In Claude Lanzmann’s seminal nine-and-a-half-hour film SHOAH, he chose not to use any images of the Holocaust, telling the story instead solely through the words of witnesses. By contrast, art historian Georges Didi-Huberman and contemporary artist Gerhard Richter have both emphasized the power of images to reflect and educate—the former in his book Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, and the latter in a series of paintings titled “Birkenau.”
The Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Fritz Ascher Society presented this lecture exploring the tension between these different perspectives on images, words, and the Holocaust with German art historian and curator Eckhart Gillen. Gillen grounded the discussion in the example of Boris Lurie, the subject of the Museum’s special exhibition Boris Lurie: Nothing To Do But To Try, who used art to access his buried memories before he was able to address them with words.
Watch the program below.
Recording transcript for Boris Lurie: Searching for Truth in Holocaust Images
This program’s original recording transcript is below. This transcription was created automatically during a live program so may contain inaccurate transcriptions of some words.
Ari Goldstein: I'm Ari Goldstein Senior Public programs producer at the Museum of Jewish heritage and i'm delighted to welcome you to Boris Lurie
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Ari Goldstein: searching for truth and Holocaust images a program that the museum is co presenting with our friends and partners at the Fritz asher society or persecuted ostracized and fan art.
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Ari Goldstein: will turn in a moment to Rachel stern who runs the fresh fruits astra society to Sarah softness the museum's guest curator of the exhibition or slurry nothing to do, but to try and they will introduce our guest today at Carnegie mellon.
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Ari Goldstein: If you have questions for a car, please feel free to share them in the zoom Q amp a box any point during his lecture and we'll save time for audience Q amp a towards the end of the hour, that further ado, thank you all for being here with us and Sarah over to you.
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Sara Softness: Thank you so much sorry that you can hear me.
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Sara Softness: Never certain on that and I am really delighted to welcome everybody on behalf the museum, as already mentioned i'm Sarah softness I am the guest curator of the exhibition Boris lori nothing to do put to try and.
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Sara Softness: which has occasion this really wonderful and what is sure to be an illuminating lecture with a really renowned lori scholar Dr at Carnegie mellon.
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Sara Softness: And, as already mentioned, this is, in collaboration with the amazing Fritz asher society, and I have to say it was really only weeks after the.
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Sara Softness: possibly even days only after the announcement of the exhibition that this program got into the works.
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Sara Softness: So, thank you very Thank you Rachel and thank you, Dr gillen for all of your enthusiasm there i'm glad to see the day finally here.
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Sara Softness: And so just a bit of context the Boris slurry nothing to do, but to try exhibition is is the first of its kind for the Museum of Jewish heritage and it focuses on modern art.
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Sara Softness: As its principal mode of Holocaust Remembrance we understand lori's artwork in this exhibition as visual testimony it's a way of describing both his own personal experiences.
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Sara Softness: And as a Holocaust survivor and of communicating larger themes of grief and horror and guilt and resilience and he does so through color line subject matter.
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Sara Softness: composition, etc, I know, Dr gillen will give us much to consider about lori's artistic choices, as well as kind of visualization of trauma, more generally, so.
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Sara Softness: With that very much hope you'll come see the exhibition in person, if you're able or.
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Sara Softness: return to see it if the case may be, the museum is open Wednesdays Thursdays Fridays and Sundays.
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Sara Softness: I want to thank the bursary art foundation, without whom, none of this would be possible in our exhibitions that Thank you very much and.
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Sara Softness: And with that i'll give it over to Rachel stern is director and CEO of different factors society Thank you again Rachel for this wonderful collaboration and over to you.
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Rachel Stern: Thank you so much, Sarah and Ari good afternoon everyone and welcome i'm delighted to co present again with the Museum of Jewish heritage for this important event.
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Rachel Stern: And we just turned director and see or the frittata society for persecuted ostracized and band are based in New York.
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Rachel Stern: We research discuss publish and exhibit artists was live and work were affected by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.
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Rachel Stern: With this work we commemorate their lives and achievements, today I have the pleasure to introduce Dr Catherine was an independent curator based in Berlin.
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Rachel Stern: He has organized numerous exhibitions and published widely on Washington American and German art of the 20th century, the mommy has exhibition catalogs and books are.
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Rachel Stern: And I could just a very, very few to give you the wage German ad from back to vesta images of a divided country published by you university press in 1997.
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Rachel Stern: In collaboration with stephanie Baron he created out of to germany's Cold War cultures 1945 to 1989, which was a view at the Los Angeles county museum of art project managers and that's you know museum number digest historical museum better than in 2009.
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Rachel Stern: odd and you're 1945 1968 facing the future was our process ck and cards for Pushkin museum Moscow in 2016 17.
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Rachel Stern: constructing the word add an economy 1919 to 1939 in USA Soviet Union and German yet console in Mannheim 2018 19.
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Rachel Stern: Since 2013 and again as an adjunct Professor for art history at the university and Potsdam bob's book.
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Rachel Stern: Because exhibition was laureate and avoid foster out after all schmitz just open this week and, at the museum den haag in the Netherlands, when will be on view until May 29 welcome again.
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Eckhart Gillen: Thank you Rachel Thank you very much, I start without controversy between lunch mom and the artistry into the government, the French filmmaker you know my maybe it from this famous film Sean.
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Eckhart Gillen: landsman categorically rejected pictures of the German genocide and of European Jews or sorry I can't see the images now to that.
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Eckhart Gillen: With them again.
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Ari Goldstein: Yes, that card go ahead.
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Eckhart Gillen: You see them.
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Ari Goldstein: Now yeah you'll just need to share your screen.
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Eckhart Gillen: And I have to show them again i'm.
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Eckhart Gillen: Not on my they disappeared before.
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Ari Goldstein: No problem.
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Eckhart Gillen: um so I have to with them again.
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Ari Goldstein: No problem, and while you're locating the slides of this remind everyone that today's lecture is being recorded will send out a link to the recording and some additional resources on the subjects tomorrow in a follow up email.
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Ari Goldstein: also mentioned that this is the third program and series of programs and Museum has offered related to the exhibition Boris Larry nothing to do, but to try.
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Ari Goldstein: We hosted a special curator lecture with Sarah softness which is available on museums website and YouTube channel, as well as a program commemorating the anniversary of the rumble a massacre or Boris flurries family members were murdered, that is also available on our website.
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Eckhart Gillen: Can you see my image well.
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Ari Goldstein: Yes, at card, we can see your slides, although it's in.
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Ari Goldstein: it's not full screen, we can see your slideshow view.
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Eckhart Gillen: haha well, they have that already in the beginning, but it disappeared during the opening words so i'm really with hustled what happened meantime.
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Ari Goldstein: If we're able to make it full screen, now that was excellent all right we're ready.
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Eckhart Gillen: let's clean yeah.
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Ari Goldstein: yeah Thank you card go ahead.
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Eckhart Gillen: Okay Okay, find it again okay so as I got again it's got it's a controversy between lance man and the moment about the possibility of images and landsman made this famous talk show that.
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Eckhart Gillen: categorically Neil Smith checking or pictures of the show on yet principal believe decided against the use of archive German genocide pictures in his film show on and he says.
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Eckhart Gillen: This stifle our thinking and then any power of imagination, it is incomparable incomparably better to direct all energy towards generating a memory of what happened, as I have done.
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Eckhart Gillen: favoring the film archives over the words of witnesses, as if the archives for superior actually amounts to first disqualification of the human birth in searching for the tools.
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Eckhart Gillen: The dispute dispute with announcement, the French art historian you go on Defense images as a Lek intimate medium for remembering the German genocide experience in this book images, in spite of it all.
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Eckhart Gillen: The book is about home photographs.
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Eckhart Gillen: As the book is about for photographs of Jewish member of the special command.
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Eckhart Gillen: Here you see them all for now very famous and infamous photographs.
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Eckhart Gillen: There may have made from the.
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Eckhart Gillen: You see.
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Eckhart Gillen: The special equipment happening to get the COPs from the gas chamber and taking them to the crematoriums.
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Eckhart Gillen: The photos show the burning of naked POPs and a group of naked women being hurt it's to the gas chamber.
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Eckhart Gillen: According to the book is precise his ability to cherish victims to hand down official testimony the vet to make the photo so valuable.
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Eckhart Gillen: They had been developed by Polish resistance fighters involved so and passed on against the Nazi regime's plan to eliminate any means of destiny.
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Eckhart Gillen: For example, strict ban on taking photographs to act of photographic assistance, the successful 1956 they are part of the picture material for night and for me.
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Eckhart Gillen: They remained surrounded by the hour of holo holo did not turn into objects of science.
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Eckhart Gillen: In France, but also in Sherman remembrance and memoria the culture, the dogma was sufferings and crimes inflicted in the National Socialists concentration and extermination camps are unimaginable.
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Eckhart Gillen: And therefore also undetectable in contrast Obama insists on the photographs claim of making a point of contact this reality.
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Eckhart Gillen: German painter get how to register.
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Eckhart Gillen: followed taught huntsman and is touting in general about the possibility of depicting the horrors of the genocide.
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Eckhart Gillen: It started in the early 1960s to collect photographs into German genocide on European Jews and photographic material which he documented on opposite sides of his famous atlas.
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Eckhart Gillen: The same pitch for his glory collecting niches rich, the plan to use the for for the past of Birkenau for a series of four paintings, which you can see here.
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Eckhart Gillen: The first step of the artistic process characteristics and Spencer for the past two for canvases thereby grading for figurative images.
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Eckhart Gillen: Which is then readily painted over used to painting technique he had been using for years, which he first bite painting with a brush and then distributed it with cream cheese and kept it off again.
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Eckhart Gillen: The process was repeated several times which each additional layer of pain, the pain did for the graphic template disappeared, a little more until it was finally no longer visible.
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Eckhart Gillen: In few of the horror and the inquiry Hannibal crime against humanity associated with a German genocide.
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Eckhart Gillen: He had to reach the dust free it's a process of abstraction that ends in a refusal of direct depiction in the sense of landsman and the short film is the process catalyst, I found a way to access documentary material photographs, these are showing diversity.
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Eckhart Gillen: I finally held on to for abstract paintings bigger know.
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Eckhart Gillen: Whereas lori intuitive felt that at the beginning of his memory process, he needs images before he could first find words for the trauma.
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Eckhart Gillen: of his experiences in German comes you know from tama research, the pictures come before words as testimonies of the truth.
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Eckhart Gillen: It is actually precisely in Canada beauty practice that dramatize people are able to visualize forgotten experiences long before any verbal formulation.
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Eckhart Gillen: Like analysts would do this is psycho Toma Toma cheese state vote images are closer to the right brain hemisphere.
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Eckhart Gillen: Which is assumed to be able to store traumatic memories, which are not yet accessible to the verbal representation of the Left hemisphere, in this respect, art proves to be a unique medium was initialization and processing of tomato the best john's.
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Eckhart Gillen: dramatize person has of restoring the broken bones, this is inner self is to try to strike up a creative dialogue is a drama.
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Eckhart Gillen: and artists will do it symbolically by trying to objectify is trauma in this work of art artistic work mobilizes once intellectual imaginative integrative and manual skills.
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Eckhart Gillen: It counter X it counteracts the tendency to in a test integration does the road to the past, does the Center of pain we go why other images which will help the traumatized person to again develop a feeling for his identity autonomy and the self for us.
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Eckhart Gillen: So, as the example of Jewish artists Boris laurie, we will see that the images of his art work which he had arrested from his own repression and forgetting.
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Eckhart Gillen: Their first steps in facing his trauma it took more than 20 years after the events before he was able to return to the scene of the crime in Riga in 1975 and began his literary confrontation is a chairman genocide.
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Eckhart Gillen: You see here a map it's called fragments of Jewish history on the map of Africa which year was hanging in his.
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Eckhart Gillen: studio, as you can also see in the exhibition in kneel.
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Eckhart Gillen: Before he started.
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Eckhart Gillen: His memorize you felt another medium is needed one not yet discovered and he found it in the SMP assemblage and collage.
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Eckhart Gillen: Whereas laurie was born in a new products and Peters book today in 1924 as the youngest child of the dentist China and the businessman Indian movie.
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Eckhart Gillen: Which means destiny's beginning in the beginning of starlings rule his father abandoned his business in any God the same year and move to weaken the capital of that.
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Eckhart Gillen: The family followed him in 1925 they are Boris lori attended the German language to arrange private so high school.
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Eckhart Gillen: And going to also their English and he was fluent in Russian and let him after he had been occupied by the Chairman armed forces on July 1 1941.
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Eckhart Gillen: Persecution of the Jewish population began immutably aside from the physical elimination of the tools to German military occupation machine, it also planned economic exploitation of the productive choose a slave laborers.
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Eckhart Gillen: There was also a unit of lesson auxiliary police.
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Eckhart Gillen: which also that the commando Victor is July 25 the reporting application for all Jews.
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Eckhart Gillen: was introduced in preparation of setting up a ghetto can see here for the path which was fenced in on October 25 and locked by gates, which are guarded by the letterman special pollutants and the victory is ours on November 27.
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Eckhart Gillen: And here's an answer footpath yellowstone the back, yet.
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Eckhart Gillen: commanded we have them.
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Eckhart Gillen: On November 27 just show you here.
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Eckhart Gillen: This is to get over here on the right side, you can see enlargement from the map here, this was the ghetto block of for streets was attached as a small ghetto, and on the other side was a big Fo they are groups of choose Oh well, assets for event creation from the ghetto, as you can see.
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Eckhart Gillen: Since the since the temporal lobe his family live in the ghetto on 3637 looks as street, you can see the painting of lori and on the other side you see the building, as it looks today.
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Eckhart Gillen: yellow echoed lorry yellow and glowing in the afternoons on it is the only four or five story building set limits the warehouses.
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Eckhart Gillen: My story Martha made a made up father's mind, it was her decision she my sister Shannon and my old grandma so we go with the evacuation my father and I will go to the orbits locker.
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Eckhart Gillen: So you've denial age of 17 or is lori have to witness always muscle, China is grant masa and john the younger, one of the two sisters waited the large ghetto for the equation.
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Eckhart Gillen: which, in reality, was a deportation into the simpler books 10 kilometers in South East of the direction.
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Eckhart Gillen: There they all had to unjust until naked on December 819 41 the middle of winter and they were shot in excavated pits among them boys Louis even I love uber uber.
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Eckhart Gillen: was also killed was after November 13 the second action which resulted in the murder of a total of more than 30,000 Jews, so you can see here the studio wall of bar is glorious.
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Eckhart Gillen: And you see photographs of the shootings in the pile on the left.
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Eckhart Gillen: And on the right, you see a photograph of his young love lupa just gonna bomb, you can see that also in the exhibition and the Jewish heritage Museum in there in the back and the photograph of her on the left side.
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Eckhart Gillen: In confronting the two images of the naked women before the execution the pyre it's a different spot and in the poetry of even I love you try to imagine the concrete situation in the one below woods.
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Eckhart Gillen: And he had that always present in his to do every day in New York.
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Eckhart Gillen: What happened there was a quote laurie was for me all like a horrible dream later it all came back to me, but that was much later.
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Eckhart Gillen: Against all probabilities for a story about successful to get services fazal Father ilya to survive, to get two and four camps for term ken's was the following four years thanks to his physical fitness until the end of the warm.
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Eckhart Gillen: After the liberation from the proven by satellite, can be net that mark the book on April 18 lori did not see himself as a human aided cassettes prisoner.
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Eckhart Gillen: Growth, I was busy victor's I was not surviving at that person, no, no, he emigrated by chance to America in 1946 because he says to us yeah will lift in Italy and came before the war to New York she lived in New York, and that was a reason by came by chance to America New York.
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Eckhart Gillen: After arrival in New York and 46 he started his drawings to recall the time in the ghetto you see here examples of the worst as.
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Eckhart Gillen: One of the first drawings was his self poetry see here untitled self portrait of 1946 which depicts him with a grim and that face.
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Eckhart Gillen: amount of overseers is also found a painting entitled party of my master before shooting 1947 North paints his mother like nourishing in a dream from a different far away world.
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Eckhart Gillen: For is absent, as if she were already in the hereafter may 1996 he writes a poem is the subject of his pain over the loss of his mother, where should we fill anxieties anxieties if muscles bones of splendid such.
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Eckhart Gillen: After arrival in New York in 1946 he worked as an autodidact successfully in the tradition of cooking or the mind the mind now in presenting impressive scenes from the camps hell that she aspect from work prism entrance.
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Eckhart Gillen: show the bending shows a stream of panicky prisoners were accompanied by flame like a nominal slide a full, as if by a current in the camp gate which, at the same time, looks like the mouse of a chemical combination premise.
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Eckhart Gillen: The world stops to exist in this painting violent engulfing is the only reality and this.
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Eckhart Gillen: painting is reminiscent of power paintings of hello, or, for instance in the animus piece of a folk art mentioned in the book book fixing the I found that showing parrot driven by devils into the gates of hell.
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Eckhart Gillen: And then also painting Russian listen, this being punished in school.
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Eckhart Gillen: It was the camp on transit from Riga, to mark the book two guards are set up at the entrance of can barracks like centuries, we are in appended waste bales of helmets and shoulder broomsticks us rivals.
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Eckhart Gillen: The prisoners called hair monsters, who had already given up on themselves are showing in soft flowing phones and I dipped into a magic tree twilight.
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Eckhart Gillen: All the studies tilling the style of paintings of the presentations the serial hints private paintings for the rate which had never wanted to put on exhibition during this lifetime.
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Eckhart Gillen: I quote very, very briefly I had wanted to do these little illustrative memories.
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Eckhart Gillen: illustrative memories, but then after I learned a little in art history, I found out that illustration is not about.
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Eckhart Gillen: Growth and repair for not since since fair his experiences and memories into a traumatic the ethical scenes that's not history doesn't mean be transferring them into symbolic imagery.
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Eckhart Gillen: As a builder's of managers do it with bad haircut with carried on a sit down chair, because the depths of hell.
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Eckhart Gillen: No worries that I then paint it to this mega women.
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Eckhart Gillen: For me, they were all the symbol of New York that they all are really that fat really cutter.
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Eckhart Gillen: That truly had something to do with the past, but I had not understood that the time to actually had not understood it all it did that unconsciously didn't realize what he's doing.
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Eckhart Gillen: And a woman in courtyard Roman quarter, which is here is presumably the first painting of these dismembered women.
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Eckhart Gillen: It scenery to cold Aaron the glory of God, the domestic space that the women and minor children have a patriarch live.
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Eckhart Gillen: Usually, they are enslaved women in their nakedness the Gemini exposed like slaves, is the case, and so that we would use one standing woman of top suppose of attract attention to say press press forward and your hands propped at your sides.
