II y a 40 ans (luand les attitudes deviennent forme

281 artpress 361
anniversaire
IIy a 40 ans
(luand les attitudes
deviennent forme
En mars 1969, Harald Szeemann
invita Marline Belilos en tant que
responsable des 6missions artistiques pour la T6l6vision suisse romande h assister h [a mise en
place de I'exposition Quandles attitudes deviennent forme et a rencontrer les artistes. Le DVD joint h
ce num6ro d'art press contient le
reportage r6alise h cette occasion
et une longue interview de Szeemann sur le parcours qui I'amena
h cette exposition mythique.
Szeemann souriait quand il parlait
de la grande exposition qu'il organisa en mars 1969 ý la Kunsthalle de
Berne, Quand les attitudes deviennent forme. o C'est quand j'ai vu
P'artiste Jan Dibbets arroser du gazon sur une table que P'id6e m'est
venue de savoir s'il y avait d'autres
artistes accomplissant les m6mes
gestes. J'aientrepris alors de visiter
les ateliers. ))
Szeemann. Extrait du film
'(
Version romanc6e, peut-6tre, du d6but d'une formidable aventure, interpr6t6e comme la plus grande provocation 1I'entr6e des ann6es 1970 en
Suisse. Apocalypse ou revolution
copemicienne ?, titrbrent les journaux, qui ne firent pas dans 1'entredeux. La fonction de I'art devint l'objet de tous les d6bats. a Notre 6poque cherche 6 faire de I'art avec le
r661 lui-m6me et non i l'objectiver ),
se plaignait Jean-Luc Daval dans le
Journal de Gen&ve. a Que sont
devenus les emplAtres de margarine
de Joseph Beuys ? Ont-ils fini sur
des tartines ou dans la fosse aux
ours ? a, s'interrogeait Andre Kuenzi,
dans la Gazette de Lausanne.
Szeemann se frottait les mains. II
avait, selon sa propre expression, refuse d'Otre le (( gardien d'un cimeti6re a, entendez d'une Kunsthalle
endormie, et cette exposition plus
que toute autre representait un
enjeu majeur. II attendait que la culture des hippies et des beatniks soit
enfin presente dans I'art, mais a non
par un retour au tachisme a, pas par
le produit d'un geste sur une toile.
( II existe une telle culture de l'objet
que lon s'exprime en objet. De cela
sont n6s le land art et P'artconceptuel
Quand les attitudes deviennent torme
,.
In March 1969 Harald Szeemann
invited Marlene Belilos, in her
capacity as head of Suisse Romande TV's cultural broadcasting,
to attend the hanging of the exhibition Quand les attitudes deviennent forme (When Attitudes
Become Form) and meet the artists. The DVD accompanying this
issue of art press contains the
reportage done on that occasion
and a long interview with Szeemann about the path that led to
that legendary show.
Szeemann smiles when he talks
about the big exhibition he organized at the Bern Kunsthalle. "It
was when I saw the artist Jan Dibbets watering some grass on a
table that I began to wonder if
there were other artists doing
things like that. So I started
visiting studios."
A slightly fictionalized version,
perhaps, of the start of a great adventure, considered the biggest
provocation to hit the Swiss art
world in the early 1970s. "Apocalypse or Copernican Revo-
Excerpt trom the film about the exhibition
lution?," headlines asked, without
considering anything in between.
Debate raged around the function
of art. "Our era seeks to make art
from reality itself and not to objectivize it," complained Jean-Luc
Daval in the Journal de Gen&ve.
"Whatever happened to Joseph
Beuys's margarine plasters? Did
they end up on toast or in the bear
pit?" asked Andre Kuenzi in the
Gazette de Lausanne. (The bear
pit is a Bern tourist attraction.)
Szeemann rubbed his hands. He
had "refused to be a cemetery
caretaker," as he put it, in charge
of a dormant Kunsthalle, and this
show in particular represented a
major gamble. He wanted Beatnik
and hippie culture to make its way
into art, "but not by a come-back
for tachism," nor as the product of
gestural brushwork on canvas.
"There a kind of culture of the
object expressed in object form.
That's what gave rise to Land Art
and Conceptual Art, in which the
process of making art is art in and
of itself. The emphasis is on the
act." The artists he invited to
artpress 301
29
40 years on
selon lequel la mani6re de produire
est d6je xeuvre d'art, c'est I'id6e de
la priorit6 du geste. ;ll invita Joseph
Beuys, Michael Heizer, Lawrence
Weiner, Richard Artschwager, Alain
Jacquet, Walter De Maria, et tant
d'autres.
