A Real-Time Social System.

That is, in-part, the title of an artwork created by Hans Haacke.

Utilising maps, photographs of buildings, documentation both of the properties and myriad intermediary shell corporations that owned them. It documents the reach of the real estate partnership of Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo, as of 1971.

This reach covered everything from the highest to the lowest end property, it was so extensive as to be the largest non-institutional real estate portfolio in Manhattan.

Their reputation as landlords was a low as their portfolios reach was broad. They hired heavies to intimidate tenants, enlisted firms with mafia connections to quash strikes, and were charged with serious building code violations that had resulted in fatalities.

Haacke created this work of documentation turned art alongside similar investigative pieces, they became conceptual portraits of the cities hidden faces. With these Haacke sought to visualise the extent to which the cities property market, and therefore a key part of the societal fabric, was dominated by a limited number of individuals and the outsized influence it gave them.

When it was due for exhibition The work was called “an alien substance” by Messer, the Guggenheim’s then director. He cancelled its exhibition and fired the curator responsible for it, sparking protests and outcries of censorship.

So why does this matter today? Aside from being an interesting work with incredible substance born out of the research that shaped it, it highlights how art need not remove itself from the cold strength of data and facts. Against all the power Bacons emotive paintings may shape, for the abstracted impact of Moores sculpture, these reams of data and documentation hold their own.

They demystify art, laying bare the bones of inspiration and demonstrating the mechanical structure that moves the emotive brush strokes in other works. It doesn’t rely on the audience to “get it”, it paints a monolithic and intimidating portrait without the pitfalls of uncontrolled and varied individual interpretations.

It is a crucial lesson in not separating art from other schools of work, in pushing beyond your areas of knowledge to better speak truth to power in your art.

And we need that now more than ever. There are reams of data and documents circulating right now which demand we elevate them and their horrific truth, less they hide in their own masse, disguised as nothing more than text on a page.