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Eckhart Gillen: If you look more closely, we are shocked to determine that the women of the bodies are divided into several parts, the head floats slightly above the totals.
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Eckhart Gillen: Of the head and breasts are separated from the stomach and it isn't next these disintegrating bodies are disturbing and recall the parts of COPs.
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Eckhart Gillen: And famous photographs by the Allied Forces taken after the liberation of the concentration camps where is Louis.
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Eckhart Gillen: Would later sites such an enormous photograph of naked COPs living risk cross on the open that have a trailer 1961 and title, the work of his as let calm assemblage 1945 by out of.
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Eckhart Gillen: The motive of harriman or no it's not coincidence as laurie emphasized, we were against marketing of them and the messenger.
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Eckhart Gillen: And throws it on we were against for muscle ization of sex vitamins themselves no satisfaction, without spending money, that means my pinups.
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Eckhart Gillen: There had been rage against them, the pinup mixture to me personally, as well as symbolized the mask race in Riga they're mostly women that killed.
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Eckhart Gillen: You see there's a direct relation with these between these paintings and later collages and his memories and imagination what what's happened there won't build out which you couldn't see of course you could only imagine what.
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Eckhart Gillen: 14 years after the liberation 1945 the traumatic events of this detention in the camps, but the process it for the first time, it is painting, which you can see here liberty allies 1959 nine to 16.
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Eckhart Gillen: it's in the Tele Tel Aviv art museum, the title of the painting liberty allies may be understood as a sarcastic comment of his inner conflict between lies as a mortal threat in the Ken.
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Eckhart Gillen: And the promised liberty in the new yet alien homeland of American president us are here inescapably ovulate for the first time it was able to let the stream of pictures flow free from the past.
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Eckhart Gillen: that's a new form develops unplanned to record the flow of memories, to provide this imagery and design.
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Eckhart Gillen: Nice memoirs in Riga, which is started much later in 1975 the rewrites that this painting imagery ruthlessly in super imposed alternative me your past history.
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Eckhart Gillen: and experiences of the American reality so late 1950s and 1960s until all these disparate little chapters covered over and distinguished and the process of painting yourself into a unified work on unified working with painting.
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Eckhart Gillen: inaugurated for him, this is inaugurated for him and new art from a full and directness and conscious sincerity and openness that's what he remembers in his memoir in 1975 about this painting that you did in 1959.
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Eckhart Gillen: This new artistic message for him, both arrived at by unconscious action gesturing by instantaneous instantaneous protections of the mind immediately fixed on canvas and that was art not data on the art says.
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Eckhart Gillen: The painting certain dates are mentioned, for example here, you can read December December, an eight.
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Eckhart Gillen: For the second deadly action in Kansas Missouri Missouri younger sister and lover.
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Eckhart Gillen: And April 18 which you can read here at on the right side and write down the painting was a day of liberation from the satellite can be multiple in 1945 in between you see the name of his sister Shannon.
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Eckhart Gillen: With it there.
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Eckhart Gillen: was a scene, for example, one of the ghetto can see here.
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Eckhart Gillen: In Reagan then you'll find newspaper clippings photographic renditions of these paintings, for example, the dismembered women.
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Eckhart Gillen: A passport photo here on the left by him.
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Eckhart Gillen: and
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Eckhart Gillen: And the image just found this report and control this memory comes to.
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Eckhart Gillen: You know you find him the passport is here on the left, exactly, and then you see here on the right to start with David.
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Eckhart Gillen: On an orange yellow patch with color rankings such as it has been introduced by the Nazi regime in September for the one you saw the photograph and the beginning.
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Eckhart Gillen: As a mandatory designation of shoes and then the photograph of his lover they at least they can the French lover you see here on the middle about the middle from whom we had just separated after 10 years while this painting was created.
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Eckhart Gillen: All of these pieces are connected to a critic assemblage these scraps of memory of so traumatic past I embedded between advertising threats and high heeled for example via my heel on.
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Eckhart Gillen: High heeled shoes which reminds us of an erratic shoe fetishism.
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Eckhart Gillen: I show you an example of the dismembered women.
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Eckhart Gillen: yeah this one, with women.
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Eckhart Gillen: But but also remind remind us of collections of shows and other belongings from prisoners in the death camps.
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Eckhart Gillen: There is, for example, there was an old lady was.
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Eckhart Gillen: Doing like being that and all the women were putting their shoes on her, and this show was that's really something very important for him there's always coming back in his paintings, for example, he did this little sculptures of shows.
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Eckhart Gillen: And in this painting what she called salat ironically.
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Eckhart Gillen: He tried to mix together in seville's of colors and digested sellers and this title is provided for collage from 1962 using the means of assemblage lori picks up the new techniques of art, similar to the Bay of Robert rauschenberg, for example in this installation or Dallas.
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Eckhart Gillen: But in their statements against pop art during his friends indignant we checked it this a political playful deliberately and serious approach to materials and themes by the.
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Eckhart Gillen: artist lori also incorporates everyday objects in his paintings and let them appear like a piece from daily life, not like serious art.
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Eckhart Gillen: worry about comes these practices, as the correspondence with his intention to leave the fatality of his experiences all an undigested not supplementing or idolizing them like in this early painting.
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Eckhart Gillen: Since this confrontation, as he called it, this is your New York art world concentration camp, there is art and not at sympathy for the victims of sexual.
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Eckhart Gillen: arousal at chuck a kind of shock therapy that combined the mountains of naked COPs of the Holocaust, this new pinups as products of the same immune system.
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Eckhart Gillen: As he said he saw that in order to tear the public out of its self satisfied passive Pacific to enjoy it attention to the continuing to violence and content of for human human beings.
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Eckhart Gillen: Initially unconscious handing this pictures is already the second step after this early paintings to a conscious understanding of his own self in the subsequently the river, which comes from the asserts that.
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Eckhart Gillen: The dream vision visual logic of the picture is replace as a verb of compression and displacement.
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Eckhart Gillen: lori changes the set fuses of memory and the images found which support and control this memory and comes to a quest of finding new images into a novel and unique sentences in this painting to organize.
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Eckhart Gillen: Your you want, that is our staff and impact the driver for change and you wanted to better understand not only his own situation but also America New York is your home.
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Eckhart Gillen: As a political artists your checks the American imperialism for him, that means coming to terms with the past, and also the present at the same time he's American exile and especially with mean to purple is a New York artwork.
