| Abstract |
What was critical could still be readily agreed on back in '68, when Interfunktionen came into being as an organ for activist art. That summer the opening of Documenta 4 had come under public attack for a conventional, market-driven agenda that was felt to represent inadequately the art of the '60s. With the exception of some "environments," neither space nor money was available for new media: An event involving performance and sound art, long planned by the local theater and Happening artist Wolf Vostell, was canceled. American Pop and Minimalist artists, hot tickets on the German art market, far outnumbered artists from any single European country, provoking critics to nickname the show "Americana" and to refer to New York City as a "suburb of Kassel." The curatorial team, headed for the fourth time by the aging Arnold Bode, was laced with prominent dealers, journalists, and directors of art academies—conflicts of interest hard to imagine today.
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