Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: We welcome Michael Nolte as our guest for an expert talk on “Violence in Art,” drawing on his expertise and experience to discuss backgrounds and developments in Room #925 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Power & Violence.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
I’d like to welcome all of you again very, very warmly this morning, and today especially Michael Nolte, joining us as our guest for “Violence in Art” in this expert talk. Michael Nolte, better known under his artist name MiNo, is a criminal investigator who reinvented himself in his late forties. With natural talent, skill, and self-promotion, he managed to capture the attention of the art world in just two years. Michael was awarded first place in the Tape Art category by the German Historical Museum in Berlin, and is now considered a newcomer on the street art and tape art scene. Given his expertise and experience in both criminology and art, today, under our current overarching theme of “Power and Violence,” we’re talking about violence in art, and we want to learn more about how different forms of violence come to expression in art, and what opportunities and risks come with that. And with that, once again a very warm, official welcome to you, dear Michael — I’m really happy to have you here with me today for this expert talk.
Let me first welcome everyone to the topic of art and violence — a topic that really speaks to me, because I come from both worlds. On one hand I’m an artist, and on the other I’m a criminal investigator, and I deal with violence in my day-to-day work too. So the two topics overlap for me, and I have real expertise to bring here. When we look at art and violence, I want to say upfront that I can approach this from several different angles. First, the depiction of violence in art. Second, art as an expression of violence. A third point would be sexualized violence and abuse of power in the art world. And a fourth point would be violence as a social structure. And last but not least, we’ll also get to political violence and protest art — I’m thinking of environmental activists, which is a huge topic in art right now too, some of whom glue themselves to things. So we can approach this term, art and violence, from various angles, not just from representational art. I’ve brought a few different examples where we can go deeper into this.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And that already shows that this topic, too, can be opened up on several different levels. Let’s take a look at these different aspects. Let’s start with representational art — representational art and violence. What did you bring for us there?
I picked out an example for that. There’s the work Guernica by Pablo Picasso, created in 1937. It’s a powerful depiction of the horrors of the Second World War. Guernica was a town in Spain that was bombed by the Germans. And Picasso captured these atrocities of war as an iconic symbol in this work — all the trauma of war, all the destruction, all the suffering that happened during the Second World War. And in this painting, a very typical, very famous Picasso work, we see these atrocities right there in the piece. He took on the subject of violence and tried to symbolically embed the violence of war into his work, putting his feelings or his opinion on the topic into the piece. Guernica is a really good example of this — the atrocities of the Second World War manifesting in an actual work of art. That would be an example of art where the depiction of violence manifests in a real artwork.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. How does that work out, though — if we think about it, are there opportunities and risks in this context that also need to be considered? How sensible, or how justified, is it, really, to take up certain aspects of violence, even in a time or a phase of life when you might find yourself as an artist, in order to portray the whole thing from a certain perspective in art? How do you see that?
In this case, Pablo Picasso took this on in order to point to the horrors that had happened there. So I find his intention justified — to take that on, to manifest it, and to essentially use art to point to this topic and this horror. That’s common in art. It’s not the only example we have in representational art where artists put depictions of violence into their artworks in order to draw attention to certain topics and point the viewer toward them. So for me, that’s legitimate to begin with, because he’s depicting, in a cubist style, this act of violence and the bombing of the town of Guernica, so that the viewer engages with this topic. So through art, he makes the viewer think, and keeps this depiction of violence alive in people’s memory.
Let me ask something else here, because we know this from the film industry, for example — there are certain aspects there, like certain films only being approved from a certain age onward. Does something like that exist in representational art too, or how does that work? And how does it play out, say — ultimately anyone can normally view a piece of art. So are there restrictions that should exist, or is this handled differently here than in the film industry? That would interest me at this point.
Yes, I can half-answer that, because I know it from practice. On one hand, there’s something like an ethics council in the art world too — certain institutions, big museums like the Folkwang Museum in Essen, or other major institutions with exhibitions, where the topic of violence, sexualized violence, sometimes sexuality, sometimes pornography, shows up in art. There, the curators have a say too. And I’ve been to exhibitions where pornography was depicted — that was then a separately cordoned-off area, specifically marked, and children under 14, for example, had no access there, or only with adults, or with their parents. That lies in the hands of the curators, in the hands of the institution exhibiting that artist or that art form.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Then let’s move on to that second level, so to speak, with the keyword sexualized art. Although you said that’s not about representational art, in the context you wanted to talk about violence, but a different level you wanted to open up. What can you tell us about that area?