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Eckhart Gillen: overs call to New York outward concentration can, if I can say octopus of the art market and refuses any art, but this just which degrades out to a consumer groups, nobody does not want anything any anti art in the sense of overcoming and dissolution of our into life live.
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Eckhart Gillen: It was a broken out for him out as much rob and meet him for survival survival art or a means of life, like foodstuff.
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Eckhart Gillen: only slowly did it sink in how far into him this American writer, nothing else deploying time consumer culture.
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Eckhart Gillen: Which subpoenas of things at lost its innocence, the endings it's fear of capital is circulation.
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Eckhart Gillen: Your own for Europe for the culture of France and Italy, but also for the lesbian and Russian and pitches from 1951 on what event on many trips to Paris Milan rooms payment Israel titles of painting shots such as a geometric.
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Eckhart Gillen: Are reminiscence of his desire to leave America again as quickly as possible it's a French title at you i'm Eric here, you see the painting December, also at you America to be cold or no moon by his stead.
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Eckhart Gillen: Where was the series of paintings, this one is called lumen bias that.
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Eckhart Gillen: it's the same year as Muslims few on few as the same year as liberty allies, the Center of December is formed by a rat Nazi flag.
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Eckhart Gillen: With a white circle into Center that frames ahead was physiognomy resembles personally the mirror or a Bruce plastic card cuts through his face.
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Eckhart Gillen: This with the headline a generic to the left of the painting he wants, at the same time to pitch about America, the American culture that enjoy those.
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Eckhart Gillen: And the features him the skin ups and product advertising on the red epic of the flag and around it, in view of the overpowering abundance of naked women.
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Eckhart Gillen: In provocative poses, it is clear how much effort and make inside the society of the time or breasts those arriving made of the camp system, the senior Center is flanked as a road dissemble at top right.
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Eckhart Gillen: As a cyber for the Germans mass murder in an umbrella for us on December 8 1941 and the name Lumumba.
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Eckhart Gillen: On the left.
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Eckhart Gillen: As a beginning of the sentence that ends a statement on the right side of the painting with the word is that.
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Eckhart Gillen: The tenor of national socialist state of Germany 1941 is, as it were, continue the 1961 there is a chest.
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Eckhart Gillen: by the United States of America, the secret service and CIA had Lumumba was being protected by when troops murdered in the Congo, presumably by personnel or the United States President dwight.
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Eckhart Gillen: Eisenhower on January 17 he and to support us a shot on the edge of a shallow near the Congolese city of Elizabeth will now boom boom boom boom fashion.
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Eckhart Gillen: Also characteristic of the antiquities ambiguities, with which memory works, however, is the interpretation as out of ash months, you see, is that the end of the world.
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Eckhart Gillen: yeah it's interesting that we can think this is.
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Eckhart Gillen: For his glory under the spell sticker, but when you compare that it's his speech from the LIFE magazine.
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Eckhart Gillen: You can see in this painting it out of ice man's head which functions here like a spider Internet of totalitarian in parents systems.
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Eckhart Gillen: A pen drawing on the left by Richard pool in life magazine it's in November 21 1960 and it's going to exactly as a time where he painted this work Bruce that.
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Eckhart Gillen: It appears next to an announcement of it months confessions in the upcoming issue of life, you can see the iceman confesses that you can do the page.
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Eckhart Gillen: I find contrast confesses every golden previews and extra ordinary documents to the to appear in life.
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Eckhart Gillen: It may be half it may have attracted lori's attention because the page appeared between a report of crazy party talk, you see, on the right side or.
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Eckhart Gillen: On the other side you met divine cocktail chitchat and the female drum major as a prize at the game here under.
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Eckhart Gillen: The notorious notorious sandwich principle of chairman genocide and advertising already mentioned art critic a woman wrote in November.
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Eckhart Gillen: 21 in athletics lori savage artworks it checks suppose concentration camp images is brilliant pictures called from soft core upon magazines were designed to confound as an invasion by the art market.
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Eckhart Gillen: One of the few coke them life magazine taken to it's final ultimate episode and frightening conclusion pain and deaths given no more space than pictures of Elsa maxwell's latest cotton.
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Eckhart Gillen: As a survivor of German German side, no worries comes to the realization of living you ever walk properly and then also world on another planet.
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Eckhart Gillen: And then also value system any understanding seems virtually impossible with contemporaries we had not experienced a Nazi camps system on their own mind and body, possibly, it is just out alone, which can build a bridge to the outside, instead of leaving the United States.
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Eckhart Gillen: dorian early 1950s still on his way to a career as a gallery artist established together with Sam Goodman as an answer the situation, the know art movement against abstract expressionism and pop art and, additionally, if used to be a part of the art market.
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Eckhart Gillen: They exhibitions to place the march gallery and can see this, and so like slo.
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Eckhart Gillen: In the 10 streets the brains of famous 10 street galleries assault of artists cooperation so since show the published published no show manifesto.
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Eckhart Gillen: In 1963 and in this notion of manifesto lori rights we joined forces, because we felt strongly in the group everybody pulled in as a one along in the fight against human business art market business.
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Eckhart Gillen: One off lori's most shocking and harrowing collages is slowly town 1962 a total of piece of the poster for sandy koufax movie.
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Eckhart Gillen: can be seen, which was released to cinema in early 1962 this is senior support a of three line is tilted by 90 degrees invest on the bottom most edge of the canvas.
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Eckhart Gillen: okays is oriented towards a black and white photo glued onto the canvas in the upper left hand corner.
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Eckhart Gillen: The photo shows that people in barracks which had been set on fire, before giving up the camp that the inhabitants perished in the things by trying desperately and in vain to find a way outside from underneath the barracks war.
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Eckhart Gillen: In contrast to this, you see, is a famous photo of puts down his actors to end.
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Eckhart Gillen: With a heart shaped sunglasses lenses if you look behind Lolita has glasses, you will see that she is looking directly at the fewer.
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Eckhart Gillen: Usually uses a case of a movie star who fascinates us this as effective is no to divert our perception to the horror of the barbaric violence against the Jews in the presentation and.
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Eckhart Gillen: The confrontation is a shocking document, thus triggers a short circuit the fewest consciousness that should shock us.
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Eckhart Gillen: In the United States, everybody had actually seen at one time or another, after the wall to harbor photos by the middle or market worldwide you see here market worldwide.
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Eckhart Gillen: it's a serious or photograph in life.
