Sunday, June 09, 2013

Hans Haacke

Hans Haacke's controversial piece Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 (1971) produces an abstraction of the social relationships between the wealthy and the evicted. Shapolsky, a wealthy New York land owner and landlord, happened to also be the owner of more slums than any other land owner in the city. The work thus illustrates the many ways in which the wealthy leech on the poor for the source of their money. The work was so controversial at the time that the Guggenheim Museum, where it was intended to debut, canceled the show - the understated implication being that Shapolsky probably gave money to the Museum and did not want his name to be contaminated.
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