Strategy: Get Arts: 35 Artists Who Broke the Rules 9781838382216

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Visitors to Strategy: Get Arts walking along the south corridor of the first floor, ECA Main Building SGA (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

Strategy: Get Arts 35 Artists Who Broke the Rules

Strategy: Get Arts 35 Artists Who Broke the Rules Christian Weikop

Acknowledgements

Previous pages: André Thomkins Close up of palindrome signs. SGA (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. Front cover of Strategy: Get Arts exhibition catalogue, 1970. Demarco Digital Archive. Opposite: Cordelia Oliver behind triplex glass container by Erich Reusch (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

Christian Weikop’s work for this special

Image Credits and Permissions

Strategy: Get Arts (SGA50) book edition of Studies

George Oliver Archive and Richard Demarco

in Photography is under the aegis of the Research

Archive (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art,

Forum for German Visual Culture (ECA). Weikop

National Galleries of Scotland), Richard Demarco,

(author and guest editor) and Alexander Hamilton

Demarco European Art Foundation,

(series editor) would like to thank the following

Demarco Digital Archive (University of Dundee),

individuals, institutions, and contributors, who

Gerhard Richter Archive (Dresden),

have supported this publication and the wider

Jennifer Gough-Cooper, David Oliver,

SGA50 project in different ways: The Leverhulme Trust,

Monika Baumgartl, Jon Schueler Estate, The Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS).

Edinburgh College of Art (RKEI Research Grant),

Image Research and Image Captions

Professor Richard Demarco CBE,

Christian Weikop

Terry Ann Newman, Demarco European Art Foundation, Creative Scotland, Jennifer Gough-Cooper, David Oliver, Karen Barber, Ted Fisher, Monika Baumgartl, Kirstie Meehan (Archive and Special Collections, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), Tate Research, Adam Lockhart (Demarco Digital Archive at the University of Dundee), Stuart Bennett (ECA), Juan Cruz (Principal, ECA), Andrew Patrizio (ECA), Keith Hartley (Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Modern and Contemporary Art at NGS), Frank Lesniak at Grieger International Fine Art, Roland Lang, Andrew Symons (ECA), and Magda Salvesen (Jon Schueler Estate). Throughout this publication GMA numbers refer to the Richard Demarco Archive at SNGMA.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Published in partnership with Edinburgh University Press. www.edinburghuniversitypress.com Studies in Photography is the trading name of The Scottish Society for the History of Photography A Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Registered in Scotland with the Office of the Scottish Charities Registrar SC033988 www.studiesinphotography.com British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-8383822-0-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-8383822-1-6 (webready PDF) ISBN 978-1-8383822-2-3 (epub) © 2021 The copyright of the work published in this book rests with the authors. Series Editor Alexander Hamilton Author and Guest Editor Christian Weikop Image Research and Image Captions Christian Weikop Design Ian McIIroy Proofreading and copy editing Robin Connelly The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites, is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Printed and Bound Bell & Bain Limited, Glasgow J Thomson Colour Printers, Glasgow The paper used in this publication is recyclable. It is made from low chlorine pulps produced in a low energy, low emission manner from renewable forests. Edinburgh

Opposite: Stefan Wewerka's bentwood chairs installation on the main staircase of ECA Main Building (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

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Contents 13

Foreword Keith Hartley

16

Foreword Juan Cruz

21

Preface Alexander Hamilton

22

Introduction Christian Weikop

30

Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts Christian Weikop

40

Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop Appendix A. Jürgen Harten on Strategy: Get Arts

56

SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

80

Strategy: Get Arts and Broadcast Media Christian Weikop

84

Photography at and in Strategy: Get Arts Karen Barber

88

A Turning Point Jennifer Gough-Cooper

93

Gallery Assistants – SGA Alexander Hamilton

101

The Artists Christian Weikop H.P. Alvermann, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Claus Böhmler, George Brecht, Peter Brüning, Henning Christiansen, Friedhelm Döhl, Robert Filliou, Karl Gerstner, Gotthard Graubner, Erwin Heerich, Dorothy Iannone, Mauricio Kagel, Konrad Klapheck, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhöfer, Ferdinand Kriwet, Adolf Luther, Heinz Mack, Lutz Mommartz, Tony Morgan, Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke, Erich Reusch, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dieter Roth, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Daniel Spoerri, André Thomkins, Günther Uecker, Franz Erhard Walther, Günter Weseler, Stefan Wewerka

202

Sound in Space Christian Weikop

204

David Tremlett 16 Industrial Scarecrows Christian Weikop

206

Palermo Restore Rewind Andrew Patrizio

210

Exhibiting an Exhibition: Strategy: Get Arts in the Richard Demarco Archive Kirstie Meehan

214

Douglas and Matilda Hall Edited transcript of interview by Ted Fisher, Christian Weikop and Alexander Hamilton

218

Contributors

220

Further Reading

222

Index

Foreword Keith Hartley One of the first things I did after I started my job as Douglas Hall’s assistant at the Scottish National

at the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh was that

Gallery of Modern Art in the summer of 1979 was

Douglas Hall, its founding Director (then called

to visit the Richard Demarco Gallery and meet

Keeper), was very open to modern German art,

the man I had heard so much about. He lived

by no means a common phenomenon in 1960s

up to his reputation as a dynamic, enthusiastic

Britain. He had begun acquiring German

personality, particularly when he learnt that my

Expressionist art in the mid-1960s: Jawlensky’s

area of special interest was modern German art.

Head of a Woman c.1911 (bought in 1964),

He immediately began talking about Joseph

Kirchner’s Japanese Theatre c.1909 (bought

Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts, the 1970 Edinburgh

in 1965), Nolde’s Head 1913 (bought in 1968),

Festival exhibition he had organised at Edinburgh

Beuys’s Three Pots for the Poorhouse – Action

College of Art and which had introduced Beuys

Object 1974 ( bought the same year) and

for the first time in the UK.

Dix’s Nude Girl on a Fur 1932 (bought in 1980).

Prior to working in Edinburgh I had undertaken research on German Expressionism in Berlin, but my eyes had been opened to contemporary German art and to Beuys in particular, when I visited documenta 6 at Kassel in 1977. Beuys had been placed, quite literally, at the heart of the mammoth exhibition. Not only was his monumental sculpture Honey Pump at the

Opposite: Joseph Beuys and Jürgen Harten in an ECA studio (SGA 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive.

One of the reasons why I had been keen to work

Hall had also put on exhibitions of German art from the earliest years since the Gallery’s opening in 1961: Paul Klee (1962 and 1974), German Expressionist Prints (1963), Lyonel Feininger (1964), Emil Nolde (1968), Joseph Beuys. The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland (1974), Wassily Kandinsky (1975) and Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1979). When Richard Calvocoressi became Hall’s

Workplace (Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz) 1977

assistant in the mid-1970s, he also brought a

situated in the stairwell and throughout the

strong interest in German art and helped acquire

Fridericianum (documenta’s main exhibition

Schwitters’s Untitled (Relief with Red Pyramid)

building), but also in an adjacent room, Beuys

c.1923-25 and George Grosz’s drawing Toads of

held his 100 day discussion forum (Free

Property 1920. In 1987 Calvocoressi returned to

International University), open to all and open

Edinburgh as Hall’s successor. He went on to

to all ideas. I could not have had a better

make some major acquisitions, not only of

introduction to Beuys’s ‘expanded concept

early twentieth-century German art, such as

of art’. And now Richard Demarco was telling

Kokoschka’s drawing of Alma Mahler c.1913,

me that Edinburgh had been introduced to these

Barlach’s rare wooden sculpture, The Terrible

revolutionary ideas of Beuys in 1970 and, not

Year 1937, made in 1936, but also of significant

only that, but that his art and ideas had been

post-war works as well, such as Baselitz’s

presented in the wider context of a number of

painting Pillow 1987,his painted limewood

artists who had also studied or who had taught

sculpture Untitled 1982-84 and Günter Brus’s

at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art.

Untitled photographic collage of 1965. But by

13

Foreword Keith Hartley

far and away the most important additions of German art came just after Calvocoressi left the

directorship, important exhibitions of German art

Gallery (but crucially initiated by him), with the

continued with Gerhard Richter (2008-09), August

joint acquisition in 2008 with Tate of the ARTIST

Sander (in 2011), Joseph Beuys (in 2016) and Emil

ROOMS Collection, through The d’Offay

Nolde (in 2018).

Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund. This acquisition, a resource to benefit museums and galleries throughout the UK, included an internationally important group of works by Beuys and major paintings by Richter, Baselitz and Kiefer. This ground-breaking acquisition was something that I was closely involved with, as well, of course, were Sir John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries and Simon Groom, the new Director of the Gallery of Modern Art.

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of Unclear Origin (2001). Under Simon Groom’s

In 1995 the Gallery of Modern Art purchased part of Richard Demarco’s archive, covering the period from 1949 until 1995, including his involvement with Jim Haynes’s Paperback Bookshop (and Gallery) and the Traverse Theatre and the founding of Demarco’s own gallery in 1966. The acquisition did not include Demarco’s collection of art works nor his photographs. These both remained with Demarco, as did all the archival material he produced since 1995. The Gallery was, however, a partner institution in the digitisation project of Demarco’s photographs that was based

Since Calvocoressi and I were keenly interested

in Dundee, instigated by Arthur Watson and Euan

in German art, it was natural that we also worked

McArthur at Dundee University and Duncan of

together on a series of exhibitions of German

Jordanstone College of Art and Design. Included

artists. These included Wols and German Informel

in the archive now at the Gallery of Modern Art

Drawings (both in 1990), Otto Dix: The Dresden

is a substantial quantity of material on Strategy:

Collection of Works on Paper and Georg Baselitz:

Get Arts, including photographs by George Oliver,

A Retrospective Exhibition (both in 1992),

who was commissioned to document the

John Heartfield (1993), The Romantic Spirit in

exhibition. Indeed the material is so rich that it

German Art 1790-1990 (1994; an exhibition held at

has been shown on several occasions in archival

the Royal Scottish Academy and The Fruitmarket

displays and exhibitions at the Gallery, such as:

Gallery, which included works by Beuys,

Demarco Focus One: Richard Demarco in the 1960s

Richter, Polke and Palermo), Correspondences:

(shown in 2003); Demarco Focus Two: Edinburgh

Scotland/Berlin (a show of contemporary art

Arts 1972-80 (2004-05); Strategy: Get Arts Revisited;

from Scotland and Berlin and held first at the

Focus on Demarco (2008); Richard Demarco and

Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin and subsequently

Joseph Beuys – A Unique Partnership and Strategy:

at the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh

Get Arts (both in 2016, displays that were mounted

in 1997-98), Andreas Gursky: Photographs 1994-98

at the Gallery of Modern Art at the same time

and Joseph Beuys Editions: The Schlegel Collection

as an exhibition of all the Beuys drawings in the

(both in 1999), The Private Klee: Works from the

ARTIST ROOMS Collection, called ARTIST ROOMS.

Bürgi Collection (2000) and Sigmar Polke: Music

Joseph Beuys: A Language of Drawing).

Since the Gallery of Modern Art’s acquisition

When Richard Demarco realised the revolutionary

of the ARTIST ROOMS Collection the staff and

importance of the art being produced in

students of the History of Art Department at

Düsseldorf and the Rhineland back in the late

Edinburgh University have been closely involved

1960s and, with dogged determination and

in elucidating the works of art in that collection,

eloquent powers of persuasion, went on to curate

writing texts, organising symposia and seminars,

the exhibition Strategy: Get Arts, few would have

lecturing and taking part in public conversations.

believed that Edinburgh would one day become

German art, especially the work of Joseph Beuys

the most important centre for seeing and studying

and other post-war artists, has been a particular

modern German art in the UK. For that is what it

area of interest. This has been championed by

has become.

Dr Christian Weikop and the Research Forum for German Visual Culture which he founded. There have been symposia on August Sander, Modernist Magazines, Joseph Beuys, and Degenerate Art, lectures and in-conversations

Keith Hartley Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Galleries of Scotland,

on Baselitz, Beuys, Richter, and Kiefer, and not least, PhD students (one a formal, collaborative arrangement with the Gallery) using the gallery’s resources of German art in its collection, library and archive.

Right: Response of ECA student collective (Iacabaw Enterprises) to Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

15

Foreword Juan Cruz

In 2012 and at the instigation of Antony Hudek the

I also first met Richard Demarco in Liverpool

Exhibition Research Centre (ERC) was founded at

when he accepted an invitation to hold a public

Liverpool School of Art and Design, of which I was

talk with Catherine Marcangeli, the widow of

then Director. The aim of the centre was to be the

Adrian Henri, about whom the ERC was planning

first academic centre devoted to the study of

an exhibition and an associated publication to

exhibitions. Its mission was to support research in

highlight Henri’s pioneering role as the creator of

this overlooked area of study by publishing books

some of the first happenings in the UK during the

and organising exhibitions, lectures and other

1960s and 1970s. The project aimed to reconsider

public events. The inaugural keynote lecture at ERC considered the histories and contemporary relevance of the Kunsthalle – or non-collecting contemporary art

‘Total Art’ as a template for contemporary interdisciplinary practice.

space, aiming to better understand the role that

The parallels in the artistic spirit of Henri and

such spaces have played in hosting some of the

Demarco are clear, and Richard spoke lucidly with

most radical curatorial interventions by directors,

Catherine about the dynamic link, as he saw it,

curators and artists, becoming an essential

between Edinburgh and Liverpool as centres of

reference point and source of inspiration for

their own creative universes. I had been aware of

museums as they reassess their function as

Richard’s work for many years, and Strategy: Get

keepers of objects and tradition. Speakers in the series included Maria Lind, Alanna Heiss, Mihnea Mircan, Adelina von Fürstenberg and, importantly in the context of this special edition on the fiftieth anniversary of Strategy: Get Arts, Jürgen Harten, whose talk was titled “The Kunsthalle Legend: The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and its exhibition policy with regard to the quest for avantgardism and the promotion of contemporary art in the second half of the twentieth century.” I hadn’t previously come across Jürgen Harten, and was extremely impressed at the articulation of his motives for pursuing the radical exhibition policies that he did in Düsseldorf, including key exhibitions by Joseph Beuys.

16

Henri’s legacy – he is mainly known as a poet, painter and musician – through his embrace of

Arts (1970) was a frequent point of discussion at the ERC as a unique and seminal exhibition that exactly articulated the kind of radical curatorial interventions that Hudek was eager to surface. I hadn’t though been aware of Harten’s important role in supporting the staging of this exhibition until I saw some of the photographic images that form part of this publication and planned exhibition.