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Eckhart Gillen: which were not published in 1945 but then later in 1961 of it during the iceman Israel and Jerusalem.
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Eckhart Gillen: Nor, you picked up by size Lee so none of separation, which Susan sontag was talking about as a certain degree of separation.
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Eckhart Gillen: which you have, in the context of seeing this photographs, they can be too much done at least as much to the dentin or our conscience or just do it up and this situation, it takes up in this works iteration painting moving but.
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Eckhart Gillen: i'm a call.
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Eckhart Gillen: It shows in the Center of a solid canvas we move from a stretch stretch of fame a photo of market worldwide, which you have taken on behalf of life magazine in April 13 1945.
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Eckhart Gillen: The photographs are published in that time but, for the first time this was published the other one.
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Eckhart Gillen: They showed personas and boom box behind barbed wire during the liberation of the camp, the iconic picture, then appeared in times magazine under the title grim greeting at involved in December 1969 we had cut it out from the magazine in 1968.
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Eckhart Gillen: Have it out the photo is framed by develop phonographic enough photos of a model in various purposes.
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Eckhart Gillen: As if you had wanted to things and cynicism of American National society which all needs, such as love and human closeness and all pictures in your respective of their moral significance has become products to turns into a concert.
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Eckhart Gillen: The vertex operation targets of lot of pictures which is to stimulate wrong needs ambitious nori wants to to intentionally this term an aesthetic terms the holder of this as an.
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Eckhart Gillen: assemblage the middle of an odd operation which tutor it's commercialization constantly devalues the contents of artistic work which is important right survival for his survival.
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Eckhart Gillen: The destruction of bodies into Nazi cassette system is propagated in the devil the revelation of beauty sensuality and sexuality of them into capitalistic process of exploitation of subjects everything to the loss of profit.
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Eckhart Gillen: The probably most disturbing work was created by Forrester, we showed that already that calm and you're you're here use them this anonymous photo and he's indicating in the caption auto Hitler as an author of this awesome awesome which.
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Eckhart Gillen: consisting of this naked corpses thrown pell mell one over there them into the open festivals or train them no retreats this photo is defined as a ready made.
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Eckhart Gillen: Around 1960.
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Eckhart Gillen: At a point in time, in which are the numbers are increasingly threatened to dissolve in action or performance art.
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Eckhart Gillen: Which is the 1960s and that's a cancellation of difference between art and life or is Louis declared that of Hitler as a greatest performance artist.
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Eckhart Gillen: Because if art is to be transferred to life, then it would have been the greatest and most powerful efficient artist the artist, the most far reaching consequences.
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Eckhart Gillen: Is the example of extreme conceptual art Louis demonstrates a federal consequences of a political urban gardens in 1960s.
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Eckhart Gillen: In his work reader which to America is using the same photograph.
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Eckhart Gillen: But is a collage it was a template assemblage is being commanded boundary, so to speak, by the confrontation of the cutter five is a pinup for to pass it over.
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Eckhart Gillen: It which shows the real have a young woman who is about to take off repentance we're holding speechless in disbelief in front of this collage.
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Eckhart Gillen: The confrontation of life and death, which isn't edition of Paris vanitas symbolism, is that is it a commentary was a brutal thoughtless combination of chairman genocide documents is advertisements in magazines during the past four periods, you can see that here, and this.
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Eckhart Gillen: painting, please, and you see the finding is using the advertisement i'm of this lady.
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Eckhart Gillen: These looks have a hair in different colors like in the railroad America.
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Eckhart Gillen: that's offered like a barbershop you can look up here, you see them here on the painting on the bottom of painting this hair hair looks.
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Eckhart Gillen: As a presentation to choose your the color of your hair.
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Eckhart Gillen: Good I don't know Research Executive this kind of similar culture industry after his return from this exile in the United States to fund for the mind.
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Eckhart Gillen: I don't know if used as it well known any reconciliation with the past and demanded an uncompromising negation of the conditions and circumstances which had made our shirts possible.
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Eckhart Gillen: From outward expected they always in a reconciliation sounds out the full context and turns against the meaning against meaning at all, whereas Loja also use all this energy, not to give meaning to his experiences is a German genocide and instead snatch it from open and spread.
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Eckhart Gillen: It spread it for his audience in his collages peace out any principle of order with us present it in the overlap with 1030 and atrocity history is not being verified here to come to a conclusion instead history will be short circuit is the present.
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Eckhart Gillen: In his involvement show statement lori declare very precisely, you want to create out what destroyed but state clearly what been.
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Eckhart Gillen: And that, at the coast of minutes here, you will not find any secret language just not they find excuses know quite descriptions know messages address to select listeners.
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Eckhart Gillen: Artists a tool of influences and warnings, you want to speak showered so that everybody can understand it truth is our teacher, we want know latitudes and surface fees deception frenzied lies.
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Eckhart Gillen: So consequently highlight and end of the Group of the art artist was in those culture, tradition in 1964 etc Stein gallery is another manifesto no sculptural on the left side.
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Eckhart Gillen: On execution that we have piles of shit mater via and blaster as joined works by Sam Goodman and Boris Lillian wet not arrested he painted the experiments each pile of shit was building the name of the galleries like sheet of Castelli or sheet of so now.
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Eckhart Gillen: The unexpected death of his father gallery in 1964 and the end of exhibitions of more out effectively may have the same year was the beginning of laureus withdrawal from the.
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Eckhart Gillen: Quote now we had blowing up all the bridges behind us, at that point in time, the decision that he took as an artist were made for this for the rest of his life.
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Eckhart Gillen: He would never again sell any of his works much Rasa he would buy them back because now living from stock market speculation.
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Eckhart Gillen: artists are money is money stocks stocks American nation of our the money aspect ratio of Theology that that was his confidence, money is money or dissolve and then he came for the first time back to the room i'm immortal in 1975 That was the third step.
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Eckhart Gillen: Following the illustrations of his memories and the collages Boris lori successful into transformation of trauma into the language of the picture.
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Eckhart Gillen: So we get by the first piece of in wicca and you see here the one amanda mess rafe side of overlap forest the side of his humiliations and nightmares.
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Eckhart Gillen: And i'm Maria was first established towards the end of the Soviet empire and dedicated to the data that chooses income 1960s, they were not even acknowledged as Jews about just acknowledged as victims of Soviet prisoners also.