Yes, this sexualized violence was not a topic for a long time in Germany, especially in the art scene. With the MeToo movement, that spilled over here too, and became a topic in 2019. The FAZ newspaper had a team that tracked down young female artists who declared under oath that they had been sexually harassed and molested by a well-known German curator, or gallery owner, based in Berlin. These accusations were initially just out there. That gallery owner is still fighting this legally to this day, so one has to be careful here. But it does point to the fact that abuse of power happens in the art scene too. Young female artists trying to climb the career ladder in art — in this case, they were allegedly sexually harassed by the gallery owner, allegedly touched inappropriately too, possibly in order to gain certain advantages. That’s now also become a topic — this sexualized violence, especially within these power structures that undoubtedly exist in the art world too.
How should we picture that, exactly? Because I don’t know — is it mostly the artists themselves who are affected? Or is it more about employees, say, of a museum or an art institution? So, structurally, how is that actually set up? Where might we encounter this?
Well, this exists at all levels by now. There’s a second scandal too — I can’t quite remember which museum it was — where there was talk of absolute suppression of employees by the director. Serious accusations were published in the press, that all the employees and curators there, some of whom curate exhibitions, were treated with contempt, in a commanding tone. And there too, there are power dynamics between directors, curators, and those carrying out the work. And on the other hand, sexual violence isn’t only targeted at women. There are certainly individual cases involving men too, that I’ve heard of, who’ve been sexually suppressed or approached by other men in this field. That’s possible too, and that plays out in the art scene as well. It’s a no-go, a forbidden subject, a taboo topic — it’s not really discussed, not talked about much.
That certain power dynamics exist within employment relationships, and that power and abuse of power can happen there too, is, I think, relatively easy for most of us to understand. But how does it work with artists? Is there a certain dependency, or a relationship of dependency there too? That might be interesting for people who aren’t as deep into the art world — how do power dynamics and dependencies play out there?
Among artists within the scene, violence plays a role too, but more in the sense of psychological violence there. We have to factor in that there’s a very strong sense of competition. And everything I’ve experienced so far at exhibitions, at art fairs, among artists, tends to get looked at quite enviously. And, I’d say, one artist usually doesn’t wish the other well. It’s about hard sales, it’s about business. I myself am part of an artists’ academy that does exactly the opposite — we come together in this academy, we help each other, we’re happy when someone else sells a piece. We take exactly the opposite path. But in the art scene among artists generally, it’s tough business. Other people’s art often gets looked at enviously, sometimes even talked down or belittled, because people are thinking about their own sales, their own progress. And psychological violence plays a really big role there.
Yes, absolutely understandable. Maybe you could say a bit more about power dynamics or dependency relationships — not just among artists, but also in relation to different academies, museums, institutions where representational art appears too. That there’s a topic within employment relationships too, given that dependencies exist there, is, I think, relatively plausible for a lot of us. But what does it look like if I’m the artist? We might assume I’m relatively free in what I do. But there can certainly be dependency relationships there too — for example, to make sure my own art gets exhibited in a certain institution, and that there aren’t consequences if I don’t do one thing or another. What does that dependency look like?
Well, the artist isn’t as free as many people think. There’s that saying, “art is free, the artist is free.” But artists are absolutely in a dependency relationship too, and it can be very strong. If I have gallery representation — and that’s actually why I personally still hold back from that — there are gallery contracts that tie you to certain prices, that sometimes mean you have no contact with the buyer at all. That means I, as the artist, never even get in touch with the person buying my work, which I find a real shame, because I’d really like to know who’s buying my art. The gallery handles all of that. You’re left out, you’re just the one producing the artworks. And then it’s also the case that if the gallery is quite big, they’ll advise you — or, others might put it more bluntly, pressure you — into producing a certain kind of art, a certain motif, over and over again, dozens of times, because it sells well on the market and can keep being sold repeatedly. So you shouldn’t imagine it as me, the artist, being completely free. I still am, for now, because I don’t have that dependency on a gallery yet, since I’ll only commit to one very deliberately. The artist isn’t that free. Hard demands get made — whatever sells is good, and that’s what gets produced.