Most memorable about Harten’s discussion of his

Strategy: Get Arts haunts the Main Building of

work in Düsseldorf was his foregrounding of the

Edinburgh College of Art, and the ongoing

political dimensions of the work of the artists with

challenge for us here now is what to do with

whom he worked. Speaking from the perspective

those spectres of the not so near past. We take

of 2014, he forcefully asserted that the motivations

pride of course in the significance that they give

of the artists he chose to work with then were

our studios and other grand spaces, and we are

predominantly political, and rather lamented the

reassured that we have maintained so much of

celebration of the more stylistic elements of their

the architectural features that grant the images

work. He also provocatively lamented the fact

such a particular aesthetic. Perhaps though it’s

that not more contemporary artists made work

time now, half a century on from the event, to

about money, since he understood this now

acknowledge and act upon Harten’s critical

categorically to be the prime driver of the

challenge not to be seduced by how all this

art world.

looked, but to engage with the urgency of the politics that inspired him, Richard Demarco, and many others to make this important exhibition. Professor Juan Cruz Principal of Edinburgh College of Art University of Edinburgh

Right: Jürgen Harten and Jennifer Gough-Cooper in an ECA studio in preparation for Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

17

Above: Strategy: Get Arts banner being erected at ECA Main Building entrance (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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Opposite: Stefan Wewerka walking alongside Strategy: Get Arts banner up to ECA Main Building entrance (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

Preface Alexander Hamilton This special book edition of Studies in Photography

Nor was it all together the mounting sense

marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Edinburgh

of expectancy- sometimes of disappointment

International Festival exhibition – Strategy: Get Arts

(it was a very uneven affair) - as one went

(SGA) held at Edinburgh College of Art in 1970.

from one room to the next. The real triumph

The driving force behind this publication is Dr Christian Weikop, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary German Art at the University of Edinburgh. As a specialist on leading twentiethcentury German artists, he has contributed

comfortable, glossy commercialisation of Princes Street- and getting it into the official festival programme.1

various illuminating essays on SGA, and has

As chair of the publishing organisation, I am

written new profiles of all thirty-five artists from

delighted to be able to present this special

Düsseldorf that took part in this pioneering

edition, which presents fifty new texts representing

exhibition. The SGA50 project was first prompted

the fiftieth anniversary, as well as many stunning

by an important conference, An Expanded

photographs of the event. As one of the student

Concept of Art. New Perspectives on Joseph Beuys,

helpers at SGA, the exhibition was particularly

which Dr Weikop organised at ECA in 2016. Just

significant for me. It changed many people’s lives,

as this publication, conceived in 2020, marks

including my own; and most notably, that of

fifty years since SGA, so it looks forward to the

Richard Demarco, who has described how the

centenary of the birth of Beuys in 2021.

exhibition prompted him to close his Melville

Studies in Photography has been offering insights

Crescent gallery, as the experience of SGA had

into photographic history since our inception

convinced him of that space’s inadequacy for the

in 1987. Publication of Strategy: Get Arts. 35 Artists

presentation of artists involved in performance

Who Broke the Rules offers us the opportunity

and environmental art.2

to fully reassess the significance of this event,

I would like to thank the University of Edinburgh,

documented in 1970 through the photography of

Creative Scotland and the National Galleries of

George Oliver, Monika Baumgartl, Ute Klophaus,

Scotland for their ongoing commitment to the

and Richard Demarco. Just six years later in 1976,

study and advancement of photography in

Colin Thompson, Keeper at The National Gallery

Scotland; and also to the writers whose articles

of Scotland, commented on SGA as a breath of

have made this publication possible. A particular

fresh air in the highly conservative Scottish art

acknowledgement should be made of the

world. He gave a perfectly-pitched response to

photographers who documented the exhibition

the exhibition: Opposite: Gotthard Graubner outside ECA Main Building with debris of the ‘Mist Room’, with Klaus Rinke’s water jet spouting from main entrance (1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl.

was in bringing this exhibition to Edinburgh incoherent, outrageous counterblast to the

Looking back, it was not so much the fur breathing on the dinner plates, the empty

and to Kirstie Meehan, who maintains the important NGS archive of material on SGA upon which this publication is based.

room, the broken chairs littering the staircase

Alexander Hamilton

like sad remnants of some fruitless and

Series Editor, Studies in Photography

incomprehensible assault, or the series of half-apologetic, bromide stained photographs of haunting ambiguity.

1. The Richard Demarco Gallery, 1966-1976, 10th anniversary exhibition catalogue, RDG , Edinburgh, 1976. 2. Ibid.

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Introduction: Christian Weikop

In February 2011, six months after arriving at

as part of its official programme, a major exhibition

Edinburgh University from Berlin, I decided to set

of Contemporary German art, the first to be

up the Research Forum for German Visual Culture

shown in Britain since 1938.’1 The Düsseldorf-

(RFGVC), launching it at the University’s Talbot

based artists who took over ECA in the late

Rice Gallery on the invitation of then director,

summer of 1970 were, however, closer in spirit

Pat Fisher, during their run of an exhibition on

to Dada than Expressionism, inheritors of the

Düsseldorf-based artist, Rosemarie Trockel.

provocative performance tradition of Cabaret

As part of my opening talk, I discussed the

Voltaire in Zurich (1916) and the radical display

importance of Herbert Read, Watson Gordon

strategies of the First International Dada Fair in

Professor of Fine Art at Edinburgh University

Berlin (1920). The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf had

between 1931 and 1933. During his short tenure,

staged an important retrospective of Dada

Read published Art Now (1933), dedicated to

in 1958 in the old bomb-damaged, patched-up

his friend Max Sauerlandt, the Director of the

Kunsthalle building, an exhibition which had some

Hamburg Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, who

impact on the young artists connected with the

had been dismissed from his post in April 1933

emergence of a Düsseldorf art scene, artists later

by the National Socialists for his advocacy of

associated with the new ‘Brutalist’ Kunsthalle,

Expressionism and avant-garde art more

which opened in 1967. Intriguingly, the German

generally. Read was one of the organisers of

art critic Georg Jappe, writing in the SGA

Twentieth-Century German Art (1938) at the New

catalogue, described the diverse Düsseldorf

Burlington Galleries, London, an exhibition that

avant-garde after 1945 as having a common

travelled in a smaller iteration to the McLellan

denominator in being ‘anti-Expressionist’.2 This

Galleries in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, in 1939.

did not mean that these artists were in line with

This London-Glasgow exhibition celebrated

National Socialist thinking, the opposite was true,

the Expressionist art that the Nazis defined as

but this publication considers the SGA artists’

‘degenerate’, drawing the ire of Adolf Hitler

individual contributions, leaving it for the reader

precisely because it was seen as being in

to decide why Jappe might have made this point.

opposition to the touring Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition (1937-41), which sought to defame and expunge Expressionism. It was the Twentieth-Century German Art exhibition

aware of the reputation of Prof Richard Demarco CBE as a great promoter of the visual and

that Peter Diamand, Director of the Edinburgh

performing arts in Scotland, not least through

International Festival, was referring to in the

the Edinburgh Festival, but it was Patrizio who first

Strategy: Get Arts (1970) exhibition catalogue,

told me about Strategy: Get Arts. He had been

when he stated: ‘I am pleased that the 1970 Edinburgh Festival has been able to include,

22

Sitting in the audience for the RFGVC launch in 2011 was Prof Andrew Patrizio. I was already

involved with ECA’s controversial Palermo

This international symposium led to another,

Restore (2005), a project to reinstate the artist’s

‘Joseph Beuys and Europe: Crossing Borders,

Blau/Gelb/Weiss/Rot (1970), a colourful

Bridging Histories’, that I co-organised in

architrave intervention in the ECA Main Building

collaboration with the Henry Moore Institute at

stairwell, which was whitewashed by the

Leeds Art Gallery in January 2018, with Demarco

college shortly after SGA ended in 1970. Patrizio

as the keynote speaker. Both conferences

succinctly reflects on the debate concerning

resulted in a special issue on Beuys for Tate

the ‘recreation’ versus ‘uncovering’ of

Papers (no.31, Spring 2019), which I guest-edited.3

Blinky Palermo’s work in this publication. Two exhibitions on Joseph Beuys were held simultaneously at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in autumn 2016. Upstairs in the Modern Two building was an ARTIST ROOMS exhibition on Beuys’s drawings, and downstairs Richard Demarco & Joseph Beuys – A Unique Partnership. Connected to the Demarco exhibition was a fascinating archive display on SGA, which was put together in the Keiller Library by the archivist Kirstie Meehan, also a contributor to this publication. And as part of the official programme for these National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) exhibitions, I organised ‘An Expanded Concept of Art: New Perspectives on Joseph Beuys’, an international symposium held at ECA in the Main Lecture Theatre and Sculpture Court, spaces that had been used for SGA back in 1970. Richard Demarco was guest of honour at this October 2016 conference and

My own contributions to this issue comprised an essay entitled ‘”More Impact than the Venice Biennale”: Demarco, Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts’, focusing on the British critical reception of the exhibition, and ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with Richard Demarco’, in which Demarco reflected on SGA and his close relationship with Beuys, Günther Uecker, and other artists, as well as on the impact that the ‘Celtic world’ had on Beuys’s creativity. In 2019, scholarship on SGA was certainly picking up in anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary. Karen Barber had her article ‘Documents and Archives: Photography Of, At and In the 1970 Strategy: Get Arts Exhibition’, published in the Summer 2019 issue of Studies in Photography, and Barber’s piece in this book publication is a brief distillation of that much more extensive article, focusing here specifically on the photographers of SGA.

also on the panel at a related event, the Playfair Library roundtable, ‘Artists’ Recollections of Joseph Beuys in Edinburgh’, organised by one of my research students, Andrew Symons, who has been working on Beuys for his collaborative PhD with NGS.

23

Introduction Christian Weikop

Besides Demarco, another participant at these

and liaising with key Kunsthalle Düsseldorf staff.

Beuys events was Alexander Hamilton, Chair

In my essays, I write on Demarco’s extraordinary

of the Scottish Society for the History of

drive in the early formation of Strategy: Get Arts,

Photography (SSHoP) and my collaborator on

as well as the importance of the German

this SGA50 project. Hamilton had been a student

organisers, Karl Ruhrberg, Jürgen Harten, and

helper at SGA, where he had a unique opportunity

Georg Jappe, but Gough-Cooper gives her own

to support the work of visiting Düsseldorf artists,

first-hand account, discussing the break offered

a career-changing experience as he explains

to her by Demarco, and the impact working on

in his essay for this publication. During the 2016

SGA had on her career, not least her involvement

conference, he showed delegates around the

with the documenta.

ECA spaces utilised by the artists back in 1970. This led to the idea of filming an interview with him, intercut with George Oliver photographs of the exhibition. This RFGVC film was screened at ECA in 2018 and 2019, and has inspired another more professional production, currently in development, by American film director Ted Fisher, who specialises in arts and culture documentaries. One of many interviews Fisher conducted in preparation for this film was with Douglas Hall OBE (1926-2019), the first Keeper of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and his wife Matilda Hall, both of whom had attended SGA in 1970. With Hamilton, Fisher, and myself putting questions to them, this proved to be the last ever interview with Douglas Hall. Some short excerpts from that interview are included in this publication. Another interviewee Opposite: Stefan Wewerka posing on the main staircase of ECA Main Building (SGA 1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl.

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was Jennifer Gough-Cooper, who joined the Richard Demarco Gallery as an administrator in 1969, but by the spring of 1970 found herself in the role of Scottish co-ordinator of SGA. Rising to the challenge, she was essential to the success of the exhibition, working closely with Demarco

It was important for this publication to bring different perspectives into the existing narratives on the exhibition and its legacy. It was also important to profile all the artists who contributed to the exhibition, including those who are perhaps not so well known to anglophone audiences. Previous considerations of the exhibition have understandably focused on Beuys, a hugely influential artist and charismatic figure, who continued to collaborate with Demarco throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, but this publication attends closely to other participants too. The lack of female artist representation at SGA is immediately noticeable. There were only two female artists involved, Dorothy Iannone and Hilla Becher, but this was the reality of those times. As Andrew Symons has discovered, ‘Of over two hundred artists who exhibited in the paintings and sculpture section at documenta III (1964), just six were women. Of sixty artists participating in Festum Fluxorum Fluxus (1963), only two were women.’4 The gender balance would slowly improve with the next generation of

25

Introduction Christian Weikop

artists, not least with the rise of Rosemarie Trockel

of the sheer amount of documentation and the

(b.1952), who called into question the patriarchy

need to identify the most salient correspondence.

of the West German art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, but it was not until 1998 that Trockel was made a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

been absolutely grounded in the documents of this NGS archive. These documents reveal the

Of critical importance to this publication has been

highs and lows of the exhibition-making process.

the Demarco Digital Archive (DDA), an invaluable

There were some tense moments and times

resource maintained by the University of Dundee,

when it seemed as if the whole initiative might

who have generously supplied a number of

collapse. The essays and texts in this SGA50

photographs by Richard Demarco and George

edition reveal several dramas, but this is partly

Oliver. Oliver was the partner of Cordelia Oliver,

what makes this international exhibition,

the Guardian’s arts correspondent in Scotland

unconventionally staged in a city art college,

for more than three decades, who provided

so endlessly fascinating. It was a ‘sensation’

enthusiastic critical coverage for SGA, while

exhibition in different respects, but unlike the

her husband provided extensive photo-

Royal Academy Sensation exhibition of 1997,

documentation. These photographs have been

which further ‘branded’ Charles Saatchi’s YBAs

supplemented by another personal set of Oliver

(in many ways indebted to their Düsseldorf

photographs in the collection of Gough-Cooper,

predecessors), SGA was not looking to the art

with permission to use George Oliver photographs

market. The artists and Demarco dissented from

kindly granted by his nephew, David Oliver.

any ‘art-as-commodity’ attitudes. Rather, it was

Another key archive is the Richard Demarco

an interdisciplinary effort among activist artists

Archive at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern

to promote European art and ideas.

Art (SNGMA; Modern Two), covering all aspects of Demarco’s career from the 1960s to the 1990s, with folders on Strategy: Get Arts (1970) containing many documents relating to the exhibition. The SNGMA have supported us with images, some published here for the very first time, critical for filling in gaps in the visual record. This archive is a tremendous resource because it allows the possibility of effectively reconstructing the exhibition and events leading up to and beyond the exhibition, but it is also a challenge because

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My work for various essays and all the texts on the participating SGA artists in this publication has

Cross-referencing between the SNGMA Richard Demarco Archive and the Demarco Digital Archive (DDA) has been important to address lacunae in our knowledge of what was actually exhibited. There is no definitive ‘list of works’ shown at SGA in the SNGMA archive or DDA. There are provisional lists and transport lists, and these have been used in this reconstruction process, but last minute revisions in the SGA display in 1970 complicate the detective work.

Photographic evidence is also only helpful to a

(at speed) the installation of the SGA exhibition

point. Currently unavailable on the DDA are clear

at ECA, for the agreed fee of 50 pounds.

photographs of SGA artist contributions in situ

In a letter to Oliver, Gough-Cooper writes:

by George Brecht, Peter Brüning, Karl Gerstner, Mauricio Kagel, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhöfer, Lutz Mommartz, Tony Morgan, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri (although the Banana Trap Dinner is captured), and Franz Erhard Walther. Furthermore, one work by Adolf Luther (a Focusing Room) has been

the Exhibition will begin taking shape from Monday 10th August […] John Martin says that he needs some photographs for the catalogue not later than the morning of Thursday, the 13th.5 Oliver was charged with capturing the making of

misidentified as being by Gotthard Graubner.

a new kind of exhibition of art in process, adopting

Kagel, Kolhöfer, and Mommartz contributed films

a form of ‘event photography’, rather than taking

to SGA, and Walther was unable to attend, which

tightly focused static photographs of art objects.

would account for their absence. Oliver and

Some of his photographs reveal a notable,

Demarco photographs on the DDA of course

some might say refreshing, institutional lack of

show work by other SGA contributors, but some-

concern for ‘health and safety’ issues, as with

times this work is obscured by art objects, as is

the remarkable images of Palermo balancing

the case for the installation of photographs by

precariously up a very tall ladder, or the smashing

Bernd and Hilla Becher, seen on a studio wall,

of chairs for Wewerka’s ‘action’ in front of Beuys’s

through the semi-transparent containers of

young son, Wenzel. Oliver’s photographs truly

Erich Reusch. I discovered some photographic prints and negatives in the NGS archive, as well as in Gough-Cooper’s own personal set of Oliver photographs, which do reveal some of the missing artworks, but the absence on the DDA of now very famous individuals, such as Roth, Polke, and Richter is striking. There may be several reasons for this situation. Artists who are now major international stars were not necessarily well known, certainly to a UK gallery-going public, in 1970. Any sense of ‘priority’ might not have been entirely clear to Oliver, who was commissioned by the Richard Demarco Gallery, and instructed by Gough-Cooper to cover

capture the excitement of this 1970 moment, but the pace at which he needed to work meant that some contributions by now famous artists can only be glimpsed in the photographs on the back walls of ECA studios, or in the process of being handled by student helpers. This is true of Polke, Roth, and Richter, as well as others. In the case of Polke, the four paintings are not installed, but can be seen resting on a back wall. It took many weeks of studying documentation in the SNGMA archive before they were identified, helped by the transport list, which provided sufficient information for a positive identification. We know that they arrived at ECA damaged, which might account for the lack of clear photo capture.

27

Introduction Christian Weikop

During the process of researching this project,

essay ‘Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance

I discovered the comprehensive Gerhard Richter

of the Germans’, she documented Strategy: Get

website, a digital archive of all the artist’s work,

Arts for the German publication Kunst-Zeitung,

which shows the seven paintings exhibited at SGA

which devoted an entire issue to the ECA 1970

(https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/

exhibition.

exhibitions/edinburgh-international-festivalstrategy-get-arts-272).

publication happen. It will pave the way for an

contribution in situ was initially frustrating, given

installation of SGA photographs at ECA, and more

that it was clear what he contributed. However,

besides. Additionally, thanks go to our ECA

in analysing Oliver negatives on a lightbox in the

Principal, Professor Juan Cruz, for his belief in

SNGMA archive shortly before lockdown due

this project, and for writing such an interesting

to Covid-19 in March 2020, I came across the

foreword, which reveals his connections to Jürgen

evidence I was seeking. These vintage negatives

Harten and Richard Demarco in particular.

were enlarged by NGS and are published here for

And finally, I want to thank my esteemed friend,

the first time. They do not show Richter paintings

Chief Curator, Keith Hartley, for his opening

installed, but being handled by students after the

foreword, which says so much about the history

unpacking of work. This was an exciting discovery.

of displaying modern and contemporary

Demarco, we have been granted permission by the important German photographer and performance artist, Monika Baumgartl (b.1942), to publish her SGA photographs from 1970. It has been a pleasure to be in correspondence with Baumgartl, who has been very supportive of this publication, and I am delighted that we

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and collaborative spirit in wanting to make this

The lack of photographic evidence for Richter’s

As well as publishing photographs by Oliver and

Opposite: Stefan Wewerka on the main staircase of ECA Main Building with the broken bentwood chairs from his ‘action’ (SGA 1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021.

