艺术爱好者们从巴塞尔艺术博览会浩浩荡荡地来到了卡塞尔。这一点关系重大：如果你大脑中对艺术还残留着任何幻想、认为它能美化世界的话，博览会那些绚烂的、时尚的展品，激动不安的画廊参展者、掮客、收藏家、拍卖公司、媒体代表、狂热的派对，都会打消这些幻想。这并不是一种愤世嫉俗的说法，当然也不是和参观巴塞尔艺术博览会唱反调，相反，巴塞尔在全球艺术操作系统中是重要潮流的最好代表，是绝对值得一看的。这也是为什么四年前第一个中国人出现后，中国的参观者成倍数增长的原因。但中国生产的艺术品的表现并没有和这种增长同步，也没有和艺术界对此不断增长的兴趣同步。这一切是显而易见的，并在巴塞尔的组织者那里得到了证实。
但来到卡塞尔，就来到了一个全然不同的世界：这次几乎所有构成主流艺术的西欧和美国艺术家都被排除在文献展之外。来自东欧、印度、亚洲和拉丁美洲的艺术绘就了另一幅艺术蓝图。对策划这次展览的两个人Roger Buergel和Ruth Noack来说，这次展览并非像众人期待的那样是对过去五年来艺术的小结。而是要描摹出今日当代艺术植根的思想轨迹，突破常规、不同一般，怎样不断变化并最终形成当代艺术的格局。要阐述这个问题，我们可以追溯到遥远的14世纪，看看印度人对作画方式的改变。“形式的迁徙”摇身一变成为此次文献展的主题——在全球范围内探索对于图式、色彩、视觉语言、运动和观念之超越时空的呈现，这种呈现与它们在地球上产生的时间、地点有着某种因果关系，或更多的是没有因果关系。策展人将这些不同的表现集结在一起，形成了一个大的表述——文献展。
也许我们对这种思想的轨迹和策展人的策展思路持有异议，但我们不得不认同的是他们没有刻意迎合全球主流艺术的期望。同样，他们也没有刻意迎合艺术市场的期望。因此，很多策展人、艺术掮客在开幕的日子里穿行在一个又一个展览区域，企图找到过去几年来在主流艺术中叱咤风云的英雄，结果是失望而归。实际上，此次文献展最大的价值在于它摒弃了不道德的路子——被迫做一些微不足道的花样，追求市场的成功，大肆宣传，与人竞争，甚至嘈杂、大声喧闹，这正是今日艺术事件的特征。在这个展览中，我们找不到今日艺术市场上那种常见的叫卖者，他们会喊出令人惊愕的价格，骗人上当。我们会发现参加这次展览的艺术家比主流艺术家更差吗？不一定。他们更好吗？也不一定。但是他们提供了相当新鲜的东西，尽管有些人是在20世纪60年代或70年代创作了他们的作品，在他们的时代不为人知。所有这些发现应该归功于策展人，他们使展览具有很大的吸引力。即使单从这一点，而不是从整个策展理论来看也是如此。
策展人还将矛头对准了当代艺术呈现中的另一个禁忌——白色立方体。“白色立方体已死。”Roger Buergel在他一次引人入胜、娴熟的演示中阐明了这一观点。在大多数空间中，艺术的呈现以强烈的色彩像勃艮第红、深紫色、杏色、粉红色等等作为背景，并利用强烈的射灯以营造戏剧效果，为观者提供切入点，使其自行解读，而不是利用素净、平淡的背景。显然，这与专为单调的展览空间的特定条件而创作的艺术家的意图是互相抵触的。这次，我们可以很踏实地预测，白色立方体会在这场袭击中幸存下来。
当衡量DOCUMENTA 12这个展览时，有两个重要争端不得不提：一个是涉及到展览切入点的三个问题——即“现代与古代的关系”、“生活的本质”、“怎么办”——这些却很难在展览中找到答案。我怀疑策展人在做调查研究时过于迷恋他们对形式迁徙的发现，并让这种发现成为主导。而且，关于第一个问题，他们在研究过程中可能带有鲜明的西方视角，因为在世界其他地方，现代性是以不同方式呈现的，也可以说现代性还远没有到来。不过，这些问题与“形式的迁徙”具有同样的吸引力。DOCUMENTA 12的另一项革新的吸引力就差一些了：那就是卡塞尔的温室大棚展厅。最初的设计是豪华的水晶宫，后来这一计划流产，转而成为类似西红柿培植站的设施。很难解释策展人如何 构想出这样一个建筑设施：置身其中的艺术作品直接暴露在日光下，忍受着温室般的温度，而没有任何预防和保护措施。在施工过程中水晶宫的有些理念不得不被舍弃和调整，一个很差的环境就这样生成了。
由于策展人不断访问中国，此次中国参展艺术家的人数较以往增加不少。自1972年波伊斯栽下了7000棵橡树以来，没有哪个艺术家和他的团队能像艾未未这样，以他的《童话》——这一社会雕塑引起全世界媒体的瞩目。
在最近的一次采访中，艺术总监Roger Buergel说：“我永远不会再策划什么艺术展览。我只想做我不能做的事情……”那就让我们拭目以待吧。
The art crowd arrived in Kassel coming from the Basel Artfair. This is relevant: If you ever had any illusions left about art as an agent to better the world, the Fair’s glossy, trendy exhibits and the highly agitated protagonists of the Fair, dealers, collectors, auction house and media representatives and their hectic party circus definitely would have wiped out those illusions. This is not a cynical statement, and certainly not directed against visiting the Basel Artfair – on the contrary, Basel is the finest representation of an overpowering trend in the worldwide art operating system and as such really deserves a visit. And rightly so the Chinese contingent of visitors has grown exponentially since four years ago when the first Chinese appeared. But representation of art produced in China has not kept up with this growth and with the escalating interest of the art world. This did not go unnoticed as we are assured by the ArtBasel organizers.