Yes, great, thank you so much. Then let’s move on — we still have two more levels you’d announced. You said, if I noted this correctly, violence as a social structure. What do you mean by that?
Yes, let me bring in another example here, moving away from representational art, to an artist who’s very well known: Marina Abramović. She did “Rhythm 0,” which was the most horrifying experiment that proved the dark side of humanity, first shown in 1974. Marina Abramović locked herself in a room with 72 different objects — among them flowers, feathers, a gun, knives, scissors — and presented herself as a performance piece in that room, and visitors, as had been publicly announced beforehand, could do whatever they wanted with her. And this experiment failed spectacularly — or, if you want to put it more generously, succeeded spectacularly. It turned out that as the experiment went on, over 22, 24 hours I believe, people became more and more willing to commit violence, to the point where Marina Abramović was actually mistreated during this performance, this experiment. That naturally led to outrage in the art scene, and ultimately people said this experiment was the most horrifying experiment in performance art. And she herself said at the end, if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you. So it was ultimately ended — it probably would have escalated to the extreme otherwise, showing that the darkest side of people, if you simply let it, comes out even in an art experiment like this, a performance.
Yes, really fascinating, and this raises a lot of questions too, ethical aspects that play a role here as well — how far can art actually go, or how far should it be allowed to go, what still counts as art, which is ultimately, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder to begin with, very individual. But choosing this kind of combination, and trying something out in this way, so to speak, with such devastating results, that also makes you think. You said there was an outcry in the art scene around this — how was it ultimately dealt with? What insights came out of that?
There was of course an ethical and moral discussion afterward about what’s still defensible in this kind of performance art, and how far you can even go with it. Of course, with this offer — you can do whatever you want with my body, with me — and by placing various objects there, she essentially let the visitors themselves decide which object to pick up, whether they’d choose a feather or a pair of scissors. Ultimately, how far can you go in this kind of performance art? But art is free and independent, and you’re really allowed to cross every boundary. That was of course an outcry in the art scene, and it was discussed for a long time, how far this kind of performance art is allowed to go.
Yes, absolutely fascinating questions in this context. Okay, let’s see — do you have anything to add here, or should we move on to the next level?
Yes, I’d like to bring in one more example from this spectrum of psychological pressure and violence, or physical violence too. Where do we find physical violence in art? If we think about ballet, there’s a really famous example there too. Maria Tallchief, a Russian-American prima ballerina, wrote her memoirs and described how, especially in her early years as an artist in ballet, she was, I have to say it, physically mistreated. In ballet too, there are extreme situations of pressure — on one hand psychological pressure, psychological violence, but on the other, she had to wear far too tight ballet shoes, forcing her feet into these narrow shoes, which is already physical violence, mistreatment, mutilation of the feet, in order to execute these ideal ballet steps and dances. And so, in very practical terms, we have physical violence in art there too. There have also been reports from the Russian ballet world of ballerinas being starved, or physically punished, in order to master ballet dances. So that’s a really extreme case of physical violence in this area.
Yes, thank you so much, and these are certainly aspects, or areas, that we wouldn’t classically think of right away when we pick up violence in art as a room topic. So I’m really glad and grateful that you’re opening up these different facets for us. And then we still have the aspect of protest art, which you also wanted to bring in. Let’s take a look — what example did you bring for us there?
Yes, protest art has become really spectacular in recent years. We had this protest art from climate activists in 2022 — at the Louvre, a young man threw a cake at the Mona Lisa and smeared it. That naturally went viral, because a lot of visitors were filming with their phones right there in the Louvre and could capture it. This continued, with many climate activists gluing their hands to famous artworks around the world. And here, art is also being used to exert violence — in this case, from the side of the climate activists. The artworks, the museums, are being used to point to a topic. But that’s also a kind of violence too — the artwork gets stripped of its actual intention in that moment, and gets used to point to someone else’s cause instead. Legally, of course, that’s property damage under the criminal code. Fortunately, in that last case with the Mona Lisa, not much actually happened, because there’s a protective glass panel in front of it, so it could ultimately be saved.