I want to thank Alex Hamilton for his friendship

can present a number of her truly remarkable photographs of the ‘actions’ and installations of the artists – Palermo, Beuys, Christiansen, Wewerka, Uecker, and Graubner (specifically his ‘Mist Room’, both before and after it burnt down). She and Klaus Rinke had not long returned from participating in the 10th Tokyo Biennale (May 1970) when they engaged with SGA. As discussed in my

German art in Edinburgh. SGA50 coincides with a number of other anniversaries. In this tough Covid year of 2020, I turned fifty, Alex turned seventy, and Richard Demarco turned ninety. We would therefore like to dedicate this special SGA50 edition to Prof Richard Demarco’s extraordinary achievements. 1. See Peter Diamand in Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 2. See Georg Jappe, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, ibid., n.p. 3. See https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/ tate-papers/31 4. I would like to thank Andrew Symons for allowing me to cite this information from his unpublished PhD thesis (in process). 5. GMA A37/1/0559. /46. 1 x ts. Letter to George Oliver from Jennifer Gough-Cooper, 4/8/1970, 1p.

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Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts Christian Weikop Richard Demarco (b.1930) was first invited to tour West German art institutions by Brigitte Lohmeyer, the Cultural Attaché at the German Embassy in London. In January 1970, Demarco had returned from a coast-to-coast cultural tour of the United States as a guest of the American government, and was in discussions concerning staging an Edinburgh Festival exhibition that would consolidate the idea that New York was the centre of the post-1945 art world. Demarco’s decision to go to Düsseldorf and other German cities, however, proved to be critical in changing his focus. His interest in this German city as a major European centre of contemporary art had already been piqued as a result of meeting Düsseldorf-based artist, Günther Uecker, at the first ROSC - an international exhibition of modern art, held in Dublin in 1967. Demarco had also been overwhelmed by Beuys’s contribution to the 1968 documenta 4 in Kassel and was well aware that Beuys was the Professor of Sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.1 He was therefore highly receptive to Lohmeyer’s invitation to visit Düsseldorf and other key German art centres when it came. Demarco’s first rendezvous in Düsseldorf on the evening of 27 January 1970 was with Vivien Gough-Cooper at the Restaurant Spoerri. Gough-Cooper, a director of the Richard Demarco Gallery, had championed Demarco’s artistic vision and would accompany him on trips abroad to seek out new artists to bring to Scotland. Her daughter, Jennifer Gough-Cooper, would join the gallery team as an administrator in 1969, and she would become the Scottish co-ordinator of Strategy: Get Arts. Demarco’s diary records that the first thing he did on the morning after arriving in Düsseldorf was phone Beuys.2 He arranged a time to see him the following day in his Oberkassel studio. Demarco famously enticed Beuys to visit Scotland by showing him two dozen postcards of the Scottish landscape, including Celtic and Pictish standing stones, thereby making a connection to Beuys’s own birthplace, the Celtic enclave of Kleve in the Lower Rhine region of Germany. The photograph Demarco took of Beuys looking out to Castle Stalker on 8 May 1970 (his first visit to the ‘land of Macbeth’) is an image of the artist successfully transported from Düsseldorf and projected into the absorbing physical and historical reality of this Scottish ‘picture postcard’ view, just as Demarco had hoped. Beuys’s experiences of the sublime landscape of Scotland would have a profound impact on his practice for the rest of his career.3

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Right: Joseph Beuys looking out to Castle Stalker, Loch Laich, Argyll, Scotland. 8 May 1970. Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

Demarco’s reliable guide in Düsseldorf was Hete Hünermann, who would later become a successful gallerist with an international reputation. In 1970, Hünermann represented Inter Nationes, the German equivalent of the British Council. She can be seen with her arms folded and in the company of Gerhard Richter and Uecker in a Demarco photograph of Richter’s studio. Demarco’s gallery and studio tour itinerary (27 January – 7 February 1970) was from the outset extraordinary in terms of the pace of visits. He started on the morning of the 28th, accompanied by Hünermann, and visited the Galerie Alex Vömel, Galerie Niepel, Galerie Ileana Popescu, the Kunsthalle and Kunstverein, Galerie Hella Nebelung, and Uecker’s flat, all before lunch. He seemed particularly impressed by the Galerie Hella Nebelung, and he noted in his diary: ‘Exquisite Gallery set in old classical pavilion bordering a lake in City centre. Domestic atmosphere’. Hella Nebelung was at the forefront of the vibrant Düsseldorf art scene after 1945; she was the first to show Yves Klein’s monochromes in 1955, and the first to show kinetic art in 1963. Her gallery, a former guard house in Ratinger Tor, was one of the city’s intellectual centres. After Nebelung’s death in 1985, and after the intercession of Beuys, Hete Hünermann would take over the gallery in 1986. Demarco also recorded in his diary a lunch meeting at the ‘Little Fox’ pub: ‘Put the idea of Edinburgh as setting for German art show on lines of Canada 101 to Uecker. He was enthusiastic. Agreed to meet later at the studio of Gerhard Richter.’ As it transpired, SGA was to be a very different kind of exhibition to Canada 101, which Demarco had staged at ECA for the Festival in 1968, and which was more conventional in the sense of being exclusively

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Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts Christian Weikop

focused on painting, albeit avant-garde painting. Clearly the success of that show had implanted the idea of ECA, Demarco’s alma mater, as a potential large venue. He understood early on in the genesis of the exhibition that an art college environment, Below: Left - Right: Günther Uecker, Gerhard Richter and Hete Hünermann, in Richter’s studio, 28 Jan 1970. Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

rather than a city gallery, was better suited for the experimental work he wanted to show, as well as being a means of conveying the idea of ‘artist-teacher’ as personified by Beuys. Later that day, Demarco visited the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and its director Dr Werner Schmalenbach, as well as the Galerie Schmela (est. 1957), one of the most important contemporary art galleries in Germany in the postwar period. This progressive gallery was one of a number in and around Düsseldorf, which benefited from the prosperity of the ‘Economic Miracle’, a new climate of wealth that encouraged art collecting, particularly in the Ruhr area. The Galerie Schmela represented a number of artists who would participate in SGA. In the evening, Demarco visited the studio of Richter with Uecker and Hünermann. Demarco’s first impression of Richter is noted in his diary as a ‘superb painter (reminiscent of Jim Howie, but more realistic) – using photography as basis of paintings.’ On Uecker and Richter he adds, ‘They both agreed to gather the best young Düsseldorf artists together to present our ideas to them on Edinburgh show, tomorrow evening.’ The next day Demarco continued with his studio/gallery tour with Hünermann, but he travelled from Düsseldorf to Cologne to visit the Galerie Reckermann before moving on to the ‘powerful’ Galerie Rudolf Zwirner. He then visited a number of other galleries, including one belonging to Michael Werner, which had only just opened in 1969. Werner was showing Georg Baselitz, Dieter Roth, Jörg Immendorff, A.R.Penck, Marcel Broodthaers and others.

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Considering the glamorous image and established reputation the Galerie Michael Werner has today, with branches in London Mayfair and New York, in the historic East 77 Street townhouse (where legendary dealer Leo Castelli once kept his gallery), it is intriguing that Demarco noted in his diary: ‘Run on shoe string - very idealistic principles’, not a year after Werner had established his Cologne premises. Demarco then returned to Düsseldorf for a 3pm meeting in Richter’s studio, attended by ‘leading artists’, to discuss the Edinburgh exhibition idea. At this point, nineteen artists were discussed as potential contributors, seventeen of whom would actually contribute, namely, Uecker, Richter, Beuys, Daniel Spoerri, Konrad Klapheck, Gotthard Graubner, Erwin Heerich, Blinky Palermo, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Klaus Rinke, Sigmar Polke, Heinz Mack, André Thomkins, Dieter Roth, Karl Gerstner, Tony Morgan, and Imi Knoebel. By July 1970, the number of artists involved in SGA had expanded to thirty-five. Right: Artists’ meeting in Gerhard Richter’s studio on 29 Jan 1970. Günther Uecker (left), Hete Hünermann (seated), Richard Demarco standing (centre, right). Photographer unknown, Demarco Digital Archive.

After visiting Richter’s studio, Demarco used the rest of the day to visit the studios of Polke, Rinke, Morgan, Knoebel, and Rainer Giese (known as Imi Giese). He then visited the apartment of Konrad Fischer, whose important gallery was founded in 1967, and who along with Uecker, expressed an interest in helping Demarco with the exhibition. It was decided then, as noted in the diary, that it might be best if the artists ‘were presented as Düsseldorf artists and not German artists’. The roll-call of artists in SGA, especially in its later expanded state, whilst predominantly German, was indeed international in composition. And it was very much the internationalism of Düsseldorf as a major art centre that those involved with SGA wanted to emphasise. After Fischer, Demarco viewed the art collection of Gabriele Henkel, the sister of Hünermann and wife of the industrialist Konrad Henkel, who like Hete was closely connected to the Düsseldorf art scene. Finally, Demarco

33

Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts Christian Weikop

had dinner with Uecker and Mack, and would visit Mack’s studio in a ‘village area’ near Mönchengladbach the following day. At the end of a busy evening, and after squeezing in a late night visit to Gerstner’s studio, Demarco noted the following in his diary: The influence of Professor Beuys and Group Zero is much felt. Contemporary artists certainly are an integral part of society. There has been a tremendous boom in the last three years in the art world in Germany. The Kunstmarkt at Köln and Dokumenta have helped, and the fact that the art world is decentralised and the German economy is booming. RDG must get its artists to be interested in and respectful of the German scene. Exchange shows must take place to link Scotland with Germany. On the 29 January, Demarco saw Dr Fliescher, ‘the man who is in charge of Culture for the City of Düsseldorf’, who agreed that the idea of a show of Düsseldorf artists for the Edinburgh Festival was a good one. In addition, he met the Assistant Director of the Kunsthalle, Jürgen Harten, who would later prove to have such a key role in the exhibition organisation. Harten advised Demarco that such an exhibition was only possible with the support of his Director, Dr Karl Ruhrberg. Demarco then departed Düsseldorf for Frankfurt and continued with his tour of Germany (including Wiesbaden, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Munich) where he met many other artists, gallerists, museum directors, dealers, and collectors, but it seems that it was the first two or three days of his stay in Düsseldorf that were really significant with respect to the early formation of SGA. Reflecting on what he had seen, Demarco wrote to Jennifer Gough-Cooper on 31 January 1970: Düsseldorf was unbelievable […] They believe in my hopes and plans, and will support my idea of a show entitled “Düsseldorf in Edinburgh”. All the top artists live in Düsseldorf.[…] All the artists I have seen are so good – as good as Paul Neagu. The Düsseldorf scene is the most exciting and progressive in Europe. They are representative of the best Germany has to offer. Your mother and I have been staggered by the artist studios we have seen. UECKER organised all of this extra to the official tour […] This whole show would be a ‘happening’ – ten years ahead of anything in Britain including the I.C.A.’s efforts. It has to happen during the Festival 1970.4 On the evening of Sunday 1 February at the Grandhotel Hessischer Hof in Frankfurt, Demarco lost no time in dictating a letter about his ‘Düsseldorf in Edinburgh’ plans for the attention of Dr Fliescher in Düsseldorf, with copies sent to Peter Diamand (the Berlin-born and educated Director of the Edinburgh Festival) and Lohmeyer at the German Embassy.

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Demarco’s experiences in various other German cities only consolidated his conception of the exhibition. In Karlsruhe, he met Dr Georg Bussmann, Director of the Badischer Kunstverein, who informed him that the Kunstmuseum Luzern had, the previous year, staged an exhibition called the Düsseldorfer Szene (15 June – 13 July 1969), featuring seven of the artists who would later be involved in SGA. Demarco noted in his diary that this exhibition ‘could be a model for the Edinburgh show’. During this meeting, Bussmann also discussed the pioneering exhibition Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, held at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969 Above: Poster for the exhibition Düsseldorfer Szene, Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1969. Collection: ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. AR00861.

and curated by Harald Szeemann, another ‘model’ for SGA. Interestingly, Gough-Cooper would join Szeemann’s documenta 5 Kassel team in 1972. Demarco spent much time considering new approaches to exhibition-making with those he met in Germany, such as his ‘art collector and personal friend’, Ursula Rohloff, who showed him a catalogue for an innovative show of open studios at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden called 14 mal 14. Eskalation (1969), organised by now legendary curator, Klaus Gallwitz. Demarco noted in his diary that this exhibition was ‘extraordinary’: It involved the artists being given the use of the Gallery […] and the public were invited to participate in their creation of the exhibition. From empty rooms, through happenings, concerts, lectures, talk-outs, film shows […] A living thing. […] The artists lived in and around the Gallery. Demarco also visited Dr Ernst Hüdepohl, Director of Cultural Programmes at the GoetheInstitut in Munich. Demarco credits him in the SGA catalogue as someone ‘who encouraged me in my resolution to have as many artists as possible physically present in Edinburgh’.5 Such conversations were critical in the percolation of ideas about how an artists’ ‘take-over’ of ECA might be a possibility. In a detailed memorandum from 25 March 1970 to Peter Diamand, Demarco stated that ‘the emphasis would not be on the usual installation of paintings and sculptures within the usual accepted idea of an art gallery’, but rather ‘an extension of the accepted role of the visual artist’.6 He also conveyed how Uecker, Mack, and other artists wanted to create work in situ, and proposed the following: ‘I would like to create environments which depend on these artists’ reaction to the spaces I would offer them at the art college [...] Professor Beuys in fact would create an environment out of what would be his first experiences of Scotland.’7

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Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts Christian Weikop

Right: Front cover of New Directions exhibition catalogue showing Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh. Right – Left: Richard Demarco, Cordelia Oliver, Günther Uecker, Lesley Benyon, Stefan Wewerka, George Oliver. Demarco Digital Archive.

Diamand was not unsupportive of Demarco’s exhibition idea, but as early as 5 February 1970, he had written to Demarco signalling his concern about the preparation time: ‘The idea sounds very interesting, but unfortunately I am afraid it is too late for 1970. Why not wait until 1971 when everybody will have the time to prepare it thoroughly?’8 Asides from Diamand’s concern about the timeframe, Demarco faced difficulties in persuading the Visual Arts Committee of the Festival Society of the suitability of the provisionally titled ‘Düsseldorf in Edinburgh’ as an ‘official’ Festival exhibition, an issue that concerned the German organisers and Brigitte Lohmeyer too. Even when it was included in the official programme very late on in May 1970, there was no financial support from the Society and only modest financial backing from the Scottish Arts Council. It was only due to Demarco’s total conviction that the exhibition must happen, along with support from the city of Düsseldorf, Goethe-Institut (Munich), and the German Embassy (London), as well as the founders and Friends of the Richard Demarco Gallery, not to mention the Royal Bank of Scotland, that it was staged. A lead-in time of six months from the genesis of a major exhibition to its realisation is remarkable by any standard, especially one with so many moving parts, a new kind of total ‘happening’. As well as Strategy: Get Arts, which was presented by the Richard Demarco Gallery (RDG) in association with Edinburgh College of Art and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Demarco staged another exhibition in tandem with SGA at the Demarco Gallery at 8 Melville Crescent. This was called New Directions (21 August – 12 September 1970) and featured three Romanian artists - Ilie Pavel, Horia Bernea, and Paul Neagu, and four Scots - Michael Docherty, Pat Douthwaite, Alistair Park, and Rory McEwen. McEwen had of course helped film Beuys on the Rannoch Moor trip in August 1970. Photographs available on the Demarco Digital Archive also show SGA artists Beuys and Henning Christiansen meeting artists at the New Directions show. Intriguingly, artists that feature on the front cover of the New Directions catalogue, namely Uecker and Stefan Wewerka, were associated with SGA at ECA rather than the RDG exhibition, but the cover and contents point to the interrelationship of both exhibitions. Demarco was particularly keen to initiate productive dialogues between West and East European artists, across the ‘Iron Curtain’, as it were, at this time.

