The world of ghosts of the world of commodities
Peter Weibel
Exhibition „Leibstandarte Realität“, Bernhard Wolf, Neue Galerie Graz, 2000

As evidenced by his poster projects since 1993, Bernhard Wolf has for many years been dealing with a certain category of public signs which we may refer to as icons of advertising. In his graphical treatment of the mascots which constitute the myths of everyday life he unmasks ideological and communicative strategies not only of the world of commodities, but also of politics as commonplaces. This series of twenty-seven motifs in the same format (110×85 cm) and technique (acrylic on canvas) is the visual extraction of those standardised figures into which political allegories degenerate in the mass media age. These characters of public life, familiar to many from childhood on, from Helmi (road safety mascot) to Sparefroh (“thrifty” mascot of the Erste Bank) and Amanda Klachl (newspaper cartoon figure), do not correspond to real people, but rather exist only virtually, although their ideological function is real. In computer lingo we would call them avatars of public consciousness.
After the three classical sign categories, the icon, index and symbol, today sees the reign of a new class of sign which relates to the world of commodities – logos. As we know, the index is a mode in which the sign is physically connected to the object to which it refers, e.g. smoke is a sign of fire. In the iconic mode, there is a visual similarity between the sign and the object. In the symbolic mode, the relationship between signs and what they signify is arbitrary, such that the meaning may only be established by means of social conventions and coding. The semantic relationship between the logo and its commodity is created by coded arbitrariness. A logo can impress any meaning on an object, e.g. a cigarette may stand for freedom. The standardised coding of the industrial production of meaning which prevails in the world of commodities owes its success above all to that soft continuum of infantile role models such as the Haribo goldbear or the political role model such as Herr Strudl in the Kronen-Zeitung newspaper. The norms and codes of a standardised reality which is under the dictates of a ruling class are constructed above all by these seemingly soft signs. The foundations for this amalgamation of media, politics and the world of commodities which adults can no longer keep apart and unchain are laid in our early-childhood habituation to the world of commodities as the real world, which is the explicit aim of this anthropomorphisation of commodities and their ideological functions.

Thrift is anthropomorphised as the little Sparefroh man, just as one company’s products are anthropomorphised as the Michelin Man. Cleanliness is anthropomorphised as Mr. Clean, just as another company’s product is by the Cosy Tiger. Toilet paper, household cleaner, and human traits are all forced into line, put to the service of consumption. That is the purpose of anthropomorphising commodities: to give the commodity itself the human character which it lacks. Marx referred to this as commodity fetishism. The little Maresi girl and the Bic man are therefore fetishes. They give the appearance of being friendly, nice, welcoming and optimistic. In reality, they bewitch our minds and make us slaves of the world of commodities. The visual icons of everyday life which Wolf serves up to us are the soft chains with which politicians and the consumer industry seek to chain us to the reality which they construct.
Unlike American pop art, that affirmatively aestheticises the signs of the world of commodities and thus celebrates consumption, Wolf follows a critical tradition of European pop art that asks of logo culture the classical question “What makes it so appealing?”, thus analysing and criticising consumer culture. Wolf shows us the ghosts of the world of commodities, the logos which colonise the human body as an occupying power today, from underpants to coats, from shoes to soup cans (Campbell). Although they seem to come over as friendly, the popular figures which marry human traits with the characteristic of commodities, this is in fact what makes them so dangerous, amounting in reality to an “unfriendly take-over” of the human being by the world of commodities. Wolf shows us the horror which lies hidden behind the infantile sign systems of consumer culture, thus revealing the infantilism of consumer culture, “infantile society” (Elfriede Jelinek).

Peter Weibel, director of ZKM / Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe