Endre Tót (b. 1937, Hungary)
Nachtbesuch in einem Museum, 2004

Ludwig, Cologne, Germany / Visited 22/01/2020

“Night visit to a museum” is built on on artworld references alone. This relates directly to some of my works – like e.g. Collaboration series – that use artworks by others artists as artistic material in order to explore relationship between the artwork and the audience, institutional writing of art history etc. There is also a very superficial title-based relation to my video piece “Night at the museum”.

There are a lot of witty and thought-provoking things going on here. By hiding the formal properties of the paintings (apart from their proportions) “in the darkness of the night” Tót highlights the classificatory structures of art museums. This also relates to my lecture-performance “Procreative strategies in Australian art circuit” tracing connections between most recurrent names in the collections of Australian national galleries.

By listing just names and titles Tót also creates resonance with my annoyance with excessive popular attention to artistic brand names over the actual qualities of the artworks.