H Homage
by Romina Dümler
ZERO's diverse artistic tributes
A homage, or tribute, refers to someone to whom one feels indebted, or who one feels is or has been a positive influence. It is a public expression of high regard—a euphonious token of love.
The titles of ZERO artists’ works are teeming with references that, quite typically for artistic productions, are expressed by the French phrase hommage à. This essay presents a selection of such ZERO works.
Heinz Mack (b. 1931)has dedicated many works to his colleagues, but also to inspiring people from past eras.
The circle with which he associates himself and his works ranges from seventeenth-century role models to his contemporaries; from Georges de La Tour to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Pablo Picasso, and Josef Albers.
The French Baroque painter Georges de La Tour became famous for painting a candle that created dramatic lighting effects in his nocturnes. Heinz Mack took up this candlelight and showed—or rather staged—his Hommage à Georges de La Tour at the Diogenes Gallery in Berlin in 1960. In 1966, he performed the work again at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf.[i] On both occasions, around 200 candles illuminated a room lined with mirror foil, which augmented the warm glow of the candlelight.
[i] The poster for the exhibition Mack, in the context of which this work was exhibited, is in the archive of the ZERO foundation, estate of Heinz Mack, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.1.VII.36.
Sometimes, instead of the French hommage, Mack chose the more lighthearted Gruss an (Greetings to), addressing fellow artists as kindred spirits, as in the work %%%Siehst du den Wind? (Gruss an Tinguely)%%% (Do You See the Wind? [Greetings to Tinguely]),[i] from 1962, and Engel des Bösen (Gruss an Aubertin) (Angel of Evil[Greetings to Aubertin]), circa 1968.
[i] Collection of the ZERO foundation, inv. no. mkp.ZERO.2008.16.
Jesús Rafael Soto references Yves Klein’s signature shade of blue— IKB (International Klein Blue)—by inserting a blue square into his black-and-white flickering structures, expressing his Homage to Yves Klein,1961.
In his Hommage à Fontana, 1962, Günther Uecker (b. 1930) features the oval shape of some of Lucio Fontana’s canvases.
For Christian Megert (b. 1936), Fontana’s buchi (holes) were the starting point for his tribute to the Italian maestro by optically expanding the canvas with shards of mirrors instead of actual slits.
More regarding "Homage"
However, Mack, Piene, and Uecker together paid the greatest tribute to the father figure Fontana by dedicating their contribution to the third Documenta in 1964 to him. Lichtraum (Light Room) (Hommage à Fontana) was set up in an attic in Kassel and consisted of individual kinetic light works and two collaborative works. The twoLichtmühlen (Light Mills) were worked on by the three artists at Gladbacher Strasse: for the Silbermühle (Silver Mill), Piene provided the easel, Mack contributed the slats, and Uecker put nails on the vanes; the substructure of the Weisse Lichtmühle (White Light Mill) came from a bar in Düsseldorf’s old town. The dedication to Fontana was important to the artists because the Italian artist had not received an official invitation to participate in the Documenta exhibition of contemporary art in Kassel.[i]
[i] See “Die Poesie des Dachbodens: Wie aus einem Restraum ein Lichtraum wurde. Heinz Mack, Otto Piene und Günther Uecker über ihren documenta-Beitrag im Jahr 1964,” in Heike van den Valentyn and Tiziana Caianiello, eds., Lichtraum (Hommage à Fontana): Der documenta-Beitrag von Heinz Mack, Otto Piene und Günther Uecker 1964 (Düsseldorf, 2009), n.p.
Their friends, or the paternal mentor Fontana, were thanked in the titles of their works, and they also paid tribute in this way to the art world’s metropolis of the nineteen-sixties: New York.
In his Lichtballett (Light Ballet) Hommage à New York from 1966/2016, Otto Piene (1928-2014) gave an impressive demonstration of his skills and showed how inspiring the city was for him.
In a slide projector, he arranged hand-colored glass slides, commercial photos of New York tourist attractions, and his own shots of everyday New York street life. Together with a soundtrack of sounds from the cityscape, a choreography of concrete images and abstract color, light, and sound effects resulted in an artistic evocation of New York.
Günther Uecker was fascinated by New York’s Broadway. He evoked Manhattan’s theater district with its numerous illuminated billboards in his Hommage à Broadway, 1965.
As early as 1960, Jean Tinguely had installed his famous Homage to New York in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)—a large-scale spectacle in which a machine ultimately self-destructs.
This text has been translated from German into English by Gloria Custance.
