The upper part of a bank for physical education, a monstrous element, whose leather cover lead our thoughts to archaic rituals and high jumping Germanic warriors, declines in the vicinity of the wall in a slight angle with a glass plate on which a photo of two Asian acrobats is printed. Just like the smart lower legs flexed forward across their shoulders show a lack of weight problems, so elegant is the presumed attachment of the padded ph.e. bank's leather and the glass plate. Straighten these two disparate elements of objects indeed mutually exclusive?The asymmetry, which shows itself on closer examination in this seemingly formalistic installation is significant, as well, that it presents itself only at a second glance. Visible is on closer examination and consideration: The ph.e. bank rests on a comfortable cushion on its own width, weight and on skin from dead, alien animals.The glass plate on the other hand, is really leaned against the bank and participates in its stability. The idea that the first outlook implies, that is, that these two objects weights themselves out, stresses this difference particularly. The game with the first impression in turn refers to an art historical speciality, similar to sweetbreads as a speciality of haute cuisine, which one eats as long as the meaning of the word is not consciously perceived, showing how ever-closer - in a way correctly - the Haute Cuisine draws to the Hautes Artes. The art historical specialty is the trompe l'oeil - a deception of the eyes, to put it into simple words.

The normal case of the classical trompe l'oeil is a painted architecture element within an interior wall design of the 14th or 15th Century, the simulation of a view on the open sky painted by Andrea Mantegna is a higher case, but the very special case of a trompe l'oeil, however, is the "Self-portrait in a convex mirror" created by Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola) in 1523/24, who went in his "photo realism" so far as to imitating the curved shape of the razor mirror in the picture to let it appear to be indistinguishable. The special joke of his self-presentation is furthermore, that Parmigianino submits his left hand in front of the mirror, that looks in a mirror image as the right hand, so - just as long as the mirror image is not understood, it works as a quasi-evidence that the image is not a painted image but a mechanical mirror image. The viewer at this moment places himself (herself) not at the point of Parmigianino but "behind the mirror" as his counterpart. Is the depiction understood as a representation by looking at Parmigianino across the place where his real shoulder was placed in front of the picture, the hand can be recognized as the left hand. Thus the possibility, that Parmigianino painted himself during this mirroring with the right hand gets visible. A confusion of the left and right can thus be very interesting and constructive.But how is this in modern art, for example, if concerning installations such as that with which we started this our article?
Let us swing our eyes away form the left sided installation of the Bavarian artist Christian Hörl upon a right wing instalation he created for the same exhibition at the H2 in Augsburg. The artist does not talk a lot about his theories, by the way. At the right, you'll see oversized hands in black-and-white, touching each other and printed on glass, the huge glasspane leaning on the wall. Illusionistic elements are actually not to be found. These touching hands in black and white (!) allow substantive transitions to other works that could be seen in a diashow and talk the artist gave about his work in the context of the exhibition. Some of these artworks: An object in front of a midwives's home, alluding to protection and care with an oversized image of a cell. On a recommendation for dating the protection have kindly be waived, but the programmatic content, which so clearly advances in the forefront, is also continued in other works like an exhibition wherein the female designation of bunkers of the second World War in southern France is affirmatively exaggerated to photo exhibitions of these bunkers in exhibition halls, the artist had himself designated with female names: The protective cave is the protective cover is the protection hell .....
This game with the formalistic surface of subjective "statements" about social differences becomes Mannerism, not only in the above mentioned installations, but also in a quite similar work, showing male dancers in Tutus as photographs printed on glass, and displayed again with apparatuses of physical education and with arrangement of spatial differences. The dancers, who shall look like female ballerinas through their clothing strike as contemporaries no real trompe l'oeil effect, which would have required another hairstyle, ballet shoes or perhaps a minimal distortion of the photograph. As given, the male dancers in Tutus create not trompe l'oeil but at most eyewash. The idea of equality, out of whome the trompe l'oeil culture of Mannerism got their illusionistic and witty strength is in these works by Hörl clearly rejected, regardless of whether the artist act awarly or not.

With nearly ghastly consistency therefore the work comes along, which is able to claim his place in the Hautes Artes due to its inherent interpretability and his challenging appearance - although the artist more or less explicitly refuses to defend his obviously politically conservative and Catholic-oriented content. The formal nature of the work, its transparency, that is, in an almost subtle way comparable to the eye deceptive architectural breakthroughs of Mantegna - only an eyewash?
We pan back.
We are now back in Parma, Parmigianino, the famous picturesque mannerism and his works such as "Madonna with the long neck" and others, in which even the child is dangerously "extended", as if Mother Mary and the surrounding almost surrealistic architectural fragments, with some hand gestures looking as surely borrowed from the Surrealists, only served as a frame for presenting the well aged boy to pedophiliacs.
15th Century art is for sure also a question of eye deception in this respect, but we fortunately not know anything exact about it.
Common knowledge however is, that the city of Parma is famous not only for their mannerism but also for a plainer specialty, the Parma ham. Because this article is written on Christmas Eve in transition to the first Christmas Holiday, we are somewhat ashamed about the dead animals, which is also a major issue in contemporary art, as in the work of Anja Güthoff, shown until the 6th january in the already mentioned and discussed exhibition series of Augsburg's awarded artists at the H2.

