Volume 30, Number 16 · October 27, 1983
There's No Geist like the Zeitgeist
By Robert Hughes
The exhibition called 'Zeitgeist,'[1] which generated such heat and smoke in Berlin a year ago, still lingers in the mind as an event—even though the promised English version of its catalog has not yet materialized. It was a huge show in an overwhelming setting, a bombscarred and partially restored palazzo named the Martin-Gropius-Bau, built in the late nineteenth century as a venue for international trade-and-culture expositions. The Wall runs directly outside its abandoned portico; not far away are the ruins of Gestapo headquarters. Short of a De Mille set constructed on the lines of Piranesi's Carceri, it would have been hard to find a more dramatic environment, or one which did more to make its contents more theatric: 237 paintings and sculptures, by some fortysix living artists. And theater was the order of the day: even the catalog preface bore the title 'Achilles and Hector before the Walls of Troy.'
Feature, 6170 words
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