Paper Truth

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An article dedicated to the German artist Thomas Demand opens by describing a German Disneyworld employee working in the Bavarian beer garden at Epcot. When questioned about working in a replica of her homeland, the employee replied that her hometown had been completely demolished in World War II and was reconstructed afterward. Thus, what is perceived as an authentic place of origin is often an imitation of its former existence, and conceptually, isn't too far removed from Disney's amusement parks.(1) The relation between this anecdote and Demand's artwork reveals something of the manner in which critics tend to interpret his work. Demand, who began his career in the 1990s, reconstructs interiors and other locations according to documentary photographs and objects; he builds these life-size reconstructions strictly out of colored paper. Demand then photographs the fabricated locations, which he eventually destroys. His exhibitions present large-scale photographs of paper reconstructions that, when first perceived, look like documentations of real objects and places. At first glance, his works tend to deceive the viewer. Only after a closer look, when encountering the disturbing effect of the works, does doubt arise regarding the nature of the images. Interpretations of Demand's work posit two very different views concerning its truth. On the one hand, the works can be understood as dealing with the production of visual images that reflect one another, devoid of any substantial core. On the other hand, some of his critics stress the referential aspect of his works--the indication of specific, concrete locations. Yet, despite their differences, all interpretations agree upon another prominent aspect of Demand's work: the extraordinary skill it exhibits. Using Demand's work as a lens, this essay elucidates the unique way works of art bare truth--truth that is not the opposite of falsehood and that has nothing in common with historical fact. This truth is derived from the artist's know-how--a know-how excluded by the discourse of art. ART VS. HISTORY, FACT VS. FICTION According to Aristotle, the difference between the historian and the poet is that the former relays what has happened, while the latter deals with the possibility of what might happen. (2) This distinction did not, of course, prevent the emergence of works of art such as historical novels or paintings. Theorists have claimed that what gives historical painting its privileged status in art history is part of another Aristotelian argument: the claim that exquisite painting should represent significant human actions. (3) Thus, for example, although it seems that in the painting The Death of Marat (1793) Jacques-Louis David did not save any efforts in supplying his viewer with historical information such as the crime scene or the murder weapon, the praise lavished upon this painting actually points toward the subject matter and its painterly characteristics rather than its reliable depiction of a particular historical event. Generally speaking, the failure of works of art in mirroring true information, a standard derived from Aristotle, seems obvious and inevitable. As is well known, the supremacy of historical paintings did not last long. Yet, the art world of the late twentieth century was stimulated from an opposite direction by questions related to the referential aspect of works of art--this time concerning questions of representation in relation to reality. In an essay dedicated to the American artist Cindy Sherman, Rosalind Krauss analyzes Sherman's Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), a series of black-and-white photographs in which the artist assumes the look of a Hollywood starlet and photographs herself in various costumes and locations (4) She begins by stressing the fact that although Sherman's works appear to recall a specific film, they do not in fact contain any singular cinematic reference. …