Harald Szeemann Papers
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http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8ff3rp7 Online items available Finding aid for the Harald Szeemann papers Alexis Adkins, Heather Courtney, Judy Chou, Holly Deakyne, Maggie Hughes, B. Karenina Karyadi, Medria Martin, Emmabeth Nanol, Alice Poulalion, Pietro Rigolo, Elena Salza, Laura Schroffel, Lindsey Sommer, Melanie Tran, Sue Tyson, Xiaoda Wang, and Isabella Zuralski. Finding aid for the Harald 2011.M.30 1 Szeemann papers Descriptive Summary Title: Harald Szeemann papers Date (inclusive): 1800-2011, bulk 1949-2005 Number: 2011.M.30 Creator/Collector: Szeemann, Harald Physical Description: 1998.3 Linear Feet(3882 boxes, 449 flatfiles, 6 crates, 3 bins, 24 reels) Repository: The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles 90049-1688 [email protected] URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref (310) 440-7390 Abstract: Swiss art curator Harald Szeemann (1933-2005) organized more than 150 exhibitions during a career that spanned almost five decades. An advocate of contemporary movements such as conceptualism, land art, happenings, Fluxus and performance, and of artists such as Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly and Mario Merz, Szeemann developed a new form of exhibition-making that centered on close collaborative relationships with artists and a sweeping global vision of contemporary visual culture. He organized vast international surveys such as documenta 5; retrospectives of individual artists including Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman, Wolfgang Laib, James Ensor, and Eugène Delacroix; and thematic exhibitions on such provocative topics as utopia, disaster, and the "Plateau of Humankind." Szeemann's papers thoroughly document his curatorial practice, including preliminary notes for many projects, written descriptions and proposals for exhibitions, installation sketches, photographic documentation, research files, and extensive correspondence with colleagues, artists and collaborators. Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy . Language: Collection material is primarily in German with some material in Italian, French, English and other languages. Biographical / Historical Note Among the most influential art curators of his generation, Harald Szeemann (Swiss, 1933-2005) organized more than 150 exhibitions during a career that spanned almost five decades. Szeemann studied art history, archaeology and journalism in Bern and Paris and had a brief, but successful, theatrical career before he organized his first exhibition in 1957. In 1961 he became one of the youngest museum directors in the world when he was appointed to head the Kunsthalle Bern. From 1961 to 1966, Szeemann was also in charge of the exhibition program at the Städtische Galerie Biel. Szeemann gained prominence through a lively and experimental series of exhibitions that included early projects with Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, and Christo. In addition to showcasing current developments in contemporary art such as kinetic art, op art, and happenings, Szeemann also examined areas of early twentieth-century modernism such as Dada and surrealism, including artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Kazimir Malevich, and Vassily Kandinsky, as well as various fields of visual culture such as Art Brut, science fiction and religious iconography. Following his 1969 exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form , a sprawling and controversial international survey of postminimalism, conceptual art, and Arte Povera, Szeemann left the Kunsthalle Bern to become an independent curator. Calling his business the Agentur für geistige Gastarbeit, or Agency for Spiritual Guest-Labor, a one-man enterprise relying on a group of independent partners, Szeemann developed a new form of exhibition-making that centered on close collaborative relationships with artists and a sweeping global vision of contemporary visual culture, aided by a pioneering vision of fundraising. Because he traveled extensively and frequently, he was able to integrate emerging developments from disparate parts of the world into exhibitions that became touchstones of their time. Taking on the organization of documenta 5 in 1972, Szeemann transformed the exhibition into a vast and dynamic survey of young artists from across the world. Likewise, when asked to co-direct the Venice Biennale in 1980, the curator introduced a new concept that became a mainstay of the Biennale: the "Aperto," an international and multigenerational group exhibition that contrasted with the Biennale's traditional focus on national representations. He continued to survey art-making from all parts of the world in the biennials he later organized