Documenta 5: A Film by Jef Cornelis

This second installation in JRPRingier's Archives collection on exhibitions and curatorial practices focuses on Documenta 5, held in Kassel between June and October 1972. Curated by "master-curator" Harald Szeemann, it was the most expensive and intricate Documenta to date, and remains one of the most important international exhibitions of the past forty years. Entitled "Interrogation of Reality--Picture Worlds Today," it brought together works by Marcel Broodthaers, Christian Boltanski, Arnulf Rainer, Claes Oldenburg, Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha (who designed the famous orange, ant-ridden catalogue cover), and inaugurated the art exhibition as spectacle. The film introduces the show's different sections (such as "Artist's Museum" and "Individual Mythologies"), and also provides a report on the trends and pacesetters of the time, as well as an effort to understand the phenomenon of Documenta itself as it questions the definitions of curator, artist, exhibition and contemporary art.