Archiving Myth and Memory: Jackie Valle on Carl Heidenreich

CARL HEIDENREICH, UNTITLED, C. 1958–65. MIXED MEDIA ON JAPANESE PAPER AND HARDBOARD. N.D. COLLECTION OF PATRICIA RECENDEZ. COURTESY OF THE CARL HEIDENREICH FOUNDATION.

Painter Carl Heidenreich (1901–1965) was driven into exile in 1933 under the historical confluence of fascist seizures of power, wartime conflict, and multiple instances of incarceration. In a life marked by varying forms of sociopolitical horror — Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, Nazi-occupied France, and the United States at the dawn of the nuclear age — Heidenreich bore witness to the expansion of what Achille Mbembe identifies as the state’s necropolitical structures and strategies of power.

The following essay by Jackie Valle considers a selected series of rarely exhibited paintings made by Heidenreich in the early 1960s, following his arrival in New York alongside refugee-émigrés Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher.

Valle’s essay is excerpted from Carl/Karl: Three Takes on Heidenreich, a scholarly publication by the Carl Heidenreich Foundation, edited by Christopher Squier. Carl/Karl offers perspectives on the role of exile and migration, anti-fascism and communist politics, and the avisual senses to aid in recuperating Heidenreich’s unique work for the present. It includes contributions by Hannah Arendt, Kathryn Barulich, Alla Efimova, Rachel Schreiber, Monica Smith, Christopher Squier, Jackie Valle, and Anne Wagner. Carl/Karl is available through Amazon.

Read the essay at the link below:

“Ma(r)king Myth, Imagining Nowhere: A German Exile's Alaskan Archive” by Jackie Valle

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