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Eckhart Gillen: He wrote in his memoirs in Riga, which she started in 1975 world Oh, will I be able to incorporate this into my life, now that I have actually isn't it, it is even worse in its real physical smallness then in the gutter DEMO that lives in my imagination now.
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Eckhart Gillen: Thank you for this evening.
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Eckhart Gillen: I finished now I can of course at something about the novel house of Anita.
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Eckhart Gillen: Years and also image of this memorial site, and this is Anita painting it that and in this novel house of Anita is comparing the art market the gallery, without a mouse or studio and in that time before that you did this heart writings and this paintings and this is the stolen.
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Eckhart Gillen: Commemorating Tesco Nova and Boris the couple of love, which is what.
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Eckhart Gillen: He was looking for him searching for him.
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Eckhart Gillen: Okay, thank you very much.
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Rachel Stern: Thank you so much eka this.
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Rachel Stern: there's so many questions and the questions from the audience are also just coming in, so we'll get started we'll go a little bit over time so just so we have a we've possibility to.
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Rachel Stern: ask a few questions and discuss a few things so was amanda is asking.
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Rachel Stern: Whether you know how how survivors respond to Boris norris work have you.
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Rachel Stern: heard about any any survivors responses and also she's asking also about Holocaust deniers whether they.
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Rachel Stern: You know, respond to it to lori lois work.
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Eckhart Gillen: I don't know that I only know that in American museums, is very hard to show this works.
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Eckhart Gillen: It tries to move the exhibition from Denmark to the United States and.
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Eckhart Gillen: I know that but I don't know the reaction of the virus and all not have the.
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Rachel Stern: Various yeah so massey is asking you to please say more about the artists juxtaposition of the images of the post for photographs of naked women and the causes of the death camps, what is the message pornography shock.
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Rachel Stern: yeah what is the message.
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Eckhart Gillen: yeah The message is exactly what I said about.
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Eckhart Gillen: You just read this painting again.
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Eckhart Gillen: Which is.
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Eckhart Gillen: commenting This concerns that is here, you see the mixture of.
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Eckhart Gillen: Sorry.
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Eckhart Gillen: No, no that's too far let's go back.
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Eckhart Gillen: yo yo remember this liberty allies and then you remember.
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Eckhart Gillen: there's no bias that and he's comparing.
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Eckhart Gillen: yeah you see the moon, where is that and.
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Eckhart Gillen: Here you realized that this is money was between so body chitchat and this.
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Eckhart Gillen: advertisement.
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Eckhart Gillen: And yeah.
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Sara Softness: If you want to share your screen again, then we can see the you can bring them back up the images.
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Eckhart Gillen: Can you see it now no i'm sorry Oh, what happened.
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Sara Softness: I think it looks like perhaps our age, stop the sharing for the Q amp a session, but if you share again, we can see them.
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Eckhart Gillen: Oh well, can I do that.
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Sara Softness: If not that's Okay, too.
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Eckhart Gillen: I don't know, I have no choice yeah.
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Sara Softness: Only if easy.
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Eckhart Gillen: there's, no, no.
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Eckhart Gillen: Nothing, which I can do.
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A child.
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Rachel Stern: We just saw it, I cried so.
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Sara Softness: yeah we did.
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Eckhart Gillen: You really yeah you remember this mixture of advertisement and have it have it on spotify, for example, this mixture of.
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Eckhart Gillen: Of this human nations of women, which he realized, you know he came from these he came from the guy came from from another culture from a complete nother world.
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Eckhart Gillen: And you came suddenly to New York to this road of concentration camp, as he called it, in the middle of this advertisement of this misusing of.
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Eckhart Gillen: ut and human of women's bodies and.
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Eckhart Gillen: And that I called him the way what happened to the women which had killed on this huma huma woods and is comparing that he is bringing that together.
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Eckhart Gillen: To express his shock about the American culture, the American American affluent society which I he thought it's misusing feelings like love it if you do it brothers man with beautiful woman and Miss using her for that for him, it was and.
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Eckhart Gillen: Putting the matching that because it can read from this as a culture and became as a young boy to this working camps and from there.
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Eckhart Gillen: Suddenly to New York and the middle of the capital is worlds and he was overwhelmed by that culture and he could like this Lolita like this film compares that with this people in the camp, which is burned down and try to escape and they fail.
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Eckhart Gillen: So this is shocking of poison, it should shock the shoe shop, the fewer that is his strategy is this method.
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Eckhart Gillen: is doing that.
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Eckhart Gillen: very consciously.
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Rachel Stern: mm hmm.
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Rachel Stern: yeah I actually debbie is.
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Rachel Stern: posting a comment that i'm saying, I can tell you that my father Boris friend and also survivor set that bar His work was very relevant to a costume memoria art so.
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Rachel Stern: and other people say that was disturbing in its content, your lecture and so needed to see this and.
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Rachel Stern: I also fear.
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Rachel Stern: I thought it was interesting, I mean the Museum of Jewish heritage focuses on Boris early work was serious where he's Willie.
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Rachel Stern: Recording history, mostly.
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Rachel Stern: The way, you said that and at the same time, I also fed looking for, for his.
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Rachel Stern: visual language has you know trying out different styles different influences on him before he finds his own voice, and I think yeah, it is very interesting that he completely turns away from that, but then starts.
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Rachel Stern: Joining those two images in his head the things that he sees outside that is so completely untouched by.
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Rachel Stern: His experience that he went for and.
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Rachel Stern: I think that's an amazing yeah.
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Eckhart Gillen: The only working never show it never showed in his lifetime, they are not important for him the very first tries to remember what he said no that's not enough that's not helping me that's not I can't really.
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Eckhart Gillen: I can't really deal with that kind of images and he said well that's old fashioned, this is not really.
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Eckhart Gillen: Functioning from me and what he really wanted to show the future and to shock, the fewer is to compare the destruction of parties in the Nazi cassette system.
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Eckhart Gillen: and evaluation, the devaluation of duties as well, a tea and sexuality of women in the capitalistic process of exploitation, he was comparing his exploitation as a slave broker is exploitation of women's bodies and beauty like I showed this example real from this.
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Eckhart Gillen: hat or car is held on some cheap.
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Eckhart Gillen: Very often, is citing in his paintings as a big painting or four meters long they use four or five women, this is hair does in different colors.
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Eckhart Gillen: And it's over the know and over the concentration camp photographs and over this pornographic photos this is for him very important that is that these are the highlights of his work and he which you wanted to show to the people, not to sell them, but to show them.
