M HKA Ensembles

Intervention, 18 x (29.5 x 21 cm).

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK4883).

Until the mid-1980s Daniël Dewaele worked mostly ‘as a sociologist’, interviewing fellow Belgians in the street or sending questionnaires to members of the international art community. One ambitious project, published as a book in 1985, was Art and Society. Are There Solutions? The loosely – possibly too loosely – formulated question (‘Is there a rupture between contemporary expressions of art and society? If yes, what are the reasons for this? If no, please comment.’) provoked different answers, some curt (Lucy Lippard: ‘I have spent 20 years trying to answer such questions and written volumes on them. Please just read them!’), others ramblingly enthusiastic. These 18 letters from European art institutions are written in response to Dewaele’s inquiry about how much space they have available – for a 24,800 m2 sculpture. Again the answers vary. Some (Nicholas Serota, Jan Hoet) drily report the size of their galleries. Others are more playful. Johannes Cladders, Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach, writes: ‘Can you imagine an unimaginably large area? If yes, you dispose of this area.’