Symbiosis, not Competition: The successful model of the artistic duo
By Stefan Lüddemann for #32
The death of Hilla Becher is an occasion to reflect upon a successful model: the artistic couple. Alongside all of the artistic egos, the adept self-promoters and marketers, this alternative continues to influence the art world – quietly, unobtrusively, yet meaningfully.
Bernd and Hilla Becher supplied a prominent example of continuous artistic teamwork. They appeared exclusively in joint presentations. Bernd and Hilla Becher: two names, one brand. But who actually pressed the camera shutter? Who really created the celebrated photo series of blast furnaces and half-timbered houses? Both artists always responded to such (and other) questions in a pragmatic fashion: both of them pressed the camera shutter – each made his or her own photographs. Evidently, they compared their pictures together before deciding upon one version, for which they were jointly responsible. At any rate, this is how Hilla Becher described things in an interview.
But isn't the true genius a solitary figure? Isn't great art created in isolation? So says the myth. And the reality? Of course, things aren't always like that. Artistic couples disprove this view in an unobtrusive but lasting way. They function not through the externally oriented cultivation of image, but instead through an inner strength that is generated by a symbiotic relationship. They shift the weight of authorship, otherwise the touchstone of unmistakable individuality, onto not two, but instead four shoulders.
For them, creativity emerges from two different heads. Or more precisely: for them, creativity is not a matter of a solitary source of power, but is instead nourished by communication and interaction. The impulses and processes of genius remain a mystery. With artistic couples, it becomes possible to witness how new ideas emerge, because here, we can observe the interplay between two individuals.
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, for example, not only deliberately exposed conflicts concerning individual skill to the light of day, but also resolved from the very beginning of their collaboration in 1979 to reject the model of competition and instead to profit from the superabundance of ideas and inventions that emerged from two minds. This not only relieved pressure within, but provided external protection as well. The artistic duo functions so well as a special instance of artistic production because this approach relieves the individual partners of the compulsion to achieve perfection. Perfection is something the pair arrives at in concert.
Artistic couples, however, must function as exceptional cases of the general type of couple. Marriage crises, jealousy, affairs, contested dominance – all of these can flare up suddenly, putting an end to a lifestyle, and in particular a career model, which can function amicably only with two people. Obligatory here is a tendency toward thick-skinnedness, a trait that does not always work well in private life.
Of course, there are also well-known instances of artistic couples who separate. In 1989, after many years of collaboration, the performance artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay met on the Great Wall of China for a grand farewell before going their separate ways. Ulay literally remained behind. Marina Abramovic continued alone – before eventually achieving world fame.
Things were different for the recently deceased Hilla Becher and her husband and working partner Bernd. They not only stayed together, but continued to function as a team. Their photographs of half-timbered houses and power plants, through which they founded a much-imitated style of documentary and serial photography, are the work of both artists. Both of them wanted things that way, as they have explained – despite the internal division of tasks.
The "Becher School," from which star photographers such as Andreas Gursky,
Thomas Struth, and Thomas Ruff have emerged, is known for Bernd and Hilla Becher in equal measure – and this despite the fact that it was Bernd held a professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Together, they became a leading brand of the global art market, and this too provides testimony to the potential performance capacity of the artistic couple.
But what happens after the death of one partner? After Bernd Becher's death in 2007, Hilla Becher continued to produce photographs alone. She never gave up their common style. Hilla Becher finished partially completed projects, and continued signing new photographs with the double signature of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Was there an impulse to make a new start as a soloist? For Hilla Becher, evidently not. Peter Fischli too seems to have been immune to such temptations.
Solo careers may work for rock musicians who have left their bands, but not for the members of artistic duos who have been left alone after the death of a co-creator. In 2012, after the death of his partner David Weiss, Peter Fischli was obliged to come to terms with his situation. Since the death of her partner Bernd in 2011, Anna Blume too has been alone. Christo lamented the death of his partner Jeanne-Claude, but continue to plan art projects. Together, Bernd and Anna Blume contrived subversive images such as those of the series "Vasen-Ekstasen" (Vase Ecstasies), exposing petty bourgeois sensibilities as the focal point of secret anxieties. With their enigmatic installations and sculptures, Peter Fischli and David Weiss – known to the art world simply as Fischli/Weiss – revolutionized object art. With their installations, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009, literally changed the world. And now?
Artistic couples not only stick together for decades at a time, they have also established any number of new paradigms and standards in art. And moreover without any avant-garde hullabaloo. The serial industrial photographs of the Bechers, the whimsical object worlds of Fischli/Weiss, or the young Romanian artist twins Gert and Uwe Tobias, who have nearly single-handedly revived the woodcut as an exciting medium of contemporary art – all of them provide us with examples of the ways in which inventiveness and even spontaneity can be combined with consistency. A contradiction in relation to an art world characterized by trends, fashions, schools, tendencies, and powerful alpha figures? In any event, it is hardly accidental that most artistic couples work serially, reproducing the constancy of their lives together in the structure of their oeuvres.
This is true to a heightened degree for artistic duos who do not vanish behind their works, but instead literally put themselves on display. Gilbert and George and Eva and Adele provide paradigmatic examples of a symbiosis that extends directly into the space of the art world. These teams are themselves the works of art they create. They pose as art objects – perfect examples of the total identity of art and life.
It may be that artistic couples function so well because they alternately assume the roles of creator and observer for one another, consistently engaging in a reciprocal mirroring. In this constellation, each is the excessively-invoked "better half" of her counterpart. In this way, Bernd and Hilla Becher balanced one another's weaknesses, complementing one another's strengths in an optimal way. Incidentally, Bernd and Anna Blume gave birth to twins. A coincidence? To be sure, but at the same time, eloquent testimony to the successful model of the artistic couple.