Thus - here they are - for example, as a dead, treated great tit (parus major) on an altar, in a way borrowed from a Christian church culture, but profane now. In its random moments the altar is likely to remind of Adorno's similars in his Enlightenment theories of the ancient culture, in his conscious moments it simply recalls ancient sacrifies. Sure, the augurs of Athens did not abstain from slaughtering the sacrificial animal brutishly. But Güthoff is just not interested in a new mystery culture but more in a game with moments of remembrance and the assessment just in her culture Christianly dominated. You might understand Güthoff as a kind of modern old Francis (of Assisi), because she maintains not only a collection of natural history but takes animals, even lively and intelligent animals like apes as her art objects usually as if she tends to love and like them. But in most of her works, the animals are lifeless and too much used as metaphors for life and misdemeanors, so classically as Vanitas-motives - although of course barely in the classical form. Especially the technical skilled obscuration of the boundaries between abstraction and figuration works for the distance to the classical subject.
We are thus again in the 16th / 17th Century, the century in which in almost photorealistic illustrations of fruit and vegetables through the maze and crowding insects the decay was celebrated and the sight of delicious freshness was quickly transformed into back shuddering from the signs of decay,- just not in front of the face of the Master, as in Arcimboldo's Mannerism, but of objects.
So, we are finally back in Parma and in the culinary industry.
To this beautiful subject of eyes, equality and difference the final paragraph of this article will be donated.
The Hautes Artes artists favores - as it has been known since the appearance of Rosemarie Trockel as pig-herdsman at documenta 9, and the public artworks of pig-observer and tattooist Wim Delvoye - the living pork over the ham.
Also and just for Christmas.
If we compare this capacity of art to transform raw and original things and phenomena of nature with the methods of the Haute Cuisine, we should first say-so, conceeding adequacy to the critized documenta 11 of 2007, that it has similar principles.One draws art with the pig - through his painting or installation (it is allowed to point out the perhaps uncritical, just German perfidiousness of such principles as the Koon'sche Installertion), the other by its molecular decomposition and parfait. To ask the pig what it would prefer seems unnecessary. But why does no one notice that exactly these three variants of artistic creativity together lead to a new vegetarian illusionism, whose representatives will paint in the style of the vaginal painted plates of Judy Chicago's Supper (we reported) slides of ham and subtly smoothed parfait knolls on the everyday plates, but offer as real food steamed vegetables and fruit parfaits - to serve alongside the popular Christmas cakes.
In short. Even the most complex cultural experiences in the Christmas time will not go far beyond the cultural understanding of the cookie monster.
This was even demonstrated by a case in a current exhibition, also very interesting, in Augsburg and called "Krapplack", done by the artist Rainer Apfelbaum who staged his art works for the New Gallery in Höhmannhaus. The box is surrounded by red things, ladders, books, color crowds, animal figurines, paintings and red labels, etc. It simply stands in its shabby light and brown color there and shone with its contents, a shabby photographic, fat breasted half nude with maddeled black hair.
This is a possible motive for the author of a forthcoming exalted Haute Cuisine of Artes? But just a MOMENT ....!
Perhaps, "The Girls" themselves have something else to propose. We find for this concern a further eye deception: Four women, who show what the man-on-the-street has already known from the first sight of his mother on: They are all equal. Or, nevertheless just two common transvestites who want to be better, and in this way and for this reason imitate two American artists caring for design and books for kids? No, two real lesbians, with female-born bodies, who stage themselves as travestites? Or simply Prince Harry and Prince William after a visit in Sellafield, so real, but just a long time hidden by the the English court? The two no sexed, but English and overweighted "Girls" at least make clear proposals regarding upcoming meals: instead of the sow with oranges in the mouth the (lifeless?) woman herself is offered on the table, tastefully prepared. (Also nothing new - but perhaps travesty?) The American Design Girls, however, are still experiencing food as trauma and present in their frightening retro-infantilistic books, design objects and works of art all-eating elephants, before they finally in an entertaining blog suggest the idea, not only to attract children with their books but furthermore to eat "them" ...
But, Christmas, the holiday of reflection, calls for sweeping the crumbs on the own table. So what do we find on our plate?Well, we just eat men ... (Should I say something more about it? .... Because of ..? Well, of course only if they wear red hoods, and are even enjoyable for vegetarians .... already clear, right?)

Dr. Ulrike Ritter