"It will be beautiful, it will be beautiful," is the stubbornly repeated, vague incantation of Roger Buergel, artistic director of the forthcoming Documenta 12, scheduled to open in June 2007. --from Artnet, June 2006I knew I wouldn't be able to visit Documenta early on, as I might assume many of my colleagues would have, given the propensity of the international art world to show up at opening celebrations, tempted by the sure knowledge, I suppose, that they'd run into dozens and dozens
of their colleagues and be able to chat, unimpeded by the crowds of ordinary art tourists that can clog the works at other times, so I steadfastly blanked out all references, news stories, and opinions about it. The catalogue sat on my desk for a month with its plastic wrapper intact. I returned from Documenta depressed and exhausted, and sat at my computer now doing the research most would have done prior to attending such an event. I didn't type into Google “Documenta exhausted depressed” but one of the first things that came up at the search "Documenta 12" was an article by Richard Dorment of the Telegraph (UK) returning from the show in June "exhausted and depressed" to write about his desperate search for "signs of artistic talent at the 12th 'Documenta' show in Kassel, Germany" under the headline "The Worst Art Show Ever."
encounter a few moments earlier, you know, one of those feisty-little-dog-goes-after-the big-furry-thing affairs. To my left lay yet another of the ubiquitous coat-check trailers, which attempted to give the idea that the art on view was being showcased as one might find at a museum, where umbrellas, backpacks, and big coats are not allowed. (I started thinking if I were an artist, I would have done a piece about the ritual of checking bags at each hall, as leaving a bag at one and coming back for it would have taxed the ambulatory ability of the most hardy Nordic walker, that common feature of the German landscape.) 
And straight ahead, the dark and dreary Aue-Pavilion. I was perplexed how a temporary building made of translucent plastic and clear poly-carbonate could manage to be dark and dreary inside, but somehow this was pulled off, and by exhibition organizers who claimed what they were after, really, is beauty. In an exhausted reverie, as I waited, I saw the expansive lawn emptied of the pavilion and found in, in my imagination, much, much more beauty. Later, in my research, I learned Ai Weiwei had gone with the flow: Template, a sculpture of old doors, salvaged from Chinese buildings that were demolished to make way for new development “is really made for indoors; it was not prepared for the German weather and wind,'' Ai was quoted on the Bloomberg report. So it collapsed after six days, and he let it be.
Thus I realized my German weather experience — it rained each and every day of the six days I was in Germany, whether north or central — was hardly unique to an artist visiting from China in June. Apparently it has rained in Germany all summer long. I have to say the storm clouds over the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe were very beautiful, if one could block from view the abomination of Allan Sekula’s blatant and very tiresome billboard work Shipwreck and Workers marching up the hill.
My companion for my first day in Kassel was a psychoanalyst of very recent acquaintance, whose amateur study of the visual arts probably far surpasses most undergraduate art school offerings in this day of art not for art’s sake, but of conceptual hairsplitting and social efficacy. She kept asking me, “where’s the very contemporary art?” as she had very much wanted to see some. I felt bad, even though I shouldn’t have. I had nothing to do with organizing Documenta, but felt I needed to answer for the effort by dint of my own professional standing. “Ah,” I said, tentatively, “perhaps at another hall…?” But by this time we had discovered in the halls we had visited a jumble of works, many from the 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, none of which offered any visual qualities (as distinct from quality, a concept which I would not be so rash as to invoke) whatsoever. But what would one expect. Many of the works on view were not by visual artists. Choreographers, videographers, ethnographers, chefs, graphic designers, photo-journalists, far outweighed any actual painters or sculptors. I found myself engaged in another of many of my thought-experiments. How much richer would it be to attend a performance of Trisha Brown’s work (which seemed to be everywhere), or a slide-lecture about the political action group Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia than encountering them awkwardly in a setting that cannot enable their fullest discourse? Of course I kept such thoughts to myself, because Marcel Duchamp taught us the art context can be evoked at will to contextualize anything and Joseph Beuys taught us that the invoked art context was a magic potent that could change anything into art.
Later, when my companion did find some more recent contemporary art, such as the huge Cosima von Bonin Relax, it’s only a ghost in the Documenta-Halle, it perplexed her in that one of the white wooden platforms featured two pairs of blue jeans, left, perhaps, as if the wearers had been ordered to “drop trow” by the authorities. Perhaps the text in my now-opened catalogue would have been helpful: “Over the hedge.
After a nigh-on endless hibernation Cosima von Bonin returns; the thing is, she is only a ghost. Please relax. She is waving at us from the other bank, from a pirate island in the Caribbean. She is waving at us poor landlubbers, who are stranded forever.” Damn, and for a moment there I’d thought it was Captain Jack Sparrow who inhabited that pirate island in the Caribbean. I should have known better than be led astray by that philistine parvenu Walt Disney. But of course, what wasn’t apparent to my companion is that “Von Bonin's approach is often collaborative; she has organized numerous events with fellow artists, musicians and theorists, stretching the definition of an artist by assuming the role of curator, critic, DJ and producer,” a text I found on the Tate’s website. There goes that art-context magic again.
A big effort of Documenta 12 seemed to be “education,” making me nervous that the Europeans are now adapting the American-style notion
of art as efficacy; that is, a return to the late-19th century ideas of art as social uplift for the brawling masses, which was accomplished, of course, by building temples for the display of art and filling them with, in my home town’s case, luminous Impressionist masterpieces. I looked around for signs of erstwhile artists organizing the youth who tag seemingly every overpass and viaduct in Germany with American-style graffiti into mural-brigades, but in one small moment of exultation, found none. My own son, who seems the right age to be educated about art or anything else, was completely immune to everything Documenta had to offer, save a video of a young, large-pawed tiger
chomping a big stuffed snake, which he watched while a faint smile shaped his face, most likely a result of fond memories of playing with his young, large-pawed dog. He speaks German, so the many discussions-knots of people sitting on Ai Weiwei’s ubiquitous wooden chairs or the many talks before various works could have beckoned, but he remained strangely immune to these fonts of information as well, leading me to believe the entire thing had, rather than opening up his youthful curiosity, caused him to close down at the frustration of finding anything to focus upon. This theory was supported the next day by his intense interest in viewing the Jacob Jordaens, Jan Brueghel, Franz Hals, and Rembrandts at the Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel. It wasn’t that he doesn’t like art, he just hadn’t found any to look at at the Fridericianum. 
When I returned to Chicago, I learned the storms here were ever so much more dramatic than the drenching downpours of Kassel, judging from the many photos I found posted
on local TV stations’ websites, and felt a deep sense of sorrow that I hadn’t been home to witness them. I would
have seen and felt things I hadn’t seen or felt before, and experienced my community focused collectively on the drama and uncertainty of life, unlike my wet, wan sojourn at Documenta. But I must say there was a silver lining to the clouds I missed darkening Chicago’s skyline; I cannot tell you how happy I felt at the thought I was unlikely to run into yet another Charlotte Posenenske heating duct piece now that I was safely back home. More later,
Lynne.