Böttcher’s painting was not wanted in the GDR, but in his films he always shows people in contact with art, as visitors at a museum or as artists at work in their studios. When in the Sixties the government coined the motto: “Comrade, take pen in hand!”, Böttcher was curator of a small circle of workmen painters. Ralf Winkler who was expelled from the GDR in 1980 and later became famous in the West under the name A.R. Penck, was his student. In the triptych Verwandlungen -Potters Stier, Venus nach Giorgione and Frau am Klavichord– Böttcher the filmmaker is closest to Strawalde the painter. With no studio, in his apartment he is only able to paint small formats. He thus takes “an art postcard”, a famous subject, and using it as the melody he begins to paraphrase it, to create counterpoints with his brush through art history and styles, playing with shape and color around his subject and passing over his subject. The eye is enthusiastic.”

Wolf Kypke, Aus dem Blickwinkel eines Banausen

In February 1984, Böttcher and Plenert filmed the “X Brigade of the Ablaufberg collective” where, during a foggy, snowy, icy night, the railwaymen at the Dresden station Friedrichstadttake take trains apart and put them back together by moving thousands of cars. When interviews became popular in GDR documentaries as well, Böttcher showed his Signalmen in silence. A great deal of concentration is required to watch and listen carefully, and this keeps them from talking very much. The officials became suspicious once again: “The ‘working class without words’ – and thus Böttcher had done it again.” Above and beyond the hopes of the “First German State for Laborers and Farmers”, Böttcher sided with his heroes. To perceive the movements, movements of those heavy cars that move independently, to recognize the right moment and know how to react with one’s own body: the work of he who is shown becomes the work of he who wants to show.

Enno Patalas