VU Research Portal Between dematerialization and documentation Zonnenberg, N.S.J.F. 2016 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Zonnenberg, N. S. J. F. (2016). Between dematerialization and documentation: conceptual art in a curatorial perspective. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BETWEEN DEMATERIALIZATION AND DOCUMENTATION CONCEPTUAL ART IN A CURATORIAL PERSPECTIVE ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. V. Subramaniam, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen op dinsdag 29 november 2016 om 13.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Nathalie Sophie Johanna Francisca Zonnenberg geboren te Nijmegen promotoren: prof.dr. W. Davidts prof.dr. K. Kwastek copromotor: dr. J. Jobse ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation could not have been realized without the help of others. I am greatly indebted to my promoters Wouter Davidts, Katja Kwastek, and Jonneke Jobse, who gave me many helpful comments and suggestions throughout the course of my research. It was Jonneke who encouraged me to undertake this PhD research in the first place, while Wouter guided me in the development and elaboration of my thesis with many inspiring conversations. Katja was especially of support with constructive criticism in the last phase of completion of the dissertation. I am also indebted to Carel Blotkamp for proposing me the idea to initiate a PhD research, and giving me the confidence to execute such a project. Additionally I would like to thank the members of the reading committee, Eric de Bruyn, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Mia Lerm Hayes, Terry Smith, and Diederik Oostdijk, for accepting the invitation to assess this dissertation, as well as for their valuable comments and revelations. I would especially like to thank Jan van Adrichem for being a stable point of reference in the review of my texts from the very start, and providing me with stimulating conversations and feedback. Special thanks go also to my former PhD fellows at the VU University, Iris Burgers, Elise Noyez, and Rose Tzalmona, for being an important pillar during the first years of my research, and joining in many inspiring and humorous conversations about the tasks that we were all up to. I am grateful to have been able to work within the Department of Arts and Culture at the VU University, where I have always felt appreciated and supported by the former chair Koos Bosma (†), as well as by the Art History staff members Richard Bionda, Agnes Groot, Fieke Konijn, Sven Lütticken, Jos ten Berge, Paul van den Akker, and Ingrid Vermeulen. Furthermore, I owe many thanks to the professional staff of the museums and archives that I have consulted: Stefanie Kreuzer of Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen; Kathrin Barutzki of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Gabriele John of the Stadtarchiv Leverkusen; Elisabeth Schleeben of the Stadtarchiv Düsseldorf; Anne Dressen, François Michaud, and Florence Pustienne of the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, and Chiara Costa of the Fondazione Prada, who helped me find access and useful information in their archives. Special thanks I would like to express to Claude Gintz, to share with me his ideas and memory of the curation of the exhibition L’art conceptuel, une perspective, and Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk (†), Ann Goldstein, and Seth Siegelaub (†) for the stimulating conversations about conceptual art’s legacy. 3 Finally, I am most grateful to my family and friends who bore with me and supported me throughout this important project, and accepted recurring absences in social events and get-togethers. In anticipation to the public defense of my dissertation, special thanks go to my paranymphs Sanneke Stigter and Sjoukje van der Meulen for accepting to mentally as well as emotionally support me during the last hour of my PhD endeavor. For my father, in memoriam “You should write a book,” he said 5 CONTENTS Introduction 9 Chapter 1 A Trajectory of Conceptual Art’s “Object” (Between Dematerialization and Documentation) 1.1. Theories and Definitions of Conceptual Art 25 1.2. The Principle of Dematerialization 33 1.3. Primary and Secondary Information 43 1.4. Art Documentation 54 Chapter 2 Case study: Konzeption–Conception: Documentation of a To-day’s Art Tendency (1969) 2.1 A First Overview of Conceptual Art 65 2.2 The Catalogue (as) Exhibition 69 2.3 Where’s the Exhibition? 77 2.4 The Exhibition as (Free) Publicity 86 2.5 Conclusion 92 Chapter 3 Case study: L’Art conceptuel: une perspective (1989) 3.1 A First Retrospective of Conceptual Art 93 3.2 The Exhibition as Historicizing Venture 97 3.3 Discourse versus Exhibition 107 3.4 (Institutional) Critiques 116 3.5 Conclusion 122 Chapter 4 Case study: When Attitudes Become Form Bern 1969/ Venice 2013 (2013) 4.1 Reconsidering the Exhibition of Conceptual Art 125 4.2 (Re-)Curating Art History 129 4.3 The Legacy of the Exhibition 139 4.4 The Problem of Authenticity (Reproducing Aura) 147 4.5 Conclusion 154 Epilogue 157 Bibliography 171 Summary 187 7 INTRODUCTION The impossibility of reclaiming the volitivity of perceptual change leaves art historical explanations to pick the bones of dead forms. In this sense, all art dies with time and is impermanent whether it continues to exist as an object or not—Robert Morris1 In 1969, Dutch artist Jan Dibbets conceived and developed a project, which can be regarded exemplary for the paradoxical condition of many works of conceptual art. Project for Art & Project anticipated the fifteenth exhibition of the Amsterdam “avant- garde gallery” Art & Project, and used the distributive format of the gallery’s invitation, the so-called bulletin, to construct a work that would eventually reveal the network involved in the production, distribution and collection of conceptual art in the late 1960s.2 To a mailing list of about 400 addressees the bulletin was sent with the question to return one side to the gallery, after which each returned bulletin would be marked on a map by a straight line from the home of the addressee to the location of the gallery in Amsterdam. Next to this, the addressees were invited for the opening of the exhibition (of the work) that would take place at the closing day of the project.3 The work had at least two different formats of presentation: while the first consisted of the exhibition of the 196 returned bulletins and their additional markings on four maps in the gallery (Amsterdam, the Benelux, Europe and the world); the second appeared in the 1970 July/August issue of Studio International in printed format—representing the returned bulletins by a list of names.4 Among the addressees who returned the bulletin to the gallery were not only Dibbets’s colleague-conceptual artists, but also important critics, curators, dealers, and, most importantly, (a new type of) collectors interested in conceptual art. It may thus come as no surprise that the exhibited work in the gallery was subsequently acquired— by the collectors-couple Herman and Henriëtte van Eelen.5 The eventual sale can be 1 Robert Morris, “Notes on Sculpture, Part 4. Beyond Objects,” Artforum vol. VIII no. 8 (April, 1969), p. 53. 2 Prior to the exhibitions in the gallery space Art & Project distributed the bulletin in order to announce these exhibitions, but more often than not the bulletin also functioned as an alternative space for the activities of the artists they affiliated with that did not fit the traditional format of exhibition. 3 The closing day of the project was on Tuesday, December 16, 1969 from 8-9 p.m. See Jan Dibbets, Art & Project Bulletin #15 (November 1969). 4 For this specific issue of Studio International the New York curator-dealer Seth Siegelaub was invited to “curate” an exhibition in the magazine. On his turn he invited a number of other curators, of which Hans Strelow selected the work by Dibbets. 5 The personal relationship with the artists and the specific interaction of each acquisition were more important for the Van Eelens than the (art historical) value of the works. Birgit Pelzer has stressed that for Belgium collectors 9 considered an essential part of the work, successfully closing the cycle of production, distribution, and collection in which conceptual art operated in the late 1960s. In this respect Dibbets’s Project has become a historical document, effectively illustrating the process of commodification that conceptual art was subjected to since its beginnings— something of which the artist seemed well aware when he conceived the project.6 Ironically, the sale of Dibbets’s Project as an autonomous work of art is at the same time contradicting the principles of conceptual art that were precisely trying to counter the process of commodification.