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Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts Christian Weikop

There is no question that Demarco was brilliant at making connections, drumming up support, financial, media, and otherwise, and generally galvanising interest in the exhibition, as evidenced by the very large cache of typed and handwritten letters relating to SGA in the Richard Demarco Archive at SNGMA. Many are from Demarco and Gough-Cooper to the Festival committee, the Goethe-Institut, the Arts Council of Great Britain, BBC and STV, various embassies, key parties in Düsseldorf and the rest of Germany, senior ECA staff especially the Principal Stanley Wright and Mr John Brown (College Secretary), and Robin Philipson (Head of Painting), who took the greatest interest of all ECA faculty, helping Demarco in repurposing studios into exhibition spaces. There are also official and personal letters to all the artists involved, as well as invitations to many other individuals, including the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Edward Heath.9 Demarco’s relentless energy to make this experimental exhibition a reality was quite extraordinary. Some of that verve is captured in a well-known George Oliver photograph of the official opening of Strategy: Get Arts on 23 August 1970, which shows some of the curators, artists, patrons, senior college staff, and other guests, including Herr Karl Guenther von Hase (the German Ambassador to Britain who opened the exhibition), all standing together on the main stairway of ECA. In the middle of it all, holding court, is of course Richard Demarco. 1. For more on this first encounter, see ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with Richard Demarco’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-interview, accessed 5 November 2020. 2. GMA A37/1/0566. /162. 1 x ts. 'DIARY REPORT: RICHARD DEMARCO'S TOUR OF WEST GERMAN ART CENTRES, 27/1/1970 - 7/2/1970, 11p. All further main text references to Demarco’s diary relate to this report and will not be footnoted. GMA codes relate to the Richard Demarco Archive at Modern Two, SNGMA. 3. See for example, Sean Rainbird, Joseph Beuys and the Celtic World, London 2005; and Victoria Walters, Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: A Language of Healing, Münster 2012. 4. GMA A37/1/0563. /119. 1 x ts. Letter to Jennifer Gough-Cooper from Richard Demarco, 31/1/1970, 1p 5. ‘Richard Demarco’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 6. GMA A37/1/0567. /33. 1 x ts. Letter from Richard Demarco to Peter Diamand re: ‘Memorandum on proposed exhibition “Dusseldorf in Edinburgh”’, 25/3/1970. 7. Ibid. 8. GMA A37/1/0567. /34. 1 x ts. Letter from Peter Diamand to Richard Demarco, 5/2/1970. 9. GMA A37/1/0558. /120. 1 x ts. letter to Rt. Hon. Edward Heath from Richard Demarco, 25/7/1970, 1p.

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Above: Official opening of Strategy: Get Arts, ECA, 23 August 1970. Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive.

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Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop The Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf had an instrumental role in the organisation of Strategy: Get Arts, specifically involving the founding director, Karl Ruhrberg, and the deputy director, Jürgen Harten, as well as the important art critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Georg Jappe, who was closely connected to the institution. Richard Demarco had met Harten on his trip to Düsseldorf in late January 1970, and he was still touring other German cities when Harten wrote to him at the Demarco Gallery on 5 February to confirm the interest of the Kunsthalle in the proposed exhibition: Mr Fliescher [Cultural Officer of the City of Düsseldorf] himself will inform you about the decision of the city. It is in Mr. Ruhrberg’s name, too, that I can confirm to you that we will support happily your idea of an exhibition with different works of artists who live in Düsseldorf. We are prepared to help you with the organisation of this exhibition and would appreciate it if you could very soon send us a list of names of those artists that you think should participate. I personally would not divide the exhibition strictly into three parts, especially because it has been the meaning of happenings and underground movies to abolish the boundaries of “art-types”, for that reason one should not again develop new generic notions, but one should stress the artistic communication no matter what medium is being used.1 As the SGA ‘Scottish coordinator’ Jennifer Gough-Cooper observes in her essay for this publication, the proposed exhibition was sanctioned on 6 March when the Festival Director, Peter Diamand, and Demarco met with cultural attaché, Brigitte Lohmeyer, at the German Embassy in London. Demarco returned to Düsseldorf in mid-March 1970 in order to firm up support. And between 6-8 May, Ruhrberg, Jappe, and Joseph Beuys travelled to Edinburgh to finalise arrangements for the exhibition. Demarco took these key figures of the Düsseldorf art scene 2 on a whistle-stop tour of his gallery, Calton Hill, Salisbury Crags, and Arthur’s Seat (particularly enjoyed by Beuys). Beuys was also shown the spaces of Edinburgh College of Art, including the Sculpture Court. At 4pm on 7 May, Demarco, Jappe, and Ruhrberg, met with Professor Stanley Wright (Principal of ECA), to discuss the idea and arrangements for the exhibition, a meeting recorded by Gough-Cooper.3

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Above: Left - Right: Georg Jappe, Karl Ruhrberg, Richard Demarco, Joseph Beuys, Sally Holman, outside the Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh. 7 May 1970. Photographer unknown, Demarco Digital Archive.

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Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop

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Opposite: Joseph Beuys at Loch Awe, Scotland. 8 May 1970. Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

On 8 May, Beuys, Demarco, and his assistant Sally Holman, went much further afield, a road trip to Argyllshire (‘The Road to the Isles’), to Inveraray, Loch Awe, Rannoch Moor, Glencoe, and Castle Stalker (Loch Laich). Beuys’s first visit to Scotland proved to be essential preparation for his famous Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony because he would return to Rannoch Moor in August before SGA opened to make a film that was used as part of this ‘action’ at ECA. On 9 May, Demarco would travel to London with Beuys and Jappe to have a meeting with Diamand and Lohmeyer at the German Embassy to discuss the organisation and financing of the exhibition, as well as the catalogue to be produced by Forth Studios. On this London trip, Beuys, Jappe and Demarco also met Peter Townsend (Editor of Studio International) in a Bloomsbury café to discuss a feature on Beuys. Indeed Jappe’s article with the authoritative title ‘A Joseph Beuys Primer’ was published in Studio International (vol.182, no.937) in September 1971. It reasserted the wartime survival story of Beuys being saved by nomadic Tartar tribesmen, who wrapped him in insulating layers of felt and fat to keep him from freezing to death after his Stuka bomber was shot down, a narrative famously called into question by the art critic Benjamin Buchloh in an Artforum article, nine years later.4 Jappe was an important interpreter not only of Beuys, but of all the SGA artists. His essay in the SGA catalogue, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, provided a brilliant summary of a panoply of new artistic tendencies. On the afternoon of the 9 May 1970, Beuys, Jappe, and Demarco visited the home of pop artist Richard Hamilton, a friend of Beuys. Hamilton phoned Michael Compton, the newly appointed Keeper of Exhibitions and Education at the Tate, who, according to Demarco, said that ‘the British Arts Council and the Tate would be most interested to have the German Exhibition after the Festival’.5 And much later, on the 5 September 1970, during the run of SGA, Demarco informed Ruhrberg that the exhibition might even travel to the ‘Young Vic Theatre in London’, as Frank Dunlop, Director of the National Theatre ‘had been so impressed by the ECA show’.6 These plans to restage SGA in an art museum or even theatre setting in England’s capital did not directly amount to anything, although arguably the ICA exhibition Art into Society – Society into Art: Seven German Artists, staged four years later in 1974, owed much to the 1970 Edinburgh exhibition.

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Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop

Ruhrberg and Jappe’s trip to Scotland in May 1970 clearly focused minds. An outline of plans for the Edinburgh exhibition was immediately prepared on their return to Düsseldorf, giving information on potential artist contributors to the exhibition, as well as proposals on installations and films.7 Jappe proved to be an important link man between Harten, Ruhrberg, and the contributors. After visiting Scotland, he gathered ten of the key artists (Uecker, Opposite: Jürgen Harten (pointing) in an ECA studio, during preparations for Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. Below: Left - Right Jennifer Gough-Cooper, André Thomkins, Daniel Spoerri, and Jürgen Harten, on Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh (June 1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

Filliou, Graubner, Kohlhöfer, Luther, Palermo, Polke, Richter, Thomkins, and Weseler) to consider the strategies and shape of the exhibition. Then, along with Günther Uecker, he conveyed the nature of those discussions to Harten and Ruhrberg. He also mentioned this meeting of the artists in a personal letter to Demarco on 16 May, stating ‘It is a pity that Uecker, who is the veritable motor for the consent of artists, leaves Düsseldorf in a week for the Biennale in Venice’.8 Uecker’s commitment to the Edinburgh exhibition was apparent from the moment Demarco met up with him in Düsseldorf in January 1970, which was sustained even though he was due to exhibit at Venice with Heinz Mack. Uecker’s presence at ECA in August was essential and resulted in some extraordinary work being created in situ (see entry on Uecker). In the same letter, Jappe suggested some potential titles for the exhibition: ‘“Art and Antiart – Düsseldorf today in Edinburgh” or “Art in Progress – Düsseldorf today” or “Rooms & Realities” or “Mans, Marks, Movies-“ or “Happy Artsday”’. Ruhrberg, who wrote to Demarco one day earlier on 15 May, offered yet another variation for the title, suggesting ‘Düsseldorf Art Scene Today. “Paris on the Rhine”’.9 Working through the NGS archive, it is apparent that different titles were used at different stages in the run up to the exhibition. The title Strategy: Get Arts was not firmly proposed until 22 June when Harten wrote to his counterpart Gough-Cooper, after his reconnaissance trip to Edinburgh with André Thomkins and Daniel Spoerri the previous week (see entry on Thomkins). Harten gave provisional instructions for the layout of the exhibition in this letter and subsequent correspondence, providing detail on room divisions, the creation of white space or blackout conditions needed for the various installations, and other arrangements (including the

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outside banner display and name of the exhibition).10 Things continued to evolve right up until the opening, with many last minute display revisions and studio spaces being reallocated. In advance of the opening, Harten requested that Gough-Cooper visit Düsseldorf in the absence of Demarco (who was in Romania), in order to settle with Mr. Fliescher the financial affairs necessary to arrange insurance and transportation. Gough-Cooper travelled to the city between 1-3 July. Harten then returned to Edinburgh between 8-15 August to assist Gough-Cooper in overseeing the installation of the exhibition. He can be seen in a number of George Oliver photographs from this time, with student helpers and Cordelia Oliver, with Beuys in the studio spaces, and carefully considering the installation of work with Gough-Cooper. Harten and Gough-Cooper also worked with Hete Hünermann, a representative of Inter Nationes (the German equivalent of the British Council), who assisted the Kunsthalle on the details of the exhibition. Furthermore, Hünermann liaised with the artists, notably helping in the production of the film Description, made specifically for SGA (see Tony Morgan entry), and makes an appearance in the film as Spoerri’s partner. Gough-Cooper wrote multiple times to Hünermann in Düsseldorf, on one occasion even enquiring as to whether there was a ‘German beer company’ that might offer support, or ‘large companies in Düsseldorf who would pay for artists to visit Edinburgh plus their expenses.’11 In liaison with Kunsthalle assistant Renata Sharp, Harten, and Hünermann, Gough-Cooper dealt with a great deal of the administration in this regard, including the accommodation of the visiting Düsseldorf artists, booking many of them into the University of Edinburgh’s Pollock Halls of Residence.

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Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop

The staging of the exhibition was not without incident, to put it mildly. In the first instance, Ruhrberg had a number of concerns about the sharing of costs and wrote to Demarco on 27 May 1970 to remind him that the city of Düsseldorf would pay a subsidy, but should not be charged ‘indeterminate costs’. He added that he was ‘astonished’ by the fact that no guards for the artworks had been provided for and that Düsseldorf was ‘expected to pay for people’ to help install the exhibition, adding ‘I can see some kind of financial crisis ahead of us’. He also questioned Demarco’s request in the draft agreement for an exclusion of insurance liability in the event of damages, and stressed that there was ‘no situation’ whereby the Kunsthalle could be ‘responsible for all the organisation’.12 He effectively fired off several warning shots in this letter. Demarco was clearly concerned about the spiralling costs of SGA and communicated with Ruhrberg on 10 July to that effect.13 On 16 July, Ruhrberg wrote to Demarco again, objecting to the ‘unrealistic contracts’ that had been drawn up by the Demarco Gallery, putting his concerns in much stronger terms, stating that ‘we see the project of the Exhibition gravely in danger’.14 He added angrily, ‘I don’t think it is possible for an organiser of an Exhibition to expect three quarters of the cost of it to be paid for by the City that is being invited to produce it […] and then suggest a reorganisation at the last minute’. In this regard, Ruhrberg refused a reduction in the number of artists approved by Gough-Cooper on her visit to Düsseldorf, stating that other key figures would ‘withdraw their own contributions’ if that were the case, as artists could not suddenly be ‘uninvited’. Furthermore, he suggested that the Richard Demarco Gallery were trying to renege on earlier promises regarding the support of catalogue costs, and argued that they were attempting to shift the costs of travel expenses and Securicor personnel, contravening an earlier agreement. Overall, Ruhrberg criticised the ‘low contribution of ready cash from Scotland’, and was furious that he had to miss a trip to the Venice Biennale and a meeting with Giorgio de Chirico to deal with the problems arising from the situation and was then still unable to reach Demarco. He added that the Kunsthalle was not responsible for ‘negotiating’ a subsidy, set at 43,000 DM with the City of Düsseldorf, and even accused the Demarco Gallery of ‘negligence’ in handling the project, stating with exasperation: ‘We have gone far beyond this agreement by taking over the total organisation from Germany’. Just weeks before the opening, this was a sink or swim moment for the Demarco Gallery in the fate of Strategy: Get Arts. Demarco wrote back to Ruhrberg on 24 July, calmly and systematically trying to address all the issues outlined in

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Ruhrberg’s furious letter. This clearly had an ameliorating effect as the exhibition went ahead with the support of the Kunsthalle, although no doubt Demarco’s mention of his hope that a ‘British dock strike’ would not impact on the Hasenkamp transportation is unlikely to have been well received.15 As it happened, there were no issues in this regard. On 3 September 1970, and after having attended SGA, Ruhrberg adopted a much more conciliatory tone in a letter to Demarco, thanking him for his ‘kind collaboration’ and ‘hospitality’. He mentioned the ‘miracle’ of bringing about the exhibition, and stated: ‘You took the initiative and all in all we can be I believe very happy with the result.’ He then added wryly: ‘It is a great pity, though, that Graubner’s “Smoke Room” did burn down and that you in Scotland will now have a tremendous lack of Fog’. He also praised John Martin for the ‘fabulous layout’ of the catalogue.16 Ruhrberg and Jappe both made strong contributions to the iconic large format SGA catalogue in supplying essays on the Düsseldorf art scene. Jappe also included a transcript of a discussion that took place in Uecker’s studio on 11 July 1970 between some of the key artists in anticipation of SGA. This began in an irreverent but revealing way: ‘Gerstner: I have no idea of Edinburgh except that every year there is a terribly boring Festival there. Wewerka: Weren’t we going to de-bore it a bit?’17 Beyond their written contributions to the catalogue, Ruhrberg and Jappe sought to promote SGA in the German press and on television. Jappe wrote an article for the FAZ (1 October 1970), the title of which translates as ‘More Impact than the Venice Biennale. British Press Reviews on Düsseldorf in Edinburgh’.18 Ruhrberg and Harten also wrote essays about SGA in the ‘EDINBURGH SCHOTTLAND 1970’ issue of Kunst-Zeitung (no.5, Sept 1971), an art magazine in a large edition of 10,000 copies, which had a striking front cover of an Edinburgh landscape by Monika Baumgartl, perhaps subtly alluding to the style of Richter’s photo-paintings of landscapes, several of them shown at ECA. Whilst Baumgartl was not Following pages: Edinburgh landscape (1970). A photograph from this sequence was also used for the front cover of Kunst-Zeitung 5 (Edinburgh Schottland 1970 issue), 1971. Photos © Monika Baumgartl.

one of the artists exhibited in SGA, she was critical in the creative documentation of the exhibition. Her photographs are technically very impressive and have a distinctive performative quality, generating memorable images of Palermo and Wewerka in particular. She also captured Gotthard Graubner’s ‘Mist Room’ before and after it was destroyed by fire. Another important German publication focused on SGA was the Cologne-based conceptual art journal Interfunktionen (no.5, 1970), published in twelve irregular issues between 1968 and 1975, one of the most important European art magazines since the Second World War.