Yes, thank you so much. And you’ve brought in criminology, so the legal side of things, from your own world too, your professional world. If we look at this again — I mean, that’s an interesting combination too, given that you’re active in both fields, both art and criminology, so to speak — were you actually aware of this connection before, or how did this play out, or take shape, for you through this room topic we discovered together, so to speak, in opening this up?
Yes, through this topic I’ve really come back to it directly, and realized for myself again that I have genuine expertise in this area. On one hand as a criminologist, an investigator, and on the other as an artist, because I live in both worlds somehow. And I remembered, we were once at a shared event in Cologne too, and I was actually approached by a reporter from Die Welt about exactly this being my specialty. And should the next big art heist happen somewhere, some big golden medallion get stolen somewhere, I’d certainly be the top interview partner in that area, because I can contribute something from both sides.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. We certainly don’t hope for that, but art theft is actually another aspect we can open up here too, right, Michael?
Yes, that’s a really fascinating aspect. I actually have my own podcast too, easy to understand, and there I managed to get a top interview partner — a colleague of mine from Berlin. And he’s going to record several podcast episodes with me, exclusively, about the big art heists in Germany that he led, in terms of investigation. And we’re going to dig really deep into that together.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. So with that, a warm invitation to check out the podcast too, and while we’re at it, maybe I’ll mention briefly — we actually recorded an episode together too, on the topic of art and AI. Maybe you’d like to say a quick word about that, so we can tease it here too.
Yes, we had a really interesting conversation, the two of us, on this topic of art and AI, which is a really hot topic in the art scene right now. Not just ChatGPT, but other possibilities too — NFTs, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence. We dove into that and got a bit closer to the topic together.
Great, wonderful. Would you like to say the name of the podcast again, and where people can find it? Then we’ll have that covered too. And after that I’d like to say something about the hand-raise feature right away. Yes, my podcast, or our podcast, is called “Lecker Kunst — leicht verständlich” (“Art Made Delicious — Easy to Understand”). And there we bring art closer to people, on every level, in every area, using simple words, and we try to make even complicated, overly intellectual topics in the art scene easy to understand. You’ll find everything there, from art meets crime, to expert topics like the one we covered in our episode, all the way to exhibition recommendations.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Let’s use the time now to open up the hand-raise feature and see. I think we’ve really opened up so many different levels on the topic of art and violence today, and I’m really curious — so if you have different impulses, or maybe feel like we’ve left something out, some other level that could be opened up here too, feel free to join in. Or if you have questions or anything like that, this is also a good opportunity to step into an exchange with Michael. I’d be really happy about that. Just a quick reminder again, the room is being recorded the whole time, so if you join, you’re automatically agreeing that this will be published. And we have three small room rules: a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, your first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. If for whatever reason you don’t want that, you of course also have the option to use the chat, to share a thought or a question, so we can pick that up too.
Michael, we’ve touched on various aspects, or levels, now — is there anything you brought with you that we haven’t talked about yet, that you think we should also take a look at?
Yes, at the moment I’d say we’ve looked at this from a range of different angles already. I’m curious whether the listeners might have specific questions, or could raise entirely new aspects — that would interest me now.
Yes, and while we wait, I think it makes sense to look together again at these different aspects. We’ve touched on quite a lot already, and now maybe we can go deeper on one point or another. So feel free to join in, step into the exchange — maybe you can give us a hint too. Is there, for example, a level where you’d say, that’s something we’d like to look at more closely together, or does a question come up out of one of these different levels that you’d like to bring in, or step in to discuss? Were you even aware that under this room topic, so many different areas could be opened up around the subject of violence in art? I’d be really happy to hear a few more thoughts or aspects from you all, just to get a sense of whether this was something you’d been aware of, or how it feels for you now, hearing all these different levels. So please feel free to join in, step into the exchange.
Michael, you’re out and about a fair amount with your art too — a lot happens there. I already mentioned this a bit in the introduction, independent of violence in art now — we’re at this aspect of tape art. Maybe you’d like to say a bit about that. And is there a connection to the topic of violence there, or is that a completely different area?
