The First documenta, 1955

<p>The documenta exhibitions of contemporary art held in Kassel, West Germany, are now well known. They are awaited and received with great expectation and occasional controversy. Having established a reputation for historical prognosis and the legitimization of the present, they have become a focal point for ideological as well as aesthetic discourse surrounding contemporary art. In the summer of 1987, Kassel hosted documenta 8. But the first documenta exhibition, held in Kassel in the summer of 1955, was not necessarily conceived as the beginning of a series. It was simply called “documenta: Art of the Twentieth Century,” and in that title lay the ambitions of the project. Occurring mid-year, mid-decade, mid-century, it positioned itself as a fulcrum between the past and the future. It consciously historicized contemporary art in the process of its development and, in doing so, influenced all such exhibitions since. But above all, the conception and execution of the first documenta crystallized Germany, specifically the decade of 1945 to 1955, during which the contestation for legitimization was fought and won, through the decade of 1955 to 1965, when abstract art was more or less paramount, after which the hegemony of abstraction broke down under the influence of American Pop art and more radical political tendencies…</p>