Wassmann Foundation

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The Wassmann Foundation, Washington, D.C, is an arts collective based in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 2001, the collective has a rotating membership from a range of fields, including artists, writers, curators, musicians and film-makers. The foundation oversees the estate of the fictitious Leipzig modernist and sewerage engineer Johann Dieter Wassmann (1841–1898). More broadly, it uses its art practice to call into question the growing role of artist, curator and art institution alike, as interconnected and synergetic brands.

Leipzig Place in Saxony, Germany

Leipzig is the most populous city in the federal state of Saxony, Germany. With a population of 581,980 inhabitants as of 2017, it is Germany's tenth most populous city. Leipzig is located about 160 kilometres (99 mi) southwest of Berlin at the confluence of the White Elster, Pleiße and Parthe rivers at the southern end of the North German Plain.

Johann Dieter Wassmann fictitious German artist

Johann Dieter Wassmann (1841–1898) is a fictitious artist and sewerage engineer, purportedly from Leipzig, Saxony, in east-central Germany. He is the creation of the American-born artist and writer Jeff Wassmann. As a result of the widespread dissemination of his work, Johann Dieter Wassmann is sometimes mistakenly cited as a lesser-known figure among late-19th-century European artists; he is most often identified as an early purveyor of the Dada and Surrealist movements and has become closely associated with several notable artists of the first half of the 20th century, including Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Eugène Atget and Joseph Cornell.

Contents

History

Jeff Wassmann's fictional artist Johann Dieter Wassmann, Freundschaftstempel, Potsdam, 1896. Albumen silver print, 18 x 23 cm. The Wassmann Foundation, Washington, D.C. Freundschaftstempel, Potsdam, 1896.jpg
Jeff Wassmann's fictional artist Johann Dieter Wassmann, Freundschaftstempel, Potsdam, 1896. Albumen silver print, 18 x 23 cm. The Wassmann Foundation, Washington, D.C.

The Wassmann Foundation was publicly launched at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2003 in an exhibition titled "Bleeding Napoleon." [1] The works of Johann Dieter Wassmann were exhibited by the Wassmann Foundation across three floors of the 19th century Old Melbourne Observatory in a show curated by Kirsten Rann and overseen by Juliana Engberg (curator of the Sydney Biennale 2014). [2] All works were by the American assemblage artist Jeff Wassmann. A website was established to coincide with the exhibition, which still exists today.

Melbourne International Arts Festival

Melbourne International Arts Festival is a major international arts festival and a celebration of dance, theatre, music, circus, visual arts, multimedia, outdoor and free events held each October in a number of venues across Melbourne, Australia. Since 2016 the Artistic Director has been Jonathan Holloway.

Melbourne Observatory astronomical observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Melbourne Observatory was founded in 1862 to serve as a scientific research institution for the rapidly growing city of Melbourne, the capital of the colony of Victoria. The observatory was tasked by the Victorian government with maintaining an accurate time reference for the colony through observations of stars using a transit telescope as well as general astronomical research.

Assemblage (art) art form and technique

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The popularity of the website gave rise to a range of new media efforts on the part of collective members including blogs, videos, MySpace and later Facebook sites. After the U.S. Department of State withdrew funding from the Venice Biennale's American Pavilion in August 2004, the Wassmann Foundation turned lobbyist, leading an email campaign from "inside the Beltway" to successfully reinstate funding to the Pavilion. [3]

Facebook Global online social networking service

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Venice Biennale Bi-annual art exhibit

The Venice Biennale refers to an arts organization based in Venice and the name of the original and principal biennial exhibition the organization presents. The organization changed its name to the Biennale Foundation in 2009, while the exhibition is now called the Art Biennale to distinguish it from the organisation and other exhibitions the Foundation organizes.

In 2006 Film Victoria provided a funding grant from the Documentary Development program to pursue the project as a film. In the same year it was decided to add photography to the character's talents. Jeff Wassmann travelled extensively through eastern Germany in March and April of that year photographing the landscapes and cityscapes in a style recognizable as turn-of-the-century modernist. MuseumZeitraum Leipzig was also created in the same year, ostensibly by a disgruntled employee of the Wassmann Foundation who convinced Leipzig relatives to fight for the repatriation of the character's work to Germany. The Foundation agreed to repatriate all assemblage works in November 2007. [4] In its November 1 issue, the art blog ArtInfo announced:

Film Victoria is a statutory authority of the State Government of Victoria, Australia that provides strategic leadership and assistance for film, television, and digital media production in the Australian state of Victoria.

During these years MuseumZeitraum operated a highly popular English-language blog out of Leipzig reporting on contemporary art in eastern Europe.

With Deductible Gift Recipient status from the Australian Tax Office, the Wassmann Foundation has also financed many outside performance and theater groups.

According to the Foundation's fictional narrative, the key character, Johann Dieter Wassmann, had a number of siblings who were also involved in music and the arts. The work of these further characters is now being developed by revolving members of the collective. [5] Most recently, the collective has begun distributing portfolios of the character's photographic works to museums around the world.

Historical perspective

The Wassmann Foundation is part of a long history of artists using fictional identities in contemporary art, although the practice has not been as widely accepted as the use of pseudonyms in the literary world, where a much richer and more established tradition has prospered.

Rrose Sélavy was the pseudonym used by the artist Marcel Duchamp in the 1920s. In the late 1990s, the artist Walid Raad began constructing elaborate fictions chronicling the contemporary history of his native Lebanon, signing his work The Atlas Group and presenting it as a body of collective scholarship. In 2004 the Bruce High Quality Foundation, an anonymous artists collective made up of former Cooper Union students, began a highly ambitious practice in New York. [6] In 2013 the Brooklyn Museum showed a retrospective of the collective's work and later in the year a silkscreen by the group, "Hooverville," depicting the New York City skyline with hobos, sold at Sotheby's for $425,000. [7] Banksy is the pseudonym of a Bristol-born graffiti artist and political activist working since the late 1980s. For over twenty years Banksy has successfully hidden his identity from the general public. [8]

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References

  1. ↑ Crawford, Ashley (2003-10-11). "Hoax most perfect". Melbourne Age, October 11, 2003.
  2. ↑ "Best of the fest". Melbourne Age, October 5, 2003. 2003-10-05.
  3. ↑ Vogel, Carol (2004-08-03). "American Art is Adrift for Biennale in Venice". New York Times, August 3, 2004.
  4. ↑ "ArtInfo, Nov. 1, 2007".
  5. ↑ Stombock, Maime. "A Carpenter's Tale". Wassmann Foundation website.
  6. ↑ McKinley, Jesse (2013-12-05). "Fake Artifact by an Unknown? Sold!". The New York Times, December 5, 2013.
  7. ↑ "Sotheby's, 13 November 2013".
  8. ↑ Smith, Roberta (2013-10-30). "Mystery Man, Painting the Town". New York Times, October 30, 2013.
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