Dear Friends,
The long version of the Harald Szeemann Film is shown on 3sat German TV
12.08.2006 at 22.20.
Best,
Erzen
Harald Szeemann, 1933-2005
Harald Szeemann, 71, Swiss curator, died Feb. 18.05 .Szeemann
virtually invented the role of the independent curator--ideally a
peripatetic scout and intrepid synthesizer of cultural trends--and
refashioned both Documenta and the Venice Biennale, opening those
established international exhibitions to new media and fresh ideas.
Although his independence had its prickly side, Szeemann remained a
man of great congeniality and abiding optimism. His thematic subtitle
for the first Seville Biennial, which he organized in 2004 and which
closed just two months before his death, was "The Joy of My Dreams."
Born in Bern, Szeemann studied art history, archeology and journalism
before making his curatorial debut in Saint Gall with "Painters
Poets/Poets Painters," a tribute to Hugo Ball, in 1957. Four years
later, he was appointed director of the Bern Kunsthalle, a hitherto
phlegmatic institution with a local focus. Szeemann accelerated the
kunsthalle's metabolism with an ambitious schedule of exhibitions
that culminated in the landmark show of 1969 "When Attitudes Become
Form: Live in Your Head." (A revised version opened at the London ICA
later that year.) With characteristic inclusiveness, he forged a
big-tent show of nearly 70 practitioners, from Andre to Zorio, of
Minimalism, Conceptualism, Arte Povera, process art, land art,
installation and information art--everything, in short, that
challenged the traditional museum object.
In a now-legendary act of defying the system, Szeemann followed this
achievement by quitting the kunsthalle to embark on a freelance
career. He organized "Happenings and Fluxus" in 1970, a show at the
Cologne Kunstverein comprising actions, environments, performances
and concerts. Appointed director of Documenta 5 (1972), Szeemann
recast what had been dubbed the "museum of 100 days" by programming
"100 days of events" that included film and performance. Among the
provocative subthemes of the show were the artists' museum,
individual mythologies and "parallel picture worlds," which embraced
advertising, science fiction, everyday culture and "national piety."
Lean years followed the heady success of Documenta, during which
Szeemann pursued a series of quixotic endeavors under the rubric of
his imaginary "Museum of Obsessions." These included a show in his
apartment of his grandfather's hairdressing equipment, a series of
exhibitions staged on a hill in the canton of Ticino and dedicated to
utopian thinkers, and "Machines Celibataire" (Bachelor Machines) of
1976, a tribute to obsessional figures (i.e., Marcel Duchamp and the
19th-century postman Ferdinand Cheval, that ur-figure of outsider
art) which, with the assistance of Jean Clair, traveled to eight
European cities.
In 1980, Szeemann, still an insurgent, returned to the official arena
when he and Achille Bonito Oliva introduced the "Aperto" section for
emerging artists at the Venice Biennale. The following year, Szeemann
accepted the part-time position of independent curator at the
Kunsthaus Zurich, where his many shows ranged from an exhibition of
works on paper by Victor Hugo (1989) to "Illusion, Emotion, Reality"
(1996), a centennial celebration of film. For the Universal
Exposition in Seville (1992), Szeemann curated Switzerland's national
pavilion, inviting Ben Vautier to exhibit his impudently titled
paintings Switzerland does not exist and I think therefore I Swiss
Szeemann occasionally curated monographic exhibitions, among them the
Centre Pompidou's 1993 retrospective of Joseph Beuys. More typical in
recent years was the theme-driven inquiry, such as "The Real Royal
Trip" (2003), a look at contemporary Spanish-Latin American cultural
exchanges that he organized for New York's P.S.I. He was tapped to
direct the fourth Lyon Biennale (1997), the second Kwangju Biennial
(1997) and two editions of the Venice Biennale, in 1999 and 2001. The
1999 effort earned a particularly warm critical reception, as he
presided over the expansion of the show into several newly restored
spaces of the Arsenale, two of which housed dazzling installations by
Cai Guo-Qiang and Serge Spitzer. He also invited a substantial number
of young and youngish Chinese artists; for many Western visitors,
this was a first encounter with the work of Ai Weiwei, Ma Liuming,
Zhang Huan and Zhao Bandi. Despite a strong showing of new video
artists (including John Pilson, Anri Sala, Tiong Ang) and the
participation of well-known filmmakers (Chantal Akerman, Atom Egoyan,
Abbas Kiarostami), the return engagement in 2001 seemed less
energetic, less revelatory; Szeemann probably lacked the temperament
for sequels, and he was plainly impatient with the Biennale's
administration.
As younger, more publicity-savvy independent curators appeared on the
scene, Szeemann wore his age lightly and adhered to his ideals. The
oldest individual to direct the Venice Biennale--he celebrated his
66th birthday at the June preview in 1999--Szeemann seemed ever
animated and open-minded, always pointed toward the next possibility.
Rejecting the notion that exhibitions should aspire to have the last
word, he explained his task on the occasion of last year's Seville
Biennale by saying, "It's not about presenting the best there is, but
about discovering where the unpredictable path of art will go in the
imminent future." Although the title of his acclaimed 1969 exhibition
is often quoted (and misquoted), it is significant that Szeemann's
generous legacy includes no style name, no catchphrase, no "post-" or
"neo"-anything that would corral or impede the unfolding of the new
in art. [Szeemann's exhibition "Visionary Belgium," part of that
nation's festivities celebrating 175 years of independence and 25
years of federalism, remains on view in Brussels at the Palais des
Beaux-Arts through May 15. It includes works by Ensor, Magritte,
Broodthaers, Panamarenko, Tuymans and Delvoye.]
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