and only these questions, only these undecidable questions allow us the possibility of a decision. That is my assertion.

Are you skeptical? Go ahead. But you are right, at this point I owe you an explanation. So let's go back to the beginning.

Before I return to the undecidable questions, perhaps I should first cite an example of decidable question. For example, I could ask you to tell me:

"Is 3,875,317 divisible by 2?"

I'm sure that no one needs to think about the answer to that, because we have all learned that numbers can only be divided by two if they end with zero or an even number.

Decidable questions, then, are those that are already decided by the choice of framework, in which they are posed. Questions like this are basically boring, because a series of compelling logical steps always leads us to an irrefutable answer.

In my opinion, the questions that are principally undecidable are much more interesting. Here we are free, here we have a choice.

For example, the question of the origins of the universe is a principally undecidable question, because no one was there to observe it.

Some will say it was a matter of a unique act of creation, others maintain there never was a beginning and there will be no end, because the universe is a system that is held in a permanent balance, yet others will be absolutely convinced that the universe originated twenty billion years ago with a "Big Bang", whose weak echo can still be heard over large radio antennas. A Hindu would tell of turtles that go back to other turtles reaching all the way to the primal ground; a Christian would say something about paradise and so forth and so on. In other words: tell me how the universe originated, and I will tell you who you are.

I hope you see more clearly now what I mean, when I say: Only the questions that are principally undecidable allow us to decide! It is only with undecidable questions like this that there is no external necessity that forces us to answer the question according to certain rules. We are free! We have the choice! Sometimes we perceive this freedom as a gift, sometimes as a burden. In the case of Leta Peer's pictures, it is undoubtedly a gift, and I will now attempt to show you a possible way to look at these pictures and how one might easily come to a decision in general.

So I will not hold a lecture about mountains, nor about painting per se. Instead, I will try to talk a little about how one could encounter these works.

And I will not tell you anything really new, because the royal road to approaching an art work has always been the same:

First of all, this royal road begins by naming the things we see before us as exactly as possible. Solely with the precise description of a drawing, a watercolor, a painting, we easily arrive in the proximity of what characterizes a work and what it could mean.

That sounds quite modest, but: there is hardly anyone left today, who is able and willing to describe. We all fall into the same trap again and again: we have no patience, no time, and usually want everything at once, because we don't know what will happen tomorrow or in a month. Yet we must take our time, because as long as we have not carefully realized how a work is constituted, every interpretation, even a well-intentioned one, must fail.

We must take our time, as the artist must take time. In art, time is the greatest good.

Those who fall into the time-trap are lost.

Some people demand of the artist that he must be creative. His creativity is thought to reveal the significance of his work. Yet demands like this, considered in the clear light of day, are foolish. This would be roughly the same as requiring a white horse to be white. No, an artist is creative by definition, or he is not an artist. The only thing we can demand of an artist is that he takes his time and consistently goes his own way. Despite all the acceleration attempts in the world. And works, in which time and experience are stored, naturally also need a viewer who takes time.

I am talking about art in general, but I am also talking about Leta Peer's pictures. Especially the pictures that deal with mountains also involve this time, are an expression of a sealed time. And this is something I like very much.

With a description that progresses from the general to the particular, we always move on, even when we find ourselves faced with something completely new. A description decelerates and also helps in those cases, when we feel helpless and have no idea whether it is even worthwhile to intensively consider one work or another.

Should the persistent viewing (for a description is nothing other than this) yield that something interesting is stored there in the art work, then the next step follows as though by itself, because the artwork becomes a peculiar machine that is set in motion through the eyes of the viewer.

Indeed, one could say that an artwork is, in a wholly matter-of-fact way, always also a machine for generating interpretations, an artwork is like a machine that creates a field of energy and stimulates a communicative process, in which everyone can take part.

Almost everyone, because there is one person who should be exempt from this process: the artist. He may – if he wants to – remain reserved. We must be satisfied with the fact that he has made the work. Everyone else, though – once they have grasped what is there visually – should not only seek to interpret the pictures on the basis of their own life experience, we should also tell one another our interpretations. For it is only in this way, only when we tell one another what we see, think and feel that the work becomes a communicator.

Ultimately, it is talking about this and that, loudly and quietly, which has a stimulating effect on us. It is speaking about the artworks that first animates us to approach the artist's works again and again. At the same time, it does not matter at all whether two viewers come to the same conclusions about one and the same picture. On the contrary!

In art it is often the moment of differentiation that results in long-lasting connections. If you and I have a different opinion, then generally more happens than when we approve something in harmonious unanimity.

What does the artist say to this? As a rule, he will be happy to discover new views and readings that are suggested to him by the viewer. Certainly not all, but an astonishing number of interpreters reveal surprising conjunctions of meaning, which the artist himself was not aware of when making it. And this is good. Once a work is exhibited, it produces its own meaning. And a good work, as we all know, is always smarter than its author.

The artist does not necessarily have to take part in the interpretation of his work, as I said before. However, the artist will not be excluded from the conversation, either. For example, he may explain how and why he did something in a certain way and not differently. Maybe you will make use of the opportunity today and ask the artist about this point. But forget all considerations and questions related to the theme of inspiration, talent and genius. Because what we conventionally think of as genius generally consists of ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.

In fact, you don't even need to talk to the artist about her art. Perhaps it would be better to talk with her about the weather or what she expects from life. Because once an artwork is there, we have to find out for ourselves what it is good for. In visual art the same hermeneutical principle still applies, that it is ultimately the judgment of the viewer that illuminates the meaning of a work. That is no different in music or literature. Here too, it is not the author, not Martin Walser, not even Marcel Reich Ranicki, who determines worth of a novel. No, in the end it is the readers, who form the resonance space, in which the work must hold its own. And this evening, we are the ones who will decide whether that which Leta Peer shows us means something or not.

In conclusion, allow me to return to the questionnaire that the gallerist never sent.

We have already talked about the first question and the last one. These are principally undecidable questions seeking to be decided. But what about the moon?

Does the moon exist if no one is looking?

The answer to this question is quite fascinating, because it determines whether we believe that we can separate ourselves from the universe as observers and are thus capable of looking at the unfolding universe through a keyhole, or whether we believe that we are part of the universe, that when we act, we change and the universe with us.

In short: I am convinced that the question of whether the moon exists when no one is looking, will only be answered with a confident "but of course" by naïve realists (and probably ontologists as well).

If you trade the moon for art in this question, though, then one might say that the answer necessarily depends on us.

For me, the pictures in this exhibition evoke a lively attention to the unknown aspects of something. The indicate that things are not exhausted in their once defined form and function, but rather that there is often yet another possibility, other than the known possibilities, inherent to it.

Thus there are only two questions left this evening that I must decide:

Which picture in this exhibition is the best one?

And question number two: Where would you hang up this picture at home?

Thank you for your attention, and I hope you enjoy the exhibition.

Andreas Bee, curator at the Museum of Modern Art, MMK, Frankfurt am Main

P.S. Many thanks also to Heinz von Foerster for his wonderful ideas, some of which I have borrowed for this opening speech.