But going forward to Kassel, we enter a completely different territory: Almost all of Western European and American artists that compose the global mainstream art have been left out of this DOCUMENTA.A different map has been drawn of the art, coming mainly from Eastern Europe, India, Asia, Africa and Latin America .For Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, the two persons curating the show, this is not about drawing a summary of the last five years as many expect them to do. This is about a line of thought where the roots of today's contemporary art lie, and where the transgressions, ruptures and fissures can be identified that ultimately shaped and continue to shape the outcome of contemporary art. For this purpose, exhibits may date back as far as the 14th century, as some Indian miniatures do". Migration of Forms" has morphed into a main topic of this DOCUMENTA—a global research of patterns, colours, visual language, movements and concepts that have appeared across space and time, with or more often without a caus
e and effect relationship at the time they were conceived somewhere on the globe. The curators weave these very different manifestations into what becomes one big ornament, the DOCUMENTA.
We may disagree with this line of thought and their curatorial choices, but we have to agree that bold they are, in that the curators have not compromised to the expectations of the global mainstream. And equally so they have not compromised to the expectations of the art market. So many curators and art dealers rushing through the different exhibition venues in the opening days were dazzled not to find their heroes that they have so successfully groomed into global mainstream over the past few years. Actually one of the biggest merits of this DOCUMENTA is to abandon this vicious circle of forced innovation however small and irrelevant, then market success, then hype, then competition and then even noisier over shouting as marks so much of the event art of today. We will not find the cracks of today's art market in this exhibition who command the staggering prices and our respect during the reminder of the year. Are the many artists we come to discover in this DOCUMENTA worse than the mainstream artists? Not
really. Are they better? Not really. But they provide considerable freshness in this offering, even though some have produced their art in the sixties or seventies, widely unnoticed innovators in their time. These discoveries may well be the greatest merit attributable to the curators and provide for some great attractions—even taken as single expressions and not as part of the grand curatorial rationale.
The curators also targeted another taboo of contemporary art presentation: the White Cube. "The White Cube is dead", as Roger Buergel declared in one of his often quite spectacular and skillful presentations. In most spaces the art was presented against strong colours such as burgundy, dark lilac, apricot, pink e. a. ,with strong spot lighting, provoking drama and emotion, providing an entry point and often resulting in interpretation or narrative of its own rather than plain and sober background to the piece. At times this obviously contradicts the intention of an artist who produces for the specific condition of the autonomous white cube. We can safely predict that the White Cube will survive this attack.
Two critical issues come to mind when weighing DOCUMENTA 12: The three questions defining the entry point- “Is modernity our Antiquity?", "Bare Life" and "What to do?" — are hardly traceable in the exhibition any more. I suspect that during their research the curators became so fascinated with their personal discoveries of migration of forms that they switched their priority .Also the first question may have proved during the research process to be formulated very much with a Western viewpoint: Modernity in other parts of the world may have come in very different manifestation or maybe has not arrived at all. But these questions have no lesser charm to be developed than "Migration of Forms". And clearly less charm has another innovation of DOCUMENTA 12: The greenhouse pavillion in the Aue part of Kassel. Originally designed as a grandiose crystal palace, it aborted in the end into something like a tomato breeding station. Hard to explain how a building could ever be conceived that would expose artworks direct
ly to sunlight and extreme greenhouse temperature without precaution and protection. Somewhere in the construction process the misconceived crystal palace concept had to be abandoned and adapted, and an environment as unfriendly as ever imaginable resulted.
Chinese artists have been represented much more numerous than in the past, a result of extensive visits by the curators to China. Since 1972, when Beuys and his team planted 7000 oak trees, no artist could ever occupy the global media in a comparable way as the artist Ai Weiwei did with his "Fairytale" social sculpture.
In a recent interview, Artistic Director Roger Buergel said:" I will never curate again an art exhibition. I only want to do things I cannot do..."Let us wait and see.