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Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop

A long visual essay by Johannes Stüttgen, entitled ‘Joseph Beuys: ‘Celtic’ (Schottische Symphonie)’, consisted of Stüttgen’s sketches and notes of the ‘action’ involving Beuys and Henning Christiansen, interspersed with compelling cropped photographs by Ute Klophaus of key moments in the performance.19 A Klophaus photograph of Beuys holding a staff in an ECA studio made the front cover of the publication. Beuys would also appear on the front cover of issue 7, effectively using the magazine, with the keen support of the editor F.W. Heubach, to publish photographs of his performances and other artworks. But Heubach would clash with the next editor, the aforementioned Benjamin Buchloh, a Beuys sceptic. Buchloh felt that Beuys had received far too much coverage to the exclusion of younger artists. Buchloh was editor for the last two issues (nos. 11-12), but the publication folded in 1975 after the major controversy surrounding issue 12, when he published Anselm Kiefer’s ‘Besetzungen’ (Occupations), a parody of a photographic travelogue, which showed Kiefer giving a ‘Sieg-Heil’ salute in different European locations, an ‘action’ that ironically enough first had the support of Beuys, Kiefer’s mentor. There were undoubtedly a number of problems with staging SGA beyond all the tense wrangles about respective levels of financial contribution and how many artists should be involved. Graubner’s ‘Mist Room’ did indeed burn down and it was fortunate that the fire Above: Ute Klophaus, Joseph Beuys performing Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, front cover of Interfunktionen 5, 1970. Johannes Stüttgen, final sketch of visual essay documenting Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, Interfunktionen 5, 1970, p. 97. © DACS 2021. Opposite: Gotthard Graubner in his ‘Mist Room’ (Homage to Turner) in ECA (August 1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021.

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station was right next door to ECA, otherwise it could all have been much worse. Torches were stolen from Beuys’s The Pack by children from the local neighbourhood, which led to another dispute over insurance liability, one lasting over a year. Two men in brown overalls attempted to steal Gerhard Richter paintings, an attempt luckily foiled by the student helpers. In addition, the Edinburgh city authorities sought to shut down Klaus Rinke’s water installation in the ECA main building entrance. Stefan Wewerka’s bentwood chairs ‘action’ on the staircase upset some college staff who saw it as an act of hooliganism. And the attempt to locate Beuys’s VW camper van in the Sculpture Court was refused by an irate college secretary, Mr Brown. Günther Uecker’s corridor of knives had to be ‘caged’ on the demands of the police for fear of impaling visitors. Edinburgh police also confiscated a batch of films that were being shown for lack of certification and a Polke-Film went missing. Sigmar Polke paintings were damaged in transit, as stated in the ‘Damaged Items’ list, a list that included Graubner’s ‘Mist Room’ machine and one of his paintings. Konrad Klapheck’s Der Chef and H.P. Alvermann’s Homage to Goldwater were also listed as damaged, along with two objects by Daniel Spoerri, and Karl Gerstner’s Times Square.20 Finally, Blinky Palermo’s wall intervention was whitewashed soon after the exhibition ended, as if the college was attempting to erase a bad memory.

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Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop

Opposite: Two visitors looking at Dorothy Iannone’s artist book Extase (1970) in an ECA studio. Photo © George Oliver, George Oliver Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA AL/08/03.

For all the undoubted issues, the exhibition can nonetheless be appreciated as very important in shaking up the academicism of the art school and the conservativism of the Scottish art world at this time. It attracted the attention of national and international press, much of it generated by Demarco’s astonishing ability to publicise events, and it stole a march on London institutions, including the ICA, which had yet to present anything as radical. SGA had a positive impact on the participating artists too, with Beuys returning to Edinburgh no less than seven times to collaborate with Demarco after 1970, the two becoming close friends. The pioneering nature of the exhibition has been mentioned many times in art historical literature on the 1970s, and it is considered to be a pivotal moment by scholars on Beuys, notably profiled by Caroline Tisdall in the catalogue for the Guggenheim Beuys retrospective in 1979. SGA was effective at publicising the important Düsseldorf art scene to an Anglophone audience, providing an important European alternative to the disproportionate interest in contemporary American art in the British press. Looking back, it was certainly a rollercoaster of an exhibition, or to use Ruhrberg’s word, something of a ‘miracle’. 1. GMA A37/1/0566. /60/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Jürgen Harten, 5/2/1970, 1p. All GMA codes relate to the Richard Demarco Archive at Modern Two, SNGMA, Edinburgh. 2. For more on the Düsseldorf art scene, see Christian Weikop, ‘“More Impact than the Venice Biennale”: Demarco, Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-strategy-get-arts, accessed 13 November 2020. 3. GMA A37/1/0566. /8. 1 x ts. 'MINUTE OF MEETING held at ECA, 7/5/[1970], 3p. 4. Benjamin Buchloh, ‘Twilight of an Idol: Preliminary Notes for a Critique’, Artforum, vol.18, no.5, 1980, pp.35–43. 5. GMA A37/1/0566. /165. 1 x ts. Richard Demarco’s report on meeting with Dr Lohmeyer on 9/5/1970, 2p. 6. GMA A37/1/0566. /117/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Karl Ruhrberg from Richard Demarco, 5/9/1970, 1p. 7. GMA A37/1/0558. /4/1. 1 x ts. 'Outline of Plans for Düsseldorf - exhibition in Edinburgh', 1970, 10p. 8. GMA A37/1/0563. /5. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Georg Jappe, 16/5/1970, 1p. 9. GMA A37/1/0566. /72. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Karl Ruhrberg, 15/5/1970, 2p. 10. GMA A37/1/0566. /83. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco and Jennifer Gough-Cooper from Jürgen Harten, 22/6/1970, 4p. 11. GMA A37/1/0567. /138. 1 x ts. Letter to Hete Hunnerman from Jennifer Gough-Cooper, 6/7/1970, 2p. 12. GMA A37/1/0566. /78. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Karl Ruhrberg, 27/5/1970, 2p. 13. GMA A37/1/0566. /94. 1 x ts. Letter to Karl Ruhrberg from Richard Demarco, 10/7/1970, 2p. 14. GMA A37/1/0566. /98. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Karl Ruhrberg, 16/7/1970, 2p. 15. GMA A37/1/0566. /101/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Karl Ruhrberg from Richard Demarco, 24/7/1970, 3p. 16. GMA A37/1/0566. /117/2. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Karl Ruhrberg, 3/9/1970, 1p 17. ‘Interview’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 18. For more on the British press reception of SGA, see Weikop, ‘“More Impact than the Venice Biennale”. 19. Intriguingly, in 1973, Edition Schellmann, Munich, would produce a double LP Scottish Symphony/Requiem of Art in a numbered edition of 500, which contained two sound pieces by Beuys and his musical collaborator, Christiansen, from the Edinburgh 1970 performance of Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony. 20. GMA A37/1/0566. /121/2. 1 x ts. 'Damaged Items from "STRATEGY GET: ARTS’, Edinburgh 1970', 1p.

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Above: Jürgen Harten, Assistant Director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf at South Queensferry with view to Forth Rail Bridge (June 1970), Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

Jürgen Harten (b.1933) was one of the most influential curators of the twentieth century. He was Secretary for Arnold Bode’s documenta 4 (1968) and Founding Director of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf in 1998. From 1969 to 1972 he was Deputy Director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in support of Karl Ruhrberg. In 1972, he succeeded Ruhrberg and was Director of the Kunsthalle until 1998, where he curated a large number of important exhibitions, including Marcel Broodthaers (1972), The Museum of Money (1978), Anselm Kiefer (1984), Gerhard Richter (1986), Pollock / Siqueiros (1995), Mikhail Vrubel (1997), and many others. Additionally, he was the instigator of the major exhibition project Berlin-Moscow / Moscow-Berlin 1950–2000 (2003–04). In 2014, he reflected on Strategy: Get Arts (1970) at Edinburgh College of Art, in a keynote lecture given in Liverpool:

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Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: Appendix A. Jürgen Harten on Strategy: Get Arts

The suggestion came from Richard Demarco, the always enthusiastic, Italian-Scottish impresario, who had planned an exhibition from Germany for 1970. After a journey through the Federal Republic of Germany, he decided, impressed especially by Beuys, to focus on the Rhenish art scene, with an emphasis on Düsseldorf. In selecting the artists, he relied on the respected Cologne critic Georg Jappe, whom Ruhrberg had recommended to him […] The event took place in the Edinburgh College of Art, which was vacant during the summer holidays. In principle, the whole spectrum of the arts was to be represented, the conventional genres, objects, photography, light installation, sound, performance, and film. At that time, I was commissioned to set up the exhibition on site together with some of the artists who had travelled there and in consultation with the Scottish hosts. The artists were able to refer directly to the building and the rooms of college, for example Palermo with an intervention in the staircase, Graubner with a fog room, Uecker with a beating door and knives in the corridor, Rinke with a jet of water directly in front of the entrance. The criticism was surprisingly positive. I cannot resist quoting Edward Lucie-Smith, who wrote in The Sunday Times (30.08.1970) under the heading “A great subversive”: “The Demarco-Düsseldorf show is shock tactics; it makes most English artists look provincial. It even makes the New York avant-garde look tame. Its importance does not lie in the fact that one is confronted with masterpieces, whatever that word may now mean, but rather that it calls the whole direction being taken by the visual arts into question”. However, he was ahead of his time in that he causally acknowledged the exhibition as a contribution to restoring the dialogue between American and European art.

Jürgen Harten, ‘The Kunsthalle Legend: The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and its Exhibition Policy with Regard to the Quest for Avantgardism and the Promotion of Contemporary Art in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century’. Excerpt from a transcript of lecture given as part of the Exhibition Research Centre's keynote lecture series, 'The Kunsthalle Effect', Liverpool John Moores University, 30/01/2014.

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

In Spring 2019, the Tate published an essay, among a cluster of papers on Joseph Beuys that I had guest edited, in which I considered Strategy: Get Arts (SGA).1 The starting point for this essay was to follow up on Cordelia Oliver’s observation in her Guardian review of 24 August 1970, entitled ‘Dada for the ‘seventies’’, that it was the most significant exhibition on German art to be shown in the UK since 1938, a point also made in the original SGA catalogue designed by John Martin. As well as discussing Oliver’s review in a wider historical context, I examined many other press clippings in the Richard Demarco Archive at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was ‘bread and butter’ art historical research, analysing the many vivid statements on this pivotal Festival exhibition, penned by various art critics. More difficult to ascertain, however, is the impact that Strategy: Get Arts had on artists and the institutions of art after September 1970. One thing for sure is that it made Demarco, the instigator of SGA, reflect on his own position as a gallerist, and the legitimacy of the ‘white cube’ gallery space as a suitable place to ‘show’ new tendencies in contemporary art. In October 1970, Demarco stated: ‘I must be the first to learn the lesson of the German show. I question everything now. I question the Demarco Gallery.’2 The limitations of Demarco’s Melville Crescent gallery for work that was not painting, would lead him to develop the experimental ‘Edinburgh Arts’ summer schools from 1972 onwards. He did this in collaboration with Edinburgh University’s Schools of Scottish and Celtic Studies and that of Extra-Mural Studies, which encompassed installation, performance and theatre, workshops and lectures, in various non-gallery spaces. This was, in Demarco’s mind, an extension of the art studios of both Edinburgh College of Art and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, conceptually and physically expressing the legacy of his earlier SGA project. With ‘Edinburgh Arts’, Demarco stated that he wanted to transform the enterprise of the Richard Demarco Gallery to a school in the ‘Bauhausian spirit of Black Mountain College’.3 Stand out moments included the performances to be seen at ‘Edinburgh Arts 73’, with Tadeusz Kantor’s production of Lovelies and Dowdies (with Beuys’s participation) in the semi-derelict Forrest Hill Poorhouse, and Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 10, watched closely by Beuys, at Melville College. Abramović’s early risky performance (her first), based on a drinking game played by Slavic peasants, involved twenty knives, which may have brought to mind, for those who saw it, Günther Uecker’s Corridor of Knives at SGA three years earlier, although Abramović put her own body in direct danger in her work.

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Right: Joseph Beuys at Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, during the Black and White Oil Conference at Forrest Hill Poorhouse. Edinburgh Arts 1974. Photo © Archiv Robert Lebeck. Demarco Digital Archive.

Right: Joseph Beuys lecture event at the Black and White Oil Conference at Forrest Hill Poorhouse, Edinburgh. Edinburgh Arts 1974. Photo © Richard Demarco. Demarco Digital Archive.

Beuys delivered his Twelve-Hour Lecture: A Homage to Anacharsis Cloots at Melville College in 1973, but the following year he would utilise Kantor’s favoured Forrest Hill venue for his ‘action’ Three Pots for the Poorhouse (June 1974) and the Black and White Oil Conference (August 1974), the latter also involving the architect, inventor, and theorist, Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). At the Black and White Oil Conference, which questioned the future of North Sea oil, Beuys talked of ‘The Energy Plan of the Western Man’, using blackboards in open discussion with audiences. Reflecting on that 1974 event in 2021, Beuys’s ideas now come across as more relevant than ever. He was an exceptionally prescient artist and radical ecologist, anticipating many of the urgent concerns of the current climate crisis and the devastating impact of the burning of fossil fuels. Beuys’s involvement in this 1974 Edinburgh conference should be seen in the wider context of his co-founding of the German Green Party in 1979 and his forest ‘actions’, starting with his protection of the Grafenberger Wald outside Düsseldorf in December 1971 and culminating in his visionary documenta VII project, 7000 Oaks—City Forestation instead of City Administration (1982–87).

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Skirmishes in Art Education Beyond Edinburgh, it seems that Strategy: Get Arts did indeed function as a model for later exhibitions, such as the Tate Gallery’s Seven Exhibitions (February 24–March 23, 1972), which further ushered in the arrival of conceptual art in Britain. The seven overlapping exhibitions were organised by Michael Compton, the Tate’s first Keeper of Exhibitions and Education, and included work by Keith Arnatt, Hamish Fulton, Bob Law, Bruce McLean, Michael CraigMartin, David Tremlett, and Beuys. Craig-Martin had exhibited at the Demarco Gallery in January 1971, and Tremlett had earlier installed 16 Industrial Scarecrows on the rooftop of Goldberg’s Store in association with the Demarco Gallery during SGA. Beuys was of course central to the success of the ECA exhibition in 1970, and at the Tate’s Seven Exhibitions in 1972, he presented Information Action, a public lecture on direct democracy. Compton knew all about Strategy: Get Arts and had even discussed it with the pop artist, Richard Hamilton, in May 1970 (see my essay in this publication on Richard Demarco). For the first time, Tate really embraced the idea of an ‘expanded concept of art’, and the ‘Introductory Note’ in the unusual exhibition catalogue, stated: We believe that the artists who are showing in this group of exhibitions are taking advantage of this widening of the available media […] All these strategies have in common that they are lineally derived from the living tradition of art so must be experienced within that context.4 The ICA London exhibition Art into Society – Society into Art: Seven German Artists, staged in the autumn of 1974, curated by Norman Rosenthal and Christos M. Joachimides, also owed something to SGA. This exhibition was partially based on Kunst im Politischen Kampf (Art in the Political Struggle), which had taken place a year earlier at the Kunstverein Hannover, again curated by Joachimides, but SGA was a reference point too. Regarding the title of the ICA exhibition, the curators even deployed the palindromic device of Strategy: Get Arts. As was the case with many of the SGA artists, the seven artists at ICA were all socially and politically engaged, although only one artist, Beuys, featured in both ECA and ICA exhibitions. Hans Haacke was on an earlier rota for SGA at ECA in 1970, but at some point fell off the list, while he did feature in the ICA exhibition. There are photographs of Art into Society – Society into Art that show Beuys in front of a blackboard on which he has written ‘SCOTLAND’ in large letters, indicating that he was attempting to bring some Celtic spirit to the English metropolis, or signalling that SGA and his experiences in Scotland in the previous four years, had been a milestone in his own artistic development. 5

