Café Deutschland. Contemplating The Question - Where Do I Stand 1987

Curator: Welcome. Before us hangs "Café Deutschland: Contemplating the Question – Where Do I Stand," a mixed-media painting crafted in 1987 by Jörg Immendorff. Editor: Wow, that's intense. I'm immediately hit by this overwhelming feeling of… claustrophobia, maybe? Like being trapped in a bad dream where everyone is a silhouette and everything is just… off. Curator: Yes, there’s definitely a sense of unease. The Neo-Expressionist style, combined with those dark blues and harsh oranges, lends itself to a rather turbulent viewing experience. The fragmented figures evoke a sense of discord and fragmentation, mirroring perhaps the social and political tensions present in Germany at that time. Editor: Right, the whole divided Germany thing was still very real in '87. It’s interesting how he uses the café as this microcosm – a social space that's supposed to be a refuge, but here it’s just… seething with tension. I wonder about the figures; they seem disconnected. Curator: It's tempting to see the divided café as a microcosm for divided Germany. Immendorff, involved with various artistic movements of social change, regularly explored German identity through such figuration. His symbolism evokes memory. Notice the positioning, how the lower register, filled with more fluid, aggressive shapes, is fiery and almost hellish in comparison to the regimented blue-scale structure above? Editor: I hadn’t picked up on that distinction, but you are absolutely correct. This visual dissonance amplifies the experience and provides another angle on “Where do I stand?” That is, the contrast of Hell on Earth to the order that humanity struggles to create. It is visually arresting; quite stunning, actually. Curator: Immendorff doesn't offer answers but uses iconography to push viewers to contemplate their own relationship with larger historical events. He also places the question of artistic agency itself at center stage, the question for him being 'what is the artist's responsibility?' Editor: I’d say he accomplished that. I can’t walk away from this painting without a new sense of how images—even fractured ones like these—force you to confront not just history, but your own place in it. What is my response to injustice? Where *do* I stand? Thank you for this tour; it's really broadened my experience here at the museum. Curator: My pleasure. It is these difficult artworks that often reveal the most potent social dialogues.