Tape art is its own art movement, which I came across in 2018 when I got back into art. There, you work with gaffer tape, so-called tape bands, which come in all colors, with adhesive foils — a really fascinating art movement, quite strong in Berlin especially. I’m sort of the counterpart in the Ruhr area and Münsterland, where there are hardly any tape artists, and I managed to win a prize in Berlin at the German Historical Museum with a piece about Hannah Arendt, the Jewish publicist, which is a pure tape artwork. From the tape art scene, I’m not aware of violence being a topic there at all. The scene is very open, happy about everyone who joins and helps carry this art form further. So that topic isn’t really present there for me.
Okay, thank you so much. But it’s definitely worth taking another look there too. I already shared the link to Michael’s page, so please use the opportunity, even after the room, to get in touch with Michael, check out his page, and especially dig deeper into one podcast episode or another with different points of view. It’s definitely worth it, it’s fascinating, and especially for those of us who aren’t classically active in the art world, it’s a fascinating world worth discovering, I think.
Sabine, a very warm good morning, glad you’re here with us. What’s the thought or question you brought along?
I have a question that connects a bit to yesterday’s topic, sport and violence. In sports, it’s often the case that young people get pulled out of their families and sent to boarding schools, and get really drilled there, essentially subjected to psychological violence, so they can reach their goal in the end. Now you just said, with art, the gallery owner can drill you pretty hard too, because if the artist doesn’t sell, they’re kind of powerless if they stay with that gallery owner. So I wanted to ask — is that already the case with younger people too? Are there art academies out there that already drill children relatively early? That would interest me.
Yes, if I can jump right in on that — a really, really interesting question, I think. With gallery owners, I’ve already mentioned the psychological pressure, if you want to call it that, or those acting in an advisory role, that’s how it’s phrased nicely, who push you around and tell you what you have to paint. At art academies, it’s the case that everything gets taught there in a purely technical sense — how you’re supposed to paint, what you’re supposed to paint. And there, especially the young students orient themselves around their professor, their master, who teaches them all of this, and they start to resemble him. So the style he represents, the students — disciples, I’ll call them — sometimes adopt that too. And then there are master students, who are something really special. But what doesn’t get taught, and only comes up as a side note, is marketing. Marketing in this field simply isn’t taught at all. And then these young art students get released into the market, and they’re in a shark tank. They’re in a shark tank, and have no idea — I was a master student at such-and-such university, and now no one’s buying my work — and at my own academy, I’ve had master students who were living on welfare and couldn’t sell their pieces.
Sabine, does that answer your question, or would you like to follow up?
That was about the older ones — they go to art academy after finishing high school. I actually wanted to ask if this happens earlier too. So, does an artistic development already happen with 14, 15-year-olds?
Yes, that’s a topic. There are very, very few examples in the international art scene — I think there’s an eleven-, twelve-, thirteen-year-old right now who’s getting really hyped, though there’s a lot of PR marketing behind that too. There are very few really young artists active internationally. I don’t know of a case where really young up-and-coming artists get drilled in the way it apparently happens in ballet, for example. That’s not something I’m aware of. It probably also depends a lot on the individual art school — who teaches there, what standards they hold their students to, what kind of personality that is, and what guiding themes the art school has, the one I might send my child to, and what their approach is. How do they treat individual personalities? Do they give room, do they let the child develop freely and just guide them lightly? That’s a topic that affects us everywhere, in school, in kindergarten — how much freedom does a child have to develop on their own?
Yes, maybe an interesting question in this context, for those of you who haven’t had much insight into this before, is how an artist’s career actually develops from nothing, so to speak. Take sport, for example — we had the topic power and sport yesterday, and there it’s often the case, as we hear a lot, with clubs and so on, that children start training quite intensively from a fairly young age, playing for different clubs, then in different leagues, and slowly working their way up, and this training happens partly alongside school, but is already very, very intensive. And we discussed yesterday too that it makes a difference whether that comes, in quotation marks, from the child’s own free will, or whether it’s being drilled from outside. How does that look in classical art? I mean, well, art is of course a broad term to begin with, but how does it work in classical art? How should we picture that? When does classical artistic training actually begin? Is that only after school? It must start relatively early somewhere too, right?
