When Attitudes Become Form

Alighiero Boetti with installations in the original 1969 Bern show. Shunk Kender/Roy Lichtenstein Foundation

Holland Cotter reports from Venice in the New York Times on the Prada Foundation’s remake of a seminal 1969 exhibition. He writes:

The original version, which took place in Bern, Switzerland, has a near-mythical reputation as a late-20th-century landmark. It brought together some of the most adventurous young European and American avant-gardists of the day, exponents of post-Pop, post-Minimalist, supposedly anti-market trends like Conceptual and Process art. It presented them at a high moment of political and cultural turmoil internationally, and in what has been perceived as a radically loosened-up exhibition format, with art created communally, spontaneously, on the spot.

. . .

Puzzlement was understandable. The work, by almost 70 artists, jammed into two floors and a nearby annex, wasn’t quite sculpture and certainly wasn’t painting. Its mediums included ice, fire, broken glass, lead, leather, felt, fluorescent tubing, peas, charcoal and margarine. Ropes snaked through rooms; electric wires wound down a staircase. Nothing was framed or on pedestals or behind stanchions, and visitors trampled on work, though it was hard to tell where the art ended and the damage began.

Some damage was art. A piece by the American “earth artist” Michael Heizer consisted of craters punched with a wrecking ball into the pavement outside the museum. While popular reaction over all ranged from grumpiness to hilarity, officialdom took a more serious view. Certain kunsthalle staff members were so outraged that they effectively forced the resignation of the institution’s director, Harald Szeemann, who was also the exhibition’s curator.

Too late. Word had spread through the art world. The show—its full title was “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form: Works, Concepts, Processes, Situations, Information”—was instant history, a radical moment.

The show is on view until November 3.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 at 8:00 am. It is filed under Creative Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.