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But in the wake of SGA what about the possibility of a change of pedagogical ideas and practice within ECA itself? The creative upheaval imposed upon the art college by the Düsseldorf artists was summed up by artist Merilyn Smith, who argued that ECA was … an ideal arena for challenging established authority. Artists, students, administrators and public all had to make decisions and take sides. […] Initial skirmishes between the German artists and the Scottish establishment ensured that serious attention would be focused on the subsequent conflict of art ideologies.6 According to Alexander Hamilton, the art establishment would attempt to dig its heels in at ECA and sought to eradicate the memory of SGA.7 Exorcising Düsseldorf demons, a strict separation of artistic disciplines was maintained, as opposed to any further exploration of blurring boundaries between different artistic disciplines, which both the Düsseldorf curator, Jürgen Harten, and Demarco had insisted was so vital. At ECA, this process of entrenchment involved continuing to address the legacy of painting practices stemming from the ‘1922 Group’ / ‘Edinburgh School’, formed essentially from alumni of ECA. A protégé system prevailed, and a persistent emphasis in Edinburgh on the primacy of easel painting led to a certain insularity and scepticism with respect to the possibilities of an ‘expanded concept of art’, as demonstrated by the practice of Beuys et al. Up until SGA was staged, there was a frustrating sense of ECA being behind the curve of new multi-disciplinary artistic developments and the emergence of conceptual art, when as a capital city art college, it really should have been at the cutting edge. The parochialism of the Scottish art scene had been an issue for some time. Reflecting on the importance of the 1938/9 exhibition Twentieth-Century German Art at the New Burlington Galleries, London, which then travelled to the McLellan Galleries in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Cordelia Oliver wrote that Glasgow painters had been ‘jolted out of complacency … by the large exhibition of the work of the large Nazi-proscribed German painters – Klee, Kokoschka, Nolde, Marc …’, 8 an exhibition that had had the close involvement of Herbert Read, one-time Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at Edinburgh University. By comparison, some thirty-one years later with SGA, Demarco stated the following with respect to bringing artists over from Düsseldorf: ‘I want to throw the Scots artists in at the deep end. I mean, I want to continually throw the British artists in at the deep end.’9 Oliver had compared SGA to the much earlier McLellan Galleries exhibition, and argued that ‘this one too will have its effect on those who are fortunate enough to experience it’.10 But in 1970, while certain individual artists were impressed by SGA, the faculty at ECA were apparently not ‘jolted out of complacency’ like their Glaswegian predecessors, and did not feel compelled to change their system of teaching or artistic priorities in response to SGA’s ‘shock of the new’. This might be evidenced by the fact that for the next Edinburgh International Festival in 1971, marking its twenty-fifth anniversary, ECA staged a display of work by former students, titled The Edinburgh School, 1946-1971. In some respects this was

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

a conscious reply to SGA and the ‘Düsseldorf School’, but it was a safer proposition, and one mostly ignored by the press. According to the artist Kenneth Dingwall, while this exhibition did provide a ‘relatively rare platform’ for some younger non-RSA members, it ‘certainly did not reflect the adventure of SGA.’11 By the time The Edinburgh School exhibition opened, Blinky Palermo’s wall painting intervention above the main stairway for SGA, as well as his trademark Blaues Dreieck (Blue Triangle), stencilled at the centre point above the entrance to the Sculpture Court from the Entrance Hall,12 had long since been painted out by order of the College authorities, who were effectively reclaiming ECA for ‘Scottish’ art. In October 1970, weeks after SGA had finished, Demarco lamented that the exhibition took place outside of semester time, implying that there would have been more pressure to bear for institutional change had a larger student population been present. Demarco stated: I was very sad that the students from all the four Scottish art colleges couldn’t see it […] I was sad also that the students from all the other colleges in Britain couldn’t see it. In a way, the exhibition wasn’t an exhibition, it was a form of art education. It was a comment on art education.13 And yet, art students today, students highly familiar with ‘intermedia’ and ‘multisensory’ practices, of immersive environments, installations, performance, and participatory art, will appreciate how this exhibition, or ‘non-exhibition’ as Demarco often referred to it, represented a singular moment, when the very idea of medium ‘specialisation’ in a college environment, really started to be challenged. SGA was so ahead of its time that some of the lessons to be learnt from it were only understood and developed one generation later within ECA, rather than in the immediate aftermath. Alexander Hamilton has suggested in his short essay for this publication, ‘Gallery Assistants – SGA’, that Robin Philipson, Head of the Drawing and Painting Department at ECA from 1960 to 1982, did at least try to engage with the activities and ethos of the exhibition. Philipson had been a supporter of the Demarco Gallery since its opening in Melville Crescent in 1966, and as the art historian Elizabeth Cumming has observed, his work was included in the Gallery’s inaugural show.14 In 1970, in the lead-up to SGA, he helped Demarco identify suitable exhibiting spaces within the college, and he witnessed Beuys’s performance of Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony. Philipson would have been curious to see the work of these

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Düsseldorf-based artists as he was interested in modern German art, particularly of the pre-war period, and his own style had been influenced by the Expressionist style of Oskar Kokoschka, especially his painting Zrání ’, which had been acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland in 1942. Philipson was also indebted to the ‘Edinburgh School’ and American Abstract Expressionism. After SGA, Philipson endeavoured to bring in new speakers and perspectives, and even oversaw a ‘happening’ in Cramond, but ultimately any impetus from the Düsseldorf exhibition petered out, partly due to the lack of enthusiasm or interest from other art college tutors. Whilst he was certainly not the most radical figure, and was in many ways central to the Edinburgh art establishment, as exemplified by his presidency of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1973, Philipson did understand the need for modernising the ECA curriculum. After SGA, he favoured ‘an inter-School approach’, putting forward fresh ideas which did not always go down well with other members of staff, who stubbornly wanted to remain in their departmental silos.15 Philipson’s attempts to come to terms with SGA stood in marked contrast to the position of J.R. Brown, Secretary and Treasurer for Edinburgh College of Art, who was mostly obstructive. For instance, Brown did not want to permit Beuys’s VW camper van into the building for the exhibition. In discussion with Giles Sutherland, Cordelia Oliver recounted how he stood at the entrance and said, ‘No motor cars, no automobiles in this building!’16 In response SGA organiser, Jennifer Gough-Cooper, claimed, ‘It’s a work of art!’ But Brown retorted, ‘It doesn’t matter, it can’t go in the building.’17 Gough-Cooper also recalled the problems with Brown when Oliver arrived from Glasgow to see the artists preparing their installations, at which point he came storming into ECA shouting. Gough-Cooper has stated: He was out of his mind with rage because of what was being put into the art college. […] He left, there was nothing he could do, the Demarco Gallery had an agreement that they could use a certain number of rooms. He must have been so angry at not seeing any traditional sculpture and painting.18 In many respects, Brown embodied the traditionalism of the Edinburgh ‘art world’ at that time, which asides from placing an emphasis on easel painting (‘la belle peinture’), was bound up with connoisseurship and ideas of good taste and decorum, particularly as expressed by the time-honoured artistic study of plaster casts of Antique sculpture. Walking between the giant order Doric columns supporting the portico of ECA’s main entrance, a student would have had the impression of a temple devoted to neoclassical principles and pedagogy, a feeling only heightened inside the building by the presence of the Parthenon casts, a gift from Lord Elgin to Edinburgh in 1827. This is why Palermo’s wall intervention, comprising a horizontal band of primary colours that ran around the architrave, was so effective at providing a visual contrast to all the interior neoclassical ‘whiteness’.

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

Brown’s negative response to SGA, one shared by some other ECA staff, might also be understood in the wider context of what had taken place in art schools across the UK in the previous two years. In late May 1968, an anti-authoritarian student movement was galvanised by the occupation of Hornsey College of Art (HCA) in North London. Initially, this concerned local student grievances regarding the control of union funds, but was in part triggered by the ‘to-the-barricades’ tensions in Paris earlier that month, which featured prominently in the British press, when more than twenty thousand students, teachers, and supporters (many guided by ideas developed by the Situationist International) marched to protest over the police invasion of the Sorbonne, after student occupations at that institution and at Nanterre campus of the University of Paris. A clash led to broken-up paving stones being thrown by students and tear gas being deployed by the police. The occupation of HCA was not violent in this way, but the demands of the occupiers escalated to a radical reform of the college structure, including potentially a dissolution of authoritarian distinctions between teacher and student. Demands for a major and consultative review of the art and design curriculum, and a string of diktats attacking the government’s education policy, were issued. The sit-in was supported by some sympathetic staff, visiting artists, and cultural figures, such as Nikolaus Pevsner, R. D. Laing, Joan Littlewood, John Latham, Richard Hamilton, Henry Moore (who donated £500 to the cause), and Buckminster Fuller, who would later meet Beuys and Lady Rosebery at the Royal Botanic Garden (famously photographed by Robert Lebeck) during the Black and White Oil Conference in 1974. The Hornsey occupation lasted for six weeks, with students taking over the main building of HCA at Crouch End, until the Conservative council regained control of the building by force, expelling student activists and enforcing a six-month lockout with barbed wire and Alsatian dogs. Tom Nairn, then a sociology lecturer at HCA, who had been a former student at ECA and the University of Edinburgh, was dismissed from his post for his involvement in support of the Hornsey students. Over the next eighteen months, the activism evident at HCA rippled out to other art colleges and as far as Edinburgh, although in a rather less radical fashion. Alexander Hamilton recalls that student action at ECA started in September 1969, with students (himself included) staging a strike and a sit-in, even taking over the ECA Board Room, in a protest over outdated teaching methods. While some staff understood the need for reform but were unsure of the way forward, others were hostile to the idea of change. The student strike fizzled out by the time the January term started, but there was already some lingering resentment about the college ‘sit-in’ before ECA was chosen as the venue for SGA.

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The idea therefore of a college ‘take-over’ by Düsseldorf artists in the late summer of 1970, was too much of a ‘Spirit of 68’ style shake-up for some tutors, a spirit encapsulated by the cover photograph to this book, showing Klaus Rinke smashing a chair on the ECA staircase as part of Stefan Wewerka’s ‘action’. There was likely concern over the potential for another Hornsey-style protest at ECA at the very outset of the new college year in September 1970, a situation that the college authorities wished to avoid. The Scottish public reaction to SGA was also sometimes hostile for different reasons, judging by the ‘Letters to the Editor’ pages of various publications, an affront to the moral rectitude of many a good burgher from Edinburgh and beyond. One such letter by J.B. Chambers-Crabtree in The Scotsman on 28 August 1970, even considered SGA as ‘sick’, ‘decadent’, ‘obscene’, ‘moronic’, ‘psycho-pathological’, ‘subjects for study by psychiatrists’, and a waste of the ‘public purse’. Unwittingly or not, the author reiterated the same arguments that the conservative critic Max Nordau had used in his book  Degeneration (1892), arguments that were later adopted by the National Socialists in the 1930s in their negative response to Expressionism, the very art celebrated at Glasgow’s McLellan Galleries, which the Nazis considered to be ‘degenerate’ culture. Intriguingly, there was one response to Chambers-Crabtree’s outburst of indignation, a letter published in The Scotsman on 9 September 1970, which was almost Dadaist in its parodic tenor, irreverently aping Chambers-Crabtree’s prose style in response to SGA: I suspect that the staff and alumni of the Edinburgh College would wish to be disassociated from the contents and aims of the show. But they should wish to be dissociated from myself, Spiro Agnew, J. Chambers Crabtree, and the rest of mankind […] I suspect that there is much in this exhibition favoured by pseudo-intellectuals, hippies and drop-outs of today. But they favour so much that is evident in myself, Spiro Agnew, J. Chambers Crabtree, and the rest of mankind. I suspect strong pathological overtones, outrageous obscenity and gentle associations with our brothers, the moronic inhabitants of hospitals for the mentally disturbed. But is this not true of myself, Spiro Agnew, J. Chambers-Crabtree, and the rest of mankind?19 This continued for seven paragraphs. The sign-off of ‘myself, Spiro Agnew, J. ChambersCrabtree and the rest of mankind’ was an absurdist liturgical refrain that mocked the values of ‘common decency’ demanded by Chambers-Crabtree. The inclusion of the Republican Spiro Agnew, the 39th Vice President of the United States during the presidency of Richard Nixon, known for his anti-liberal, anti-intellectual speeches, and aligned here with the conservative values of Chambers-Crabtree, was a deliberate ploy on the part of the author, who hailed from New York and was a staunch Democrat, namely the artist Jon Schueler (1916-1992).

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

Jon Schueler’s Encounters with SGA Artists SGA had an impact on individual artists based in Scotland, on figures such as Hamilton, Elizabeth Ogilvie, Hamish Pringle, Alistair Park, Rory McEwen, Kenneth Dingwall, and Michael Docherty. Even artists who missed SGA soon became aware of its significance. For instance, Glen Onwin RSA, who returned from European travels to undertake postgraduate studies at ECA, felt compelled to acquire the oversized catalogue shortly after the event. Many of the artists who featured in it would have an influence on his own practice, including the Bechers, Polke, Richter, and Beuys, and he subsequently made sure to attend later Beuys events in Edinburgh, on the German artist’s multiple returns to the Scottish capital at the invitation of Demarco. SGA also impressed certain international figures, such as the Romanian artists Paul Neagu and Horia Bernea, who can be seen in Demarco’s photographs of the audience for Beuys’s Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony.20 The artists Li Yuan-chia and Nam June Paik also visited SGA, the latter coming with a number of artists from London, all associated with the spirit of Fluxus.21 Jon Schueler, an American artist who had been taught and mentored by Clyfford Still, deserves particular consideration as a case study though, due to the profound impression the exhibition made on him, and the fact that he became close to a number of SGA artists, especially Beuys, with whom he shared a deep love of nature. Schueler wrote: ‘When I speak of nature, I’m speaking of the sky, because in many ways the sky became nature to me. And when I think of the sky, I think of the Scottish sky over Mallaig …’.22 His references to himself as a nature painter, one inspired by the late works of William Turner, differentiated his practice from other artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, for whom ‘nature’ was a dirty word. As Jack Baur, the Director of New York’s Whitney Museum pointed out in considering Schueler’s work on the occasion of a solo exhibition in 1975: ‘… these are basically abstract pictures, not unrelated to the work of Mark Rothko or some of Clyfford Still’s big canvases. They have that kind of largeness, mystery and power.’23 Schueler wrote to Baur much earlier on in 1957 stating, ‘I am interested in reality – in the reality of my vision – not realism on the one hand, nor abstraction on the other.’24 Having initially been introduced to Demarco by the Scottish poet Alastair Reid, Schueler arrived in Edinburgh in February 1970 and immediately took a taxi to the Demarco Gallery. The Demarco Gallery functioned as an essential meeting place during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but so too did his own home and the homes of Demarco Gallery friends and patrons. In conversation with Demarco in October 1970, Schueler stated: ‘I think I met more

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people in the first half an hour that I was in your gallery than I’d met in Edinburgh during the previous 13 years on my various visits’.25 Several months later, in early May 1970, Demarco would introduce Schueler to Beuys, when for the first time Beuys travelled to Edinburgh from Düsseldorf in order to discuss preparations for Strategy: Get Arts. Reflecting on that encounter, Schueler said to Demarco: ‘Meeting with Beuys was a tremendously profound experience really, because when you first introduced me to him in the spring, we got along very well. I enjoyed him. I liked him. I felt I’m talking to an artist.’26 A photograph accessible on the Demarco Digital Archive shows this encounter, with Schueler, Beuys, and the Maltese artists Emvin Cremona, Mary de Piro, Gabriel Caruana, the architect, Richard England, and the curator and museum director James Harithas, all together at the home of Demarco Gallery Board Member and designer of the iconic SGA catalogue, John Martin.27

Above: Magda Salvesen in Mallaig, June 1970. Photo by Jon Schueler. © Jon Schueler Estate.

Schueler would also meet Magda Salvesen early in 1970, some twenty-eight years younger than him, who at that time was working as an exhibition officer for the Scottish Arts Council (which only much later merged with Scottish Screen to form Creative Scotland). Salvesen became Schueler’s muse and life partner, and in 1971 she would join him at Romasaig, a one-time schoolhouse and white-harled cottage close to Mallaig in the north-west

Right: Richard Demarco, Jon Schueler in his Mallaig studio, January 1971. Photo © Richard Demarco. Demarco Digital Archive.