Yes, it’s the case that art is tied to a gift somewhere, or talent. That means, at some point, at a young age — for me it was around six, seven, eight — you notice you have some kind of drawing talent, that you have a gift. And in my case, my father sat down with me specifically, and started fostering that gift, by drawing simple caricatures with me, simple things. And that grew from there. It came out of enjoyment and pleasure, the drive was intrinsic — it came from inside me. I felt like filling a blank sheet of paper with drawings. I wanted to draw comic characters. Later I wanted to draw with charcoal, later with oil, with acrylic. And that’s the best thing that can happen to a young talent — when it comes intrinsically, from within, whether that’s for a sport, art, or another field. In art, we don’t have hard facts. In sport, maybe it’s more like, if I run the 100 meters in 9.6 seconds, that’s a hard fact, and I can work on that, and train my body up. That creates pressure, that creates measurable numbers. In art, there’s a lot of creativity involved — I can learn the technical side, painting with oil, with acrylic, with chalk or charcoal, but I don’t have those hard factors where I can say, this line has to run exactly like this. Eventually, sure, standards get set, and maybe comparisons get made, but the comparison always falls short. Comparison also makes you unhappy, we all know that. So the best thing that can happen to a young talent is that, for years, they get to do this playfully first, and then get trained and refined by a master, or at an art school, and get to develop freely.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And an art school like that, do you attend that alongside regular school, in quotation marks, or are there actually art schools where you get a regular school education alongside it too? I’d be curious about that too, especially how that works in Germany, for example — what possibilities or alternatives exist for really diving deeper into this.
Yes, if I notice a child who really has talent, who’s creative, who can maybe really draw, better than their peers, there are various options. In whatever environment you live in, there are art associations, which you can easily google, reach out to, talk to, ask whether they take on younger children or teenagers to further nurture their art. Then there are art schools too, where, after regular classes, similar to a club, you get further trained in your skills, get your creativity fostered. There are even certain high schools I know of that have art as their focus subject, where art classes are held as a specialty, and you get further support there. All the way up to eventually studying art formally — that’s clear, you can start that, and then you’d go to a university or school where art gets fostered and taught in every area.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and especially with the aspect we touched on yesterday, I find this really fascinating, because this clearly plays out somewhat differently than, say, in the world of sport. And we established yesterday that sport, especially certain sports, is tied up with monetization somehow. And in that context, we now actually have a really interesting point in the chat that I’d like to bring in as another point here: “As someone living off their art, it’s also really difficult to monetize your work. Unemployment support only helps for a limited time and tries to categorize my art as a hobby. That takes a lot of creativity too, and it drains the energy you need for the actual art itself, which is also very energy-intensive.” Does that maybe have something to do with how art gets labeled, or categorized, in society, Michael — that it’s clearly treated differently here than other topics?
Art is always seen as floating free — there’s always that saying, art is free and independent, the free artist. But you’re not always that free in art either. Even in the Middle Ages there were commissioned works — Leonardo da Vinci worked on commission too. And a lot of things just get dismissed as hobby art, or, that’s not real art. It gets judged by hard facts — what price ranges does the artist sell in, where have they exhibited, what can they show, which exhibitions. That’s what people latch onto sometimes. And the art world, shaped academically, can be really arrogant too. And sometimes self-taught artists — and we actually did a really interesting podcast episode about this too — just don’t get let into the art market at all. But art history also has some incredible self-taught artists, like Jean-Michel Basquiat, or partly Van Gogh, who didn’t properly learn art at any university and are still outstanding artists.
Yes, thank you so much, Sabine. I saw you wanted to follow up again, and then we can bring Jürgen in too, before we move into today’s closing round. Sabine.
Yes, really interesting, Michael. Maybe one more question, more toward the visionary side of things — how do you see art in connection with NFTs? Does that have a real chance, or is it more like, I drive a Porsche tomorrow, I hang an NFT on my keychain the day after? I’d be curious about your opinion on that.
Yes, very gladly — a really specific question, but you’re at exactly the right address with me, because I’ve looked into this too. NFT art really took off through Beeple. Beeple made a piece that was then generated as an NFT, digital art. Although you have to know — Beeple took a photo every single day for over 20 years, and out of that came a combined artwork, which was then generated as an NFT. Behind that is blockchain technology, which is really, really interesting. But NFT buyers are a special kind of buyer — not necessarily art connoisseurs or art lovers, even if that might upset some people to hear — they’re more like collectors, the way people collect Yu-Gi-Oh cards, that’s how they collect NFTs, a really distinct world of its own. But blockchain technology, combined with NFTs and real art, does have a future too, I think. You can digitally reproduce, give digital stamps of authenticity. The traceability is there — when did this artwork sell, on which path, for how much. That’s worth a lot more, this blockchain technology behind it. Because then I can trace — this artwork has passed through four different hands. The last dealer sold it for 5,000 euros, and now they’re asking 12,000 euros. So I can critically ask, why this 7,000-euro increase in value? Really fascinating. Thank you so much.