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Rachel Stern: mm hmm yeah Thank you so David says, it seems to me that the pornographic imagery just objects opposed to images from the chemists points to the pornographic exploitation of the images from the camps.
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Rachel Stern: It must have been a shock for Louis to experience that life goes on business as usual, even after the award shadowing atrocity.
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Eckhart Gillen: huh huh.
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Eckhart Gillen: No.
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Rachel Stern: And drawn us Sarah what are your reflections reactions, as occurred on Dr burns lecture.
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Sara Softness: Oh well, thank you for that question, I mean, first of all thank you so much.
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Sara Softness: On Dr gillen for your lecture, I think, given the way that I have been steeped very much in boris's early work as we've been talking about, and particularly the war series and also his as you described his his kind of textual output his memoir.
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Sara Softness: His archives his writing and the way he records his dreams and, for me it was really fascinating to dig in further to some of these I guess you could call them less narrative canvases that really jumble.
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Sara Softness: His stream of consciousness in sort of a similar way that the memoir does, which I think is really interesting I think there's this layering of time, you know when you read in the memoir how Boris.
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Sara Softness: is on the streets of Riga 1975 put recalling exactly what it felt like to be there before the war or during the war, when he was in the ghetto there's this kind of.
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Sara Softness: Strange fragmentation that that he picks up on in writing that I think is really interesting to compare it to the to the works that you showed and.
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Sara Softness: I think it's really also amazing to understand how prolific Boris was he the amount of things that he had in his studio at any given time.
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Sara Softness: And you know, the way that he played with styles and the way that he played with expressing himself I think what I can see in all of this is there's so many different exhibitions you could make on this one artist and there's so many different ways that you can.
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Sara Softness: examine his approaches to art making I think he's incredibly versatile in that way and.
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Sara Softness: yeah I think i'm just absolutely grateful for the.
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Sara Softness: kind of expansion on.
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Sara Softness: Really, the themes that begin as the kind of origin story in the museum a Jewish heritage show and how that sticks with him so much as an artist.
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And as a person.
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Rachel Stern: I thought it was very interesting.
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Rachel Stern: That you said, the.
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Rachel Stern: You know the excess of our memory in.
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Rachel Stern: The access to two images in our memory is so much faster.
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Rachel Stern: Then, then two words to express.
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Rachel Stern: Our mind and words then images so that gives me a very new understanding of you know of looking at his work and, in the same kind of context Lynn.
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Rachel Stern: is asking.
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Rachel Stern: She she'd be interested in hearing more about the relationship between the paintings and the memoir, for example, is there a visual a dimension to the to his waiting or does he incorporate actual images in the text or does he completely separate the two.
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Eckhart Gillen: yeah he's integrating words as you could see in this liberty allies, the title is already very important to have this two words liberty all is the cancelled or the capital is brought the promise of of liberty, which is they were really developed.
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Eckhart Gillen: Evaluation kind of they were evolution of of attachment and then he was writing poems already in the in the in the 60s, he started with poems in his old Celtic German.
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Eckhart Gillen: which are very hard to understand, sometimes and very hard to translate them, there is a group of artists in Munich, they try to make a translation into English maker kind of performance and composition with music about them and then an easy it took very long it took more than 20 years.
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Eckhart Gillen: until he could write about that and it's very interesting when you read his letters to first tell which are found in the in the archive in multiple data in Spain.
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Eckhart Gillen: That he tried many times to book a journey with the interest ship the interest to Russia and to Riga Rica was part of Soviet Union at that time, and you failed three or four times, he missed the boat or whatever, and then finally.
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Eckhart Gillen: quit come there, and there was so much against it was such a.
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Eckhart Gillen: it's so difficult for him to overcome that.
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Eckhart Gillen: To go there to the to this place where it happened, and that was very shocking for him, and it was triggering then that he wanted to write about to write his memoirs and 75 and you wrote on that for about until the end of his life until 2008.
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Eckhart Gillen: And they are 700 pages and.
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Eckhart Gillen: Now, a part of them part of them are now published in English, and that was a problem for him and then he wrote this novel and he has house.
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Eckhart Gillen: Which is also a kind of contacts at that here of the capitalistic art market and also this capitalistic galleries were some and there is one of the slaves in this out of Anita and he's not realizing that he was he was powered or it.
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Eckhart Gillen: was in this cassette system and, finally, his family, his calming as that people and remembering what he what he is and he can't remember then finally remembers and the color is Anita the.
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Eckhart Gillen: dominating Robin in this solder muscles to do, she said Okay, they are welcome as guests, but there has to be cleaned very much cleaned and then.
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Eckhart Gillen: They are welcome, and they are part of art card of contemporary art, they are our treasures and.
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Eckhart Gillen: So he is comparing the art market and foremost calories as a gigantic long term art which will glean out down to the course of all traces of history and individuals suffering that is his.
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Eckhart Gillen: statement about the normal art business and that's why he's doing something shocking something different yeah and doesn't want.
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Eckhart Gillen: to sell that down that's why he started to make his own business following his father and.
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Eckhart Gillen: being independent money is money and artists are.
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Eckhart Gillen: That one.
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Rachel Stern: yeah yeah to thank you so much, I just wanted to conclude, we went quite a lot over time now, but I wanted to, to quote Boris louie himself and he said to survive, is the ultimate act of creation and to quaid as the as the ultimate act of a survivor, so I think that pretty much.
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Rachel Stern: Really wraps up what.
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Rachel Stern: What you have just said, I got and.
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Rachel Stern: I want to thank you so much, and I want to give over to Sarah and to to ra to concludes the event, thank you.
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Sara Softness: gracias, thank you, thank you both.
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Ari Goldstein: Thank you so much for the Fritz azure societies.
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Ari Goldstein: Partnership and great things to Dr ED card feelin for sharing his very insightful scholarship with us and helping us make more meaning of the works that are on display in the museum and the rest of course lori's.
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Ari Goldstein: extraordinary work we're grateful to a card and to all of you in the audience for joining us.
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Ari Goldstein: today's program was recorded and you will receive a link to the recording your email tomorrow, along with some additional resources to learn about the subject and links, if you wish to support the museum and the Fritz astra societies work.
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Ari Goldstein: People hope everyone stay safe and wish you a great afternoon.
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Ari Goldstein: Thank you.
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Rachel Stern: Thank you, thank you.
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Sara Softness: Thank you everyone
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