Bazon Brock's Visitors’ School on Documenta in Kassel: Training for Reception of Contemporary Art

Abstract

This article analyses the problem of reception and interpretation of contemporary art exhibition in the context of Besucherschule (Visitors’ School) invented by Bazon Brock: German philosopher, art historian and a follower of Theodor Adorno. He implemented this practice for the first time on documenta 4 in Kassel (1968) and organised such schools of reception until documenta 9 (1992). The aim of the Visitors’ School was to explain works of contemporary art on display to the public. Brock understood this process as ‘mediation’ in aesthetic education, arguing that dependence on theory was no less problematic for contemporary art perception than the lack of traditional art form. The main symbolic task of art – ‘claim for reality’, was demonstrated by Brock in two ideas: ‘new image-war’ and ‘speaking image’.