Yes, then let’s bring Jürgen in as the last one, and see what thought or question you’ve brought along, dear Jürgen?
Good morning, everyone. Since we’re running a bit short on time, I’ll keep it brief, and I’ll direct this to you, Michael, regarding three connections I’d like to draw. First, your bipolarity as an investigator and as an artist. Second, the range of expressive art forms you’ve already touched on, from performance to ballet to visual art. And third, our topic today, the connection between art and violence. My question to you: from your experience, from both sides of your experience, do you see any particular form of artistic expression that’s especially predestined either to reflect violence to the viewer, the listener, or the participant in a performance, or, on the other hand, a school of art that produces violence from within itself, from its own workings? Do you have a specific point you can name for that question? Thank you.
A really interesting question, not easy to answer. Looking across the broad spectrum of art, I don’t see one particular form that I’d say is number one for depicting violence, whether that’s visual art or representational art. I could just as easily convey the depiction of violence, or trigger reflection on it, to a viewer through a performance. Beyond that, I honestly can’t answer the second part of your question right now — I’d have to think about that longer. Feel free to reach out to me by email, and I’d be happy to dig deeper into that with you. But what I did want to say, before we wrap up the round — I really enjoyed this a lot. At the end, once I’d engaged more closely with the topic, I gathered my thoughts once more, and I’d like to quote them briefly here, because I arrived at two points about how art and violence present themselves to me. Violence runs through every layer of society, and just as art touches us in various areas, violence is always connected to it in the same way. Art and violence can never be separated. Violence is a dark side of humanity, and art is created by humans — so human violence always accompanies us in art too.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. I find it really lovely to let that insight of yours, arrived at through reflection, through preparing for this room today, stand as our closing word, so to speak — to just let that sink in. Today’s episode will be available for you in the podcast too, with a bit of delay, so feel free to listen back to it, let one thing or another sink in again. I think we’ve really brought together a lot of diverse aspects today, and especially aspects that we probably wouldn’t immediately and automatically think of when we hear the room topic violence in art. So thank you so much, dear Michael, for taking the time to open up these different levels for us, and to make the variety and the facets of this so clear for us. I found the exchange really exciting, and I’m glad we’ll stay in touch. Maybe we’ll have another opportunity somewhere down the line to pick up the general topic of art again, under one of our other overarching themes, wherever it fits well. I think we’ve touched on a lot of topics today, especially in the context of violence. But art is of course a very, very broad term, and I think there’s so much more to discover here. And for me personally, it was a lot of fun getting insights into a world I’m not classically active in. So thank you so much for these valuable impulses. Would you like to say a final word too? How can our listeners get in touch with you? How was today for you, and what’s next for you?
Yes, very briefly — it was a huge amount of fun for me to connect with you all today and discuss this. You can reach me at info@mino-art.de — really, write to me, I answer every question, or at least try to. And for me, next up, once I’m back from vacation, is an exhibition in Dortmund, then preparing works for a big exhibition at ArtMUC in Munich with over 10,000 fair visitors. 2024 isn’t fully planned yet, but Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg are probably on the agenda too. And wherever you keep in touch, you’ll see me or hear from me. Thank you all so much, it was a huge amount of fun, happy to do this again on this topic anytime — I have two areas of expertise, the investigative side and the art side. Always happy to join again.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. That was Michael Nolte, joining us as our guest for “Violence in Art” in this expert talk. And tomorrow we continue with the room topic “Physical Violence Beyond the Obvious” — in which cases and contexts does physical violence often go unnoticed? That’s the question we want to explore tomorrow at 8am here in the Deep Talk again. So you’re all very warmly invited to join us tomorrow. And I’m really curious to see which direction our reflection will take, and what insights we can develop together out of this room. So, until tomorrow at 8am — take care.
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