Highlands, which looked across the Sound of Sleat, a cottage which functioned as his Scottish base and studio. Schueler had first been drawn to Mallaig in 1957, the same year that the legendary gallerist, Leo Castelli, invited him to have the first one-man show at his new gallery in New York. At that time, Schueler was identified as a leading figure of the ‘second generation’ of New York School artists, and in 1959 he was considered as such by the aforementioned poet, Alastair Reid, in B.H. Friedman’s book School of New York: Some Younger Artists. Reid described Schueler’s paintings as ‘intense compressions of vast movement and change, the slow building up of clouds, the filtered image of the sun…’.28

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

While Schueler was identified as a rising star in the mid to late 1950s, by the end of the decade, Castelli had switched his focus to Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and artists associated with an emerging Pop Art, a movement that Schueler felt was shallow, with little to offer. The 1960s proved to be a difficult decade for him. After discontinuing his collaboration with Castelli in New York, he supported his practice with his teaching at Yale, the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, and other places. As certain personal relationships and professional connections disintegrated in the United States, however, he felt compelled to return to Scotland. Schueler’s departure from the American art scene early in 1970 resonated with Demarco, then Director of the Edinburgh Festival Contemporary Visual Arts programme, because he had just turned down the opportunity to stage a Festival exhibition that would have reasserted the significance of the ‘New York School’, of which Schueler had been a part. Demarco was attracted to talented artists who somehow existed on the margins of things, either by virtue of their location, particularly those who were based behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, or were in some form of self-imposed exile, rather like Schueler. This can be related to Demarco’s conception of himself as an ‘outsider’ figure, a feeling that came about from being persecuted as an ‘enemy alien’ as a boy growing up in Portobello, Edinburgh, after the Italians joined the Axis alliance in 1940.29 Demarco’s interest in the non-mainstream, can be seen in his critical decision to focus on Düsseldorf in 1970, a recognised ‘Kunststadt’ (art city) in Germany, but not a city that had garnered anywhere near the same kind of ‘global’ attention as New York at that time, which as Demarco observed, ‘was the undisputed source of all power in the world of visual arts’.30 Yet in 1970, Demarco divulged to Schueler, ‘… things weren’t right in America, there was a lack of spiritual strength, spiritual conviction, in most of what I saw, not just in the work of many of the so-called leading artists but also in the work of many of the so-called leading gallery directors.’31 Schueler moved between Mallaig and Edinburgh, initially staying in a West Bow flat, and later on in Salvesen’s flat at Drummond Place, New Town, on his return visits to the capital, after he was able to move into Romasaig in Mallaig in June 1970. In conversation with Demarco in October 1970, Schueler told of his earliest experiences of Edinburgh. These reflections are revealing because they comment on the cultural staidness of ‘Auld Reekie’ in the late 1950s. Asides from the activities of Jim Haynes’s Paperback Bookshop and

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Gallery (est. 1959), the Traverse Theatre (est. 1963), and the Richard Demarco Gallery (est. 1966), Edinburgh had, by 1970, not changed that much. But in the 1950s, outside of the summer Festival, there were even fewer possibilities in the visual arts. Schueler stated: When I did come here in 1957, there was nothing for me to think about or look for in Edinburgh as far as an art scene was concerned. I saw two things very, very quickly, within half a day. I saw the Royal Scottish Academy, the dead weight of that thing, just sort of enshrined in some way, just symbolizing boredom. And then I walked into one or two of the small, unpretentious galleries with small unpretentious illustrative work on the walls. And that was pretty much it and there was really no point in me looking any further. I did go around to the art school thinking that if I’d introduce myself, at least I might meet people.32 The real attraction of Scotland for Schueler was remote Mallaig and not Edinburgh; it was the possibility of immersion in nature, immersion in the ever-changing northern sky and sea of the West Highland coastline that excited him. Schueler had a Romantic vision of Scotland. His first experience of the country had lasted just a few hours after his B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’, which flew throughout the night ‘between layers of storm clouds and tossed all over the sky’,33 touched down in Prestwick in November 1942. He was a navigator during the Second World War, and navigators would take up a position in a small Plexiglas dome in these B-17s, often taking readings from the sun and stars, using these heavenly bodies to guide the bombers from the United States to Britain via Iceland, a route where not many visual landmarks existed. This wartime experience gave Schueler an important point of contact with Beuys, who had served in the German Luftwaffe as a radio operator, and then as a rear gunner in a Ju 87 ‘Stuka’ dive-bomber. Both Schueler and Beuys turned to art in 1945, and for both of them, art became a cathartic means of ‘healing the wounds’ of conflict. One of Beuys’s earliest artworks, Acer Platanoides (1945) in the National Galleries of Scotland, is a single Norway maple leaf stuck on to drawing paper and signed ‘J Beuys 45’. A regenerative Romantic symbol created at the end of the war, it marks the embarkation of an artistic journey in which he frequently embraced the arboreal. Like Schueler, Beuys was an artist in the Romantic tradition; both artists were drawn to nature; for Schueler it was sky and sea, for Beuys it was the land.

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

Below left to right: Joseph Beuys on a ladder during Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, August 1970. (Jon Schueler can be seen far right). Photo © Richard Demarco. Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

It was an emotional experience for Schueler to meet Beuys and he was fascinated by the

Audience for Joseph Beuys’s Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, August 1970. Photo © Richard Demarco. Demarco Digital Archive.

photographers Monika Baumgartl, Ute Klophaus, George Oliver, as well as David Baxandall

Joseph Beuys removing gelatine during Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, August 1970. Photo © Richard Demarco. Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

performance of Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony in ECA, watching for hours on several occasions. Schueler took photographs of the performance, including one of Beuys in a meditative state with a blackboard raised above his head, and Schueler can also be seen in Demarco’s photographs of the audience, watching Beuys scale a ladder in order to pluck gelatine globules from the wall and placing them on a silver tray. It was a diverse audience which included the actress Linden Travers and her daughter Sally Holman, the artists Alistair Park, Robin Philipson, Klaus Rinke, Johannes Stüttgen, Merilyn Smith, the (Director of the National Galleries of Scotland), the composer Harrison Birtwistle, among many others. During this performance, Beuys attached three pieces of paper to the gelatinecovered wall of the ECA life room. On the first piece of paper, it was written, ‘Where are the souls of …?’ On the second piece of paper, as Demarco has observed, were the names of artists who were being taken ‘seriously into account’ by Beuys: Naturally there was the name Malevich, summing up the Russian avant-garde, Van Gogh, Fra Anglelico, Masaccio, and God knows how many others. I was surprised that some of the other names were more from the history of ideas, the history of civilisation. I realised this was a kind of requiem.34

Opposite: Jon Schueler, Joseph Beuys holding a blackboard during Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony, August 1970. Photo by Jon Schueler. © Jon Schueler Estate. Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

Other artist names on the paper included Caspar David Friedrich, Albrecht Dürer, Paul Klee, and William Nicholson. Schueler similarly considered the performance as a requiem, and reflected on the names of friends he had lost in conflict, but also those artists and friends from the ‘New York School’ who had been lost through suicide, illness, or tragic accident, such as Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, David Smith, and Jackson Pollock. Schueler, who was almost hypnotically caught up in Beuys’s performance, stated: When Josef Beuys was here in Edinburgh I watched him standing before the black, rectangular board (the void? the grave?), his feet fixed apart, one hand hanging at his side, the other gripping the blood-tipped spear, hat firmly to the center of his head, eyes peering past all between him and the distance.  I watched him for some time, listening to the music from Christiansen’s tapes and the idea formed that this was a requiem, a requiem for all the artists I have known. Artists dead and artists living flashed before my eyes. I scarcely paused, the thought was so like a painting existing to be discovered in its depth: A requiem for others I have known, for Billy Southworth and Jimmy Hudson, for Don Stockton, and for endless names forgotten now of those squadron friends of mine who were shot down, so many. It was a war memory, war in total; I couldn’t see all the faces. And then I thought, For all the others, too. My work must be a search and a requiem.35 It is intriguing to consider this strong connection between Schueler and Beuys. Schueler even invited Beuys for dinner at Salvesen’s New Town flat during the run of SGA. Schueler related the experiences that drew them together in October 1970: I was overwhelmed that we could bring together our own embattled carcasses as it were, because we both had been fliers in the war and we’d both known each other in essence as the enemy, and that we could come together now and see each other really profoundly through work. And that at the end of that evening, we could embrace. This is a very big, and a very meaningful thing.36 It was some almost indefinable energy and spirit about Strategy: Get Arts that so impressed Schueler, rather than the artworks and performances he witnessed impacting in some visually discernible way on his own practice, which did not change markedly in consequence. In considering Schueler as a painter, one might speculate that he would have been drawn to the landscape canvases of Gerhard Richer at SGA, but this does not seem to have been the

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case. Salvesen has stated that there is a ‘slickness’ about Richter’s work, and a very different ‘handling of paint’, that would not have interested Schueler.37 And yet there remains a vestige of the Romantic contemplative sublime about some of Richter’s paintings from this period, paintings freighted with the memory of landscape visions by Caspar David Friedrich. It is worth noting, however, that Richter’s paintings of landscapes, seascapes, and cloud studies, certainly those created in 1969/1970, some of which were shown at SGA, were not based on direct immediate experience, but rather on a reality mediated by photography, a ‘distancing’ that was characterised by the German art historian Hubertus Butin as a form of ‘un-romantic Romanticism’.38 In taking this approach, in adopting photo-painting (a second-hand Below: Jon Schueler’s response to Robert Filliou’s The Vocational Game (detail) at Strategy: Get Arts, August 1970. Photo © Richard Demarco. Demarco Digital Archive.

visualisation), Richter arguably dispensed with subjective expression, whereas for Schueler, the expression of individual subjectivity through painterly mark making in response to the changeability of nature was absolutely everything. Schueler would even join local Mallaig fishermen on journeys out to sea, perhaps in part inspired by the story of his artist hero, Turner, who allegedly lashed himself to a ship’s mast for four hours in the midst of the storm, to absorb the experience for his art.39 The Abstract Expressionist quality of Schueler’s work was certainly different to most of the art shown or performed at SGA, collectively defined by Georg Jappe as ‘anti-Expressionist’, when looking for a common denominator for this ‘Düsseldorf school’.40 Schueler nonetheless tried to engage with what he saw, as evidenced by the fact that he participated in The Vocational Game created for SGA by Robert Filliou, his repeated viewings of the performance of Beuys (as well as his appreciation of Beuys’s The Pack), his respect for the diverse work of other SGA artists, and his aforementioned written defence of the exhibition printed in The Scotsman. Schueler, who like Demarco, and indeed Beuys, had some experience of art education, felt that ECA was a most appropriate venue and a wonderful building: ‘Big rooms, high ceilings. Yes, space and the warm feeling of an old place. I like it very much; it beats any new art school …’41 And Demarco has stated that the experience of SGA made him rethink the idea of ECA, his alma mater, making him ‘see it as if for the first time’,42 a building that through the dynamic exhibition seemed to transcend its function as an art college, and at the same time provided him with the kind of art lesson he had always wanted, but never received as an art student there in the early 1950s. In conversation with Schueler, Demarco also commented on the key strength of SGA: I think that the most important thing about the German show was that you met the artists. The artists were around, they were seen working. In fact, in some cases, I think the most important experience was talking to the artists, speaking to the artists and many people found that it was possible. We brought over 24 of the artists. And that was quite a number. It’s quite a number of artists. We brought over the artists because they were necessary.43

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

In addition to Beuys, Schueler developed good friendships with other SGA artists, particularly Klaus Rinke and Friedhelm Döhl. Rinke and his partner, the performance artist and photographer, Monika Baumgartl, visited Schueler at Romasaig near Mallaig (3-6 September 1970) during the run of SGA. The photographer Ute Klophaus, known for her documentation Below top: Klaus Rinke and Monika Baumgartl in Mallaig, September 1970. Photo by Jon Schueler. © Jon Schueler Estate. Below bottom: Friedhelm and Julia Döhl in Mallaig, September 1970. Photo by Jon Schueler. © Jon Schueler Estate.

of Beuys’s performances, who captured Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony for Interfunktionen 5, was also invited by Schueler to Mallaig (5-6 September 1970). Schueler’s desire to connect with Rinke intrigued Demarco, who tried to establish a link between them, even though their practices were so apparently different: What happened when you got to know someone like Klaus Rinke? By the way he said that he is a follower of the God Poseidon. Of water. And Joseph Beuys is the follower of the gods of the earth—like most Germans have always been. I mean, what did you find? I mean, he came up to a part of the world which you inhabit which is almost total water, water from the sky? All around you.44 Schueler responded that it was Rinke’s ‘great humour’ that initially attracted him, but also ‘his very true involvement with water’ and the ‘high seriousness’ of his artistic intent. He stated: ‘I felt terribly close, curiously, as I heard him talk about water and what water meant to him and how he liked to look at it, how there was a definite poetic compulsion about it’.45 During their conversation, Scheuler and Demarco discussed, not the Rinke water tank installation in SGA, but the MoMA exhibition Information, curated by Trinidadian born Kynaston McShine, held in New York between 2 July and 20 September 1970, at the same time as SGA was taking place, in which Rinke exhibited Operation Poseidon (1969). This consisted of twelve zinc containers, each filled to capacity with water ladled from the Rhine, along with a printed poster listing the twelve cities from which the water was taken, and a series of twelve photographs documenting the artist’s acquisition of the water. Scheuler seemed taken with the idea of ‘shipping the Rhine’ across the Atlantic Ocean to New York.

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On the inspiration of SGA more generally, Schueler said directly to Rinke, on Rinke’s visit with Baumgartl to the Romasaig cottage in early September 1970: I’d gotten so upset about New York in a way, that I was less and less interested in even trying to look, you see […] And there’s something about the conversations between Beuys and myself and Christiansen and yourself. There’s something about these conversations which meant for the first time in a long time, I want to look again at what some of my contemporaries are doing. And I’m not sure what that is, it could be your personality, or it could be something in the work, or it could be the attitudes about the work, or it could be all three.46 In addition to Rinke and Beuys, another SGA artist that Schueler befriended was Friedhelm Döhl. Döhl had worked with Uecker to create Sound-Scene 1, shown at SGA in August 1970, which Schueler witnessed. Döhl was an avant-garde composer, and his collaboration with Uecker, a bringing together of music and visual arts, intrigued Schueler. In conversation with Döhl, Schueler tried to relate some of the ideas of Döhl’s work to his own practice.47 Döhl’s compositions were often inspired by contact with artists, performers, and authors. He was attracted to Romanticism as an attitude of mind, not something that was limited by time or space, an attitude that he shared with Beuys. Like Rinke and Baumgartl, Döhl travelled to Mallaig with his partner Julia to visit Schueler in September 1970, a journey, in the words of Demarco, ‘to a sea girt world where the landmass of Europe ends and the great power of the Atlantic Ocean begins’.48 Döhl recalled the Mallaig experience in a letter to violinist Walter Levin, a quote from which appeared in the programme for the first American performance of the Sound of Sleat, Streichquartet (1971-72) by the LaSalle Quartet (which Levin founded) in 1982. Döhl wrote: In 1970 after the performance of my ‘Sound Scene I’ at the Edinburgh Festival, we lived at the house of our painter friend, Jon Schueler, in Mallaig, Scotland ‘at the end of the road’ with a view onto the horizon – a slim, sometimes hazy line of the Skye Isle with the sea in front, the sky above, all in constant motion and alteration, forever merging into one another – sometimes more, sometimes less – almost mutually dissolving then appearing separately. The water between the observer and the horizon is called the Sound of Sleat – a double meaning inspiring my idea of the string quartet – this body of water merging into the sky and vice-versa with the horizon becoming increasingly blurry.49 This composition was another kind of ‘sound scene’ or ‘sound landscape’ to the one performed at ECA, and it is important because it reveals the significance of the cultural exchanges that took place at SGA. Many of the SGA artists took as much from the experience of visiting Scotland in the summer of 1970 as those who attended the exhibition were inspired by their example. There was creative reciprocity in this respect and no doubt there are other hidden narratives forming part of this exchange history around the exhibition.

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

Döhl was clearly inspired by the Mallaig setting as well as by the paintings of Schueler. In fact, Schueler’s painting The Sound of Sleat / Red in a Summer Night VII (1970) was reproduced on the album cover of a Döhl recording - Friedhelm Döhl Edition Vol.1: Sound of Sleat / Winterreise / Notturno (1982). In July 1971, the year after SGA, Schueler and Salvesen visited Döhl in Berlin. They also visited Beuys in Düsseldorf. Beuys picked them up in his distinctive Bentley S1, a car he owned for twenty years from 1966 to 1986, which today may seem at odds with the artist’s green credentials. Salvesen recalls that it was a car that ‘everybody noticed’ as he drove by, stating ‘And of course Beuys in his “uniform” of waistcoat and hat and old trousers (Jeans??), even for going out in the evening, made a wonderful contrast at the driver’s seat, which I did appreciate!’50 Schueler and Salvesen also visited Rinke in Düsseldorf, and Salvesen took a number of photographs of both of them deep in conversation. Above: Klaus Rinke and Jon Schueler in Düsseldorf, July 1971. Photo by Magda Salvesen. © Jon Schueler Estate.

Earlier that same year, Demarco gave Schueler a solo exhibition of his paintings at the Richard Demarco Gallery (6 February- 6 March 1971). Plans for this exhibition took shape when Demarco visited Schueler in Mallaig in October, 1970, with Demarco making a link between Scheuler’s forthcoming show and SGA, which had ended the previous month. He told the artist: I will be doing something which is part of the German exhibition, part of the experience of the German exhibition. It is part of things, I think, and that’s why I’m delighted that certain artists from the German exhibition met you and have become part of your world and respect you and you respect them.51 Furthermore, in March 1971, an atmospheric film about Scheuler was made in Mallaig entitled Jon Schueler: An Artist and His Vision, directed by John Black and filmed by Mark Littlewood for Films of Scotland. This opportunity came about through Demarco’s connections, and again there was a link to SGA because in the previous year Littlewood had filmed Beuys’s Rannoch Moor ‘Aktion’, which formed part of Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch): Scottish Symphony, performed with Henning Christiansen.