La Kunsthalle devint le lieu de toutes
les contestations. Deux jeunes Suisses se sentirent autorises 6 bruler
leur paquetage militaire, des citoyens d6pos6rent du fumier pour
masquer les trous que Michael Heizer avait creus6s dans le trottoir
devant la Kunsthalle. Chain Link de
Rafael Ferrer, ceuvre situee en exterieur, fut pi6tin6e. L'ambassade
russe estima qu'il fallait y voir une
preuve de la decadence bourgeoise
et attribua a Philip Morris, m6cene
de 1'exposition, des desseins mercantiles.
La critique la plus avancee accordait
certes a I'art la possibilitb de representer la r6alit6 de fagon fantaisiste,
mais il devait tout de m6me r6pondre a des crit6res esth6tiques ! Et
toucher 6 la propriet6 en Suisse 6tait
un crime ! De plus, dans son propre
camp, certains artistes estimbrent
que Szeemann s'attribuait un r6le de
super artiste.
Aujourd'hui, Maria Eichhorn, une
des artistes invit6es pour 1'exposition Vides, organis6e par le Centre
Pompidou pour commemorer I'anniversaire des Attitudes, a propose
une ceuvre intitul6e Money at the
Kunsthalle Bern qui consistait a
demander un credit pour restaurer le
b6timent. On est loin de Lawrence
Weiner qui arrachait le plAtre des
murs de ]a Kunsthalle...
Lceutons Szeemann evoquer Beuys"
a Que nous raconte Joseph Beuys ?
Je ne suis pas sOr de le savoir... Ce
qui me parvient de son univers sinistre et pathetique a davantage de
quoi me repousser que de quoi me
charmer. Et pourtant, il y a la une
sorte de grandeur morose jusque
dans ses obsessions materielles qui
ne peut laisser indifferent. )
En juin 1969, Harald Szeemann
d6missionna, son exposition sur
Beuys, pr6vue en 1970, avait 6te
refus6e. Ce qui le toucha profondement, c'est que ce furent des artistes, majoritaires dans le comite
ex6cutif de la Kunsthalle, qui s'y
opposbrent. IItint 6 mettre lui-meme
sa lettre de demission dans la boTte
aux lettres, au coin de la rue.
Marlene Belilos
Lawrence Weiner pr6parant 1'exposition v Quand les attitudes deviennent forme
a.
show included Beuys, Michael
Heizer, Lawrence Weiner, Richard
Artschwager, Alain Jacquet and
Walter De Maria.
The Kunsthalle became a space
for contestation. Two young Swiss
men felt it an appropriate venue to
burn their military gear. Some citizens put in manure to fill the holes
that Heizer had made in the sidewalk facing the Kunsthalle. Rafael
Ferrer's Chain Link, a piece outside
the venue, was trampled down.
The Soviet ambassador saw it as
proof of bourgeois decadence and
attributed pecuniary motives to the
show's sponsor, Philip Morris. The
most advanced critics gave their
assent to the notion that art could
represent reality in a fantasy
mode, but still demanded respect
for aesthetic criteria. And in Switzerland, private property was sacred! What's worse, even within
his own camp, some artists felt
that Szeemann was playing the
meta-artist.
Today Maria Eichhorn, one of the
artists invited to show in the
Vides exhibition organized by the
Pompidou Center to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of
Attitudes, concocted a piece called
Money at the Kunsthalle Bern that
consists of asking for a loan to
rehab the building. We've come a
long way since Weiner pulled the
plaster off the Kunsthalle walls.
Szeemann says the following
about Beuys, "What does Joseph
Beuys tell us? I'm not sure I know...
What I get from his ominous and
pathos-filled world is more off-putting than charming as far as I'm
concerned. And yet there is a sort
of morose grandeur even in his
obsessions with material, and you
can't help being affected by it."
In June 1969 Szeemann resigned
after the Beuys exhibition he had
planned for 1970 was disallowed.
What hurt him the most was that
the veto was supported even by
the artists who made up the majority of the Kunsthalle executive
committee. He insisted on mailing
his resignation letter himself, dropping it into the corner mail box.
Marlbne Belilos
Translation, L-S Torgoff
Extrait du film. Lawrence Weiner preparingthe exhibition "When Attitudes Become Form"
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TITLE: Il y a 40 ans Quand les attitudes deviennent forme
SOURCE: Art Press no361 N 2009
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