in Lyon, Seville, and Gwangju, as well as when he returned to the Venice Biennale in both 1999 and 2001. Szeemann often tackled enormous themes that cut across regions and spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a stunningly original approach, as in his trilogy of exhibitions The Finding aid for the Harald 2011.M.30 2 Szeemann papers Bachelor Machines (1975), Monte Verità: The breasts of truth (1978), and Tendency towards the Gesamtkunstwerk (1983). Exhibitions focused on topics such as utopia, disaster, and the "Plateau of Humankind" offered sweeping and provocative surveys, while exhibitions such as Visionary Switzerland (1991), Austria in a Net of Roses (1996), Blood and Honey: the Future Lies in the Balkans (2003) and La Belgique Visionnaire België: C'est arrivé près de chez nous (2005) aimed at examining narrower topics and regions in interdisciplinary depth. Szeemann was also active on a local level in Ticino, Switzerland, where he organized several exhibitions and worked on various museum projects, among which Casa Anatta on Monte Verità, devoted to the history of the early 20th-century colony of anarchists, artists and life reformers, is to be counted among his greatest achievements. During his collaboration with Kunsthaus Zürich (1981-2000), Szeemann became known for producing definitive solo exhibitions, not only on contemporary artists such as Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, and Bruce Nauman, but on such cultural icons as Charles Baudelaire, Alfred Jarry and Egon Schiele. Szeemann's mid-1980s contemporary sculpture group exhibitions included Traces, Sculptures and Monuments of Their Precise Journey (1985) and De Sculptura (1986). He referred to them as "poems in space," and investigated the "breathing space" between artworks and within the exhibition venue. From the late 1980s onward, he often embarked on large-scale projects set in historical buildings including Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Halle Tony Garnier in Lyon, and the Arsenale in Venice. It was the first time these locations hosted contemporary art exhibitions. Even when collaborating with large institutions, Szeemann relied on the same team of independent partners for the technical aspects, believing that "only tribes survive." Long-term friends and coworkers included his wife Ingeborg Lüscher, an artist; daughter Una Szeemann, also an artist; son Jérôme Szeemann, who was in charge of installation; architect Christoph Zürcher; model designer Peter Bissegger; and Josy Kraft, who was in charge of transportation and storage. Szeemann's parents were Julie Szeemann-Kambly (1907-2005) and Étienne Ernst Szeemann (1904-1958), and his younger brother was Rolf Szeemann (1935-1994). His father worked in a salon owned by Szeemann's grandfather, Étienne Szeemann (1873-1971), a successful hair stylist during the early 20th century, who was the subject of Szeemann's exhibition Grandfather - a pioneer like us. Szeemann married twice, the first time to Françoise Bonnefoy (1934-) in 1959. He has three children: Jérôme (1959-) and Valérie (1964-) from his first marriage, and Una (1975-) with Lüscher. Szeemann began his personal archive in the late 1960s when, leaving the Kunsthalle Bern, he decided to take a substantial part of the documentation for his exhibitions with him. The archive grew significantly over the decades. Szeemann kept all documents and research material related to his projects, including all correspondence sent or received. The archive is not only a resource for the study of Szeemann's exhibitions, activities and interests, but is also an invaluable trove of rare gallery and museum ephemera such as invitation cards, press releases and posters from the 1960s to the 2000s. In the mid-1980s Szeemann permanently housed the entire archive in a former watch factory in the village of Maggia, in Ticino, which Szeemann called the "Fabbrica Rosa" or "Pink Factory." Previously it had been scattered between his homes in Ticino, Bern, and Civitanova Marche. The result of almost 50 years of professional activity, the archive can be considered one of Szeemann's main achievements. Both a physical office and a tool for retrieving information, it functioned also as an instrument of self-representation, ranging from his high school years and theatrical experiments to his "Museum of Obsessions." The archive also afforded Szeemann the opportunity to personally write and partially rectify the history of his own professional life, and it is possible to trace examples of concealment through intentional "misfiling" of exhibitions he felt were unsatisfactory. The importance the Fabbrica Rosa played in the Szeemann's understanding of his own career is demonstrated by the fact that Szeemann had planned to retire from exhibition-making in 2006 and