At the End of Subculture:
An Excursion into the
Eighties
A decade is being
rediscovered: The 1980s are not only topical again in advertising and
music. In art, too, the heroes of the eighties are celebrating new
triumphs, while a young generation is adopting the styles and strategies
of that decade. But what exactly makes this period so interesting? Achim
Drucks and Oliver Koerner von Gustorf present artists and works
from the Deutsche Bank Collection and take a journey into the past.
Blixa
Bargeld during a concert of Einstürzende Neubauten,
documenta
7, 1982
Photo Achim Drucks
Sometime
between the late seventies and the early eighties, an uprising emerged in
the western metropolises that had been anticipated by punk. It wasn't
really a political movement, but rather something that had the impact of
the '68 revolts, yet rebelled against the older leftists that had become
bourgeois: against the hippies, against the promise of collective
happiness, ideological dogma. During the era of Thatcher,
Reagan, and Kohl,
an entire generation freed itself from a belief in a secure future, and
quite simply began doing what it had always wanted to do. In Berlin and
New York, young people started using brown wrapping paper, wall paint, and
Super-8 film; they got their hands on instruments or built them
themselves, sewed canvas and plastic together, and became—temporarily or
long-term—"filmmakers," "musicians," "fashion designers," "designers," and
"artists."
Nan
Goldin, April in the window, N.Y.C., 1983
Deutsche
Bank Collection
Claudia
Skoda, fashion show Trommelfeuer, 1986
This
do-it-yourself approach was not limited to individual creativity, but
became closely tied to the appropriation of urban space. The eighties
began as a squatters' era, with demands for free space for alternative
living. "There's a war raging in the cities, and that's a good thing,"
said Blixa Bargeld, front man
of the band Einstürzende Neubauten,
in 1981, alluding to the street riots between squatters and police that
reached civil war proportions in the front city of Berlin: "There's not
much time before the collapse comes […] For me, it's the time of downfall,
the ultimate end. This will go on for another three or four years, and
then it will all be over. There's no more for me. Downfall is downfall."
FM
Einheit (Mufti)
during a concert
of Einstürzende Neubauten, documenta 7, 1982
Photo
Achim Drucks
Today, Bargeld's uncompromising
vision sounds more like a romantic message from a distant universe. The
invasion of Afghanistan, the first Gulf War, the anti-nuke movement: in
the early eighties, the sense of an approaching apocalypse due to the arms
race or a reactor meltdown led to a tempestuous life feeling characterized
by acceleration, intensity, and ironic ambivalence. "Think today, over
tomorrow" was one of the programmatic titles of a painting by Martin
Kippenberger.
Walter
Dahn, Alptraum, 1984
Deutsche
Bank Collection
And the art of the time was
fast too, as was the music people listened to: "Everything was fast, very
fast," remarked the Cologne-based artist Walter
Dahn in 1994 in a conversation
with Richard
Prince. "I remember that I made twenty paintings in one night with Georg
(Dokoupil), and that was it. We had an extreme sense of time, rhythm,
speed. We weren't punk painters, but the music was playing all the time,
and it stimulated us and made us faster."
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Helmut Middendorf, Umarmung der Nacht,
1983,
Deutsche Bank Collection
The
idea that everything is possible—but it has to be now—arose in the
alternative clubs, record stores, galleries, rehearsal rooms, and studios
that sprouted up in Kreuzberg, Brixton, and the Lower East Side at the
speed of light and then moved or closed down again. Under the pressure of
disintegrating social systems and neo-conservative governments, however,
it wasn't only subcultures and alternative ideas that blossomed, but also
a hedonist, excessive lifestyle that eventually took over mass culture.
Grace
Jones celebrates her birthday party at the the New York club Le Farfalle.
Left
front: the underground icon Divine
Photo:
Ron Galella/WireImage, © Getty Images
The
notion of "sustainability" was as yet completely unknown. The "last days
of disco" commenced; a new species, the yuppie, was born on Wall Street;
and people partied, earned and wasted money, and basically celebrated
themselves. But the big bang never arrived. The following decades led to a
sobering and even frighteningly banal realization: that one can grow
accustomed to the idea of the apocalypse, and that demise had become a
part of everyday life.
The
band Mona Mur, Berlin, early 1980s
Photo
© Eva Maria Ocherbauer
Fear of terrorist
attacks, the wars in the Middle East, environmental catastrophe, Avian
Flu, dirty bombs, and AIDS: in a globalized world that has become both
incalculable and unpredictable, future perspectives and scenarios for the
world's demise have multiplied alike. A quarter of a century down the
road, one longs to return to a time when the danger was real but seemed
easier to comprehend, when the power blocs in the East and West, separated
by the Berlin Wall, still comprised clearly delineated fronts. The arrival
of the new millennium brought a rediscovery of the eighties in pop
culture—as "eye candy," aesthetic toys with retro flair usually about as
radical as David Beckham's
Mohawk.
The
band Sprung aus den Wolken
in
front of the Berlin Wall, early 1980s
Photo
© Eva Maria Ocherbauer
Whether you
stroll down the streets of Brooklyn's trendy neighborhood Williamsburg,
London's East End, or Berlin Mitte—there is a common tendency towards
fluorescent colors, asymmetrical haircuts, leggings, and thin ties. Glossy
magazines appropriate the raw style of copied fanzines; bands like Franz
Ferdinand and Zoot Woman
have long since taken over the charts with their edgy post-punk sound and
electro-pop reminiscences, followed by groups that sound like the Gang
of Four or the Talking
Heads. At the same time, Terry
Richardson's campaigns for Tom Ford
invoke the high times of Halston,
the excesses of the late Studio
54, and early Wave aesthetics. American
Apparel resurrects roller girls and aerobic fashion.
Peter
Bömmels, untitiled, 1983,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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