No Laughing Matter Barry Schwabsky
In looking at two groups of work by one artist, with a gap of some three decades between them, one could start by taking note of the differences, the changes across the years, or by considering the continuities in the oeuvre. In the case of Werner Büttner, there have been some very evident developments since the 1980s, when he became prominent as part of a new generation of German painters. Since then, his palette has lightened and brightened, for instance, and (almost against his will, as he distrusts anything facile or ingratiating in art) his brush has become more fluent. But to my eye, what’s most striking is how consistent Büttner has remained in his attitude – in what might be called the purpose of his art. So what I am about to say goes, unless I am mistaken, for all of Büttner’s work, early and recent. It’s a remarkable peculiarity that, until his first show with Marlborough in London in 2015, Büttner had been practically invisible across the anglophone world since 1990, when he had exhibited with the Kerlin Gallery in Belfast. During the preceding decade he had held two solo exhibitions in New York and participated in several touring exhibitions in the United States, as well as in an important group show in London. So why have the English-speaking peoples – in Winston Churchill’s phrase – looked away from Büttner’s work for so long? I can’t help wondering whether cultural misconceptions might not be part of the reason. One stereotype among both the British and the Americans is the belief that Germans lack humour – or anyway that German humour is not funny. A 2011 headline in The Daily Telegraph “officially” declared Germany “the world’s least funny country”1; “Being German is no laughing matter,” The Economist told its readers five years later, assuring them that “It may be clichéd but it’s also true: Germans have no sense of humour.”2 Well, here’s something funny: when I look at Büttner’s paintings, one of the things I appreciate about them is their humour – but I don’t laugh. Maybe some people don’t recognize that kind of humour as humour. It confuses them. What do you do with humour that isn’t funny – that takes you, in fact, to some of the dark places in human