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Right: One of the ECA exhibiting rooms for the Jon Schueler Sound of Sleat exhibition, Edinburgh Festival, 1973. Photo by Archie Iain McLellan. © Jon Schueler Estate.

Around the time of the Demarco Gallery exhibition, Schueler gave an inspirational lecture at ECA, seen by Hamilton and other students, having been invited to do so by Robin Philipson. As Cumming has written: A relationship had quickly developed where visitors to the Demarco Gallery were often encouraged to visit the College […] The flow of artists between organisations was part of the culture of the late 1960s…’.52 Schueler was no exception. And a few years later, he would have a major exhibition of one-hundred-and-fifty Mallaig paintings and fifty watercolours in ECA. This exhibition, Jon Schueler, The Sound of Sleat, An Exhibition of Paintings, (18 August – 8 September 1973), was sponsored by the young London-based art dealer, Richard Nathanson. Schueler occupied some of the same spaces that had been utilised by the Düsseldorf artists three years earlier - four teaching studios and the Sculpture Court on the ground floor, and another large studio upstairs. On this occasion, it was the artist Kenneth Dingwall rather than Demarco who suggested ECA as a venue, and it was a highly successful exhibition, in large part due to the organisational efforts of Salvesen, who was, by now ‘absolutely indispensable’ to Schueler (they later married in 1976). He met many people and sold a great deal of work, describing it as ‘one of the most beautiful experiences of his life’.53 The connection to ECA had clearly been stimulating and productive for Schueler, from his revelatory engagement with SGA in 1970, to his own large exhibition in 1973, seen by collector and dealer, Ben Heller, soon to become the artist’s American representative.

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SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

In 1975, Schueler moved back to New York after an American revival of interest in his work, in large part due to his tremendous productivity in Mallaig in the previous five years, and thanks to the endeavours of Heller, Bauer, Friedman, Salvesen, and others. He kept the studio in Mallaig for the rest of his life, usually spending three months there in most years, until his death in 1992. In 1981, he returned to the Scottish capital and took up a six-week residency at the Talbot Rice Art Centre (now called the Talbot Rice Gallery) of the University of Edinburgh, for a ‘live’ Edinburgh Festival exhibition entitled The Search, with the support of the director Duncan Macmillan. Here he painted very large scale work in situ, and some of the process was filmed, recalling the 1951 film directed by Hans Namuth of Jackson Pollock in the act of painting. In 1981, Beuys happened to be in Edinburgh at the same time for his last work in the city, New Beginnings are in the Offing, which, with the assistance of the artists George Wyllie and Dawson Murray, involved the removal and relocation of the old doors of the Forrest Hill Poorhouse, the venue he used in the early 1970s, along with Kantor. The doors were transported first to ECA and later temporarily installed in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which in those days was located at Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden. They were installed with the addition of a red light bulb under them for an exhibition The Avant-Garde in Europe 1955-70 (The Collection of Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach). At the same time, Demarco was showing Beuys in Scotland 1970-1980, an archival exhibition at the Richard Demarco Gallery. Beuys visited his old friend Schueler at the Talbot Rice Gallery. Striking photographs, one showing the two of them together, and one with Beuys scrutinizing Schueler’s remarkable palette table, were taken by Demarco. Beuys and Schueler were two artists with very different practices, but who, as discussed, shared a Romantic sensibility and a desire to heal the wounds of war through art, in part by immersing themselves in the regenerating landscapes of Scotland, a Celtic world that energised their creativity. It was undoubtedly an enduring relationship, one initiated by the inspiration of Strategy: Get Arts.

Opposite top: Jon Schueler with Joseph Beuys at the Talbot Rice Gallery Edinburgh, 1981. (Young Wenzel Beuys and John Halpern also in photograph).

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Opposite below: Joseph Beuys looking at Jon Schueler’s palette table at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 1981. Photos © Richard Demarco. Demarco Digital Archive.

SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’: Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop

1. Christian Weikop, ‘“More Impact than the Venice Biennale”: Demarco, Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts’, Tate Papers, no. 31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-strategy-get-arts, accessed 19 April 2021. 2. Richard Demarco & Jon Schueler: A Conversation. Taped by Jon Schueler in his Studio, Romasaig, in Mallaig, Inverness-shire, Western Highlands of Scotland, October 1970. Transcript edited by Magda Salvesen. With thanks to the Jon Schueler Estate, www.jonschueler.com, and the Jon Schueler Archive, for access to unpublished edited transcripts by Magda Salvesen, March 2021. 3. Richard Demarco, A Unique Partnership: Richard Demarco, Joseph Beuys, Edinburgh 2016, p. 110. 4. My italics. For the full text of the ‘Introductory Note’, see materials on this exhibition at the online Smithsonian libraries, https://library.si.edu/donate/adopt-a-book/seven-exhibitions, accessed 23 May 2021. 5. See Anna McNay ‘Art into Society – Society into Art: Seven German Artists’, 9 February 2016, https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/art-into-society-seven-german-artists-review-institute-ofcontemporary-arts-ica-london, accessed 19 May 2021. This is a review of an ICA archive exhibition curated by Lucy Bayley and Juliette Desorgues in 2016. 6. Merilyn Smith, ‘Joseph Beuys: Life as Drawing’, in David Thistlewood (ed.), Joseph Beuys: Diverging Critiques, Liverpool 1995, p. 177. 7. Alexander Hamilton in conversation with the author on 12 March 2021. 8. Cordelia Oliver, ‘The Glasgow School in the Forties’, The Times, 12 September 1968. 9. Demarco & Schueler: A Conversation. Transcript edited by Salvesen. 10. Cordelia Oliver, ‘Dada for the seventies’, Guardian, 24 August 1970. 11. The artist Kenneth Dingwall in correspondence with me, 5 May 2021. 12. The Blaues Dreieck, inspired by Yves Klein’s use of ultramarine, was also installed by Palermo at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in February 1970. Palermo even inscribed the blue symbol in Alexander Hamilton’s copy of the SGA catalogue, an inspiring and generous gesture by the German artist for a young ECA student artist. 13. Richard Demarco & Jon Schueler: A Conversation. Transcript edited by Salvesen. 14. Elizabeth Cumming, Robin Philipson, Bristol 2018, p. 103. 15. Ibid. 16. Cordelia Oliver interviewed by Giles Sutherland, 13 May 1999, Glasgow. Transcript available at http://gilessutherland.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Cordelia-Oliver-pdf-interview-file-web.pdf, accessed 19 April 2021. 17. Jennifer Gough-Cooper talking about Richard Demarco. Transcript from recording, 17 October 2011. Richard Demarco Archive. 18. Ibid. 19. Copy of full letter, dated 1 September 1970, from artist Jon Schueler to the editor of The Scotsman newspaper is available on the Demarco Digital Archive. https://www.demarco-archive.ac.uk/assets/3646-p1970_letter_from_jon_schueler_the_scotsman_ref_strategy_get, accessed 19 April 2021. 20. See https://www.demarco-archive.ac.uk/assets/377-1970_beuys_celtic_kinloch_rannoch_scottish_symphonyp 21. Richard Demarco in correspondence with me, 25 July 2020. 22. Jon Schueler, ‘A Letter about the Sky’, It is, no. 5, Spring 1960, pp. 12-14. Two paintings by Schueler can be found in the University of Edinburgh Art Collection. Schueler’s work is also in the collections of the Whitney Museum in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, National Gallery of Australia and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, among many other places. 23. Jack Baur in the brochure for Jon Schueler’s exhibition at the Whitney Museum, New York, April-May 1975. 24. Letter cited in Jay Parini, ‘Jon Schueler: The Castelli Years’, The New Criterion, November 2010, pp. 46-47. See https://www.jonschueler.com/essays.html, accessed 19 April 2021. 25. Demarco & Schueler: A Conversation. Transcript edited by Salvesen. 26. Ibid.

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27. See https://www.demarcoarchive.ac.uk/assets/91970_group_including_beuys_england_schueler_home_ john_martin_edinburgh 28. B.H. Friedman (ed.), School of New York: Some Younger Artists, New York and London 1959, p. 66. 29. For more on Demarco’s life and career, see Christian Weikop, ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with Richard Demarco’, Tate Papers, no. 31, Spring 2019,  https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-interview, accessed 19 April 2021. 30. Demarco & Schueler: A Conversation. Transcript edited by Salvesen. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Jon Schueler quoted in Whitney Balliett, ‘Profiles: City Voices: Jon Schueler and Magda Salvesen’, The New Yorker, 25 February 1985, p. 38. 34. See Weikop, ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories’. 35. Jon Schueler, The Sound of Sleat: A Painter’s Life, Magda Salvesen and Diane Cousineau (eds.), New York 1999, pp. 195-196. 36. Demarco & Schueler: A Conversation. Transcript edited by Salvesen. 37. Magda Salvesen in correspondence with me, 31 March 2021. 38. Hubertus Butin, ‘The Un-Romantic Romanticism of Gerhard Richter’, in Keith Hartley (ed.), The Romantic Spirit of German Art, 1790-1990, exh. cat., Edinburgh 1994, pp. 461-463. 39. This famous Turner story is retold in Richard Ingleby, ‘North: Jon Schueler in Scotland’, in Gerald Nordland and Richard Ingleby, Jon Schueler: To the North, London and New York, 2002, p. 29. 40. See Georg Jappe, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, in Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 41. Demarco & Schueler: A Conversation. Transcript edited by Salvesen. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Jon Schueler, Talks with Klaus Rinke, September 1970 in Romasaig, Mallaig, Inverness-shire, Scotland. Transcript edited by Magda Salvesen. 47. Conversation between Jon Schueler and Friedhelm and Julia Döhl. This took place in Romasaig, Mallaig, Inverness-shire, September 1970. Transcript edited by Magda Salvesen. 48. Richard Demarco in Weikop, ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories’. 49. Jon Schueler to Walter Levin, cited in album sleeve notes for the recording Friedhelm Döhl Edition Vol.1: Sound of Sleat / Winterreise / Notturno (1982), Dreyer Gaido, Münster 2004. 50. Magda Salvesen in correspondence with me, 16 April 2021. 51. Demarco & Schueler: A Conversation. Transcript edited by Salvesen. 52. Cumming, Robin Philipson, p. 103. 53. Schueler, Sound of Sleat, p. 343.

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Strategy: Get Arts and Broadcast Media Christian Weikop In an article for Tate Papers, I have discussed the British press reception of Strategy: Get Arts (SGA) and considered the importance of art critic Cordelia Oliver (George Oliver’s partner) and others who wrote on the exhibition for the broadsheets.1 Cordelia Oliver and Caroline Tisdall were of particular significance in opening up a wider public sphere in the Englishspeaking world for the reception of Joseph Beuys. What has not been addressed is the fact that SGA was also reviewed in BBC broadcast media in 1970 and subsequently featured in a number of television and radio documentaries profiling Demarco and the Edinburgh Festival. Photographs of SGA, as well as rare film footage of the event,2 have been included in various programmes, German as well as British, disseminating the importance of the exhibition to even larger audiences, thereby underscoring its status. On 13 September 1970, Festival Orbit was broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland. Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, an eccentric raconteur, writer, and Conservative Party candidate, who lived in a sixteenth-century castle near Dunfermline, had been invited to review Strategy: Get Arts for this BBC arts programme. He spoke of himself as a liberal, but was mostly intolerant of the artistic freedoms of SGA. The presenter, Maurice Lindsay, inaugurated proceedings by referring to the ECA exhibition as ‘highly controversial’, before passing over to Fairbairn, who started positively: ‘Here in this Exhibition, there is a galaxy of new forms of expression.’ Impressed by Critchlow’s ‘sculptured frame’, Heerich’s ‘beautiful cardboard shapes’ and Ruthenbeck’s ‘stark forms’, Fairbairn reserved his highest praise for Gerstner’s and Luther’s ‘beautiful presentation of light’, stating that ‘these are all exciting and worthwhile.’ He was, however, decidedly negative on all the other contributions. He mocked Beuys, or rather the cult of Beuys: ‘He is the artist represented upon which greatness is sought to be thrust, even sainthood is claimed by those who seek to identify with him.’ Some of the terms used by Fairbairn stand out in the transcript, specifically, ‘Sadistic’, ‘arrogant’, ‘absurdity’, ‘inability to create’, ‘total self-involvement’, ‘indolent’, ‘macabre’, ‘false prophets’, and ‘fearful things’. In his conclusion, Fairbairn argues: ‘To criticise this Exhibition is to invite scorn. Extravagant claims of greatness have been made for it and one risks intellectual banishment if one does not pretend reverence […] we are fools if we do not worship at the shrine of Beuys and his like.’ He then thanks Demarco, before adding sarcastically, ‘Try again, more humbly’. The presenter Lindsay replies, with an apparent lack of neutrality: ‘And thank you, Nicholas Fairbairn. I must say I think that needed saying.’3

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Demarco, a co-founder of the Traverse Theatre, knew Fairbairn well. He had been chairman of the theatre in the 1960s. Demarco heard about the programme and immediately wrote to the BBC Controller Alasdair Milne, asking for a transcript. Milne obliged, but noted ‘it is not our normal practice to release these.’4 On receipt of the review, Demarco wrote to Fairbairn, stating ‘I was appalled at your summing up of the German exhibition […] I respect your personal opinions, but I am saddened that they had to be voiced as part of a programme which could have been lined up with the national view of the Exhibition, rather than what I had expected from the reactionary Scottish stronghold of the visual arts.’5 Fairbairn’s negative opinions of SGA were not shared by journalist, television presenter, and today Labour Party peer, Baroness Joan Bakewell DBE, perhaps primarily known to contemporary television audiences for presenting Portrait Artist of the Year for Sky Arts. In 1970, Bakewell was a regular presenter of the BBC Two programme Late Night Line-Up, which she co-presented with Sheridan Morley. In an edition of the programme broadcast on 7 September 1970, Bakewell names the exhibition as one of her ‘highlights’ of the Festival, along with an Italian production of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. In 2003, Bakewell reflected back on this 1970 moment for a documentary called Richard Demarco: Beyond the Fringe. Footage of Bakewell talking about those days was intercut with photographs of SGA by George Oliver and Demarco. Bakewell’s comments are worth citing at length: I was doing a programme nightly on BBC2 and the team dreamt up the idea that we should all come to Edinburgh and cover the festival. And it came to Ricky’s attention that I would be arriving, so he laid on a great reception which was basically him greeting me as an old old friend. We had never met before, but we shared an enthusiasm for the arts. And I arrived, you know very sixties - floaty clothes and a big hat, all that showmanship, and he had a good deal of that himself! So we swanned around Edinburgh together. He explaining to me what the Festival was about because I had never been before, and exactly what I should be doing to present it to the British public. […] Ricky is not in the mainstream of cultural planning in this city. He’s not a favourite of the city fathers. He’s a thorn in their side. He’s not in the mainstream of Edinburgh taste. He is a maverick, he is out front, he is avant-garde, he is looking for the new and the shocking. And of course, if it shocks, it does not take its place automatically at the heart

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Strategy: Get Arts and Broadcast Media Christian Weikop

of what’s going on. And that’s a very very important role to play in the arts. To be the figure that irritates, but challenges. […] He’s got enormous boldness. He’s completely ruthless if he wants a certain artist or exhibition. So he’s got this driving, indefatigable will to succeed, which is his great strength. He never never gives up! […] Ricky will never stop. He’s absolutely unstoppable, that energy has to go somewhere. To his dying day, he will be looking for new artists and new ideas, new venues, new ways of looking at the arts, I know he will! 6 And in 1994, another legendary broadcaster - the comedian, folk musician, actor, and art lover, Billy Connolly, presented a BBC Scotland television series, The Bigger Picture, in which Strategy: Get Arts also featured. Again edited with photographs by Oliver of Demarco and Beuys, as well as a photograph of Ferdinand Kriwet’s Apollo Amerika installation in ECA, Connolly stated the following in his considered narration: The irrepressible Richard Demarco was to put an end to the provincialism of the British art scene. The Edinburgh Festival was his springboard, the German avant-garde master Joseph Beuys his hero […] The way out performances orchestrated by Beuys, care of Demarco, put Scotland on the international art map for the very first time. Demarco’s conviction enticed artists attempting to break new ground to come to Scotland, and in time, change irrevocably the mood and outlook of Scottish artists. After Demarco, being a Scottish artist meant taking on the world and seeing oneself as a member of an international fraternity.7 1. See Christian Weikop, ‘“More Impact than the Venice Biennale”: Demarco, Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-strategy-get-arts, accessed 13/11/20. 2. See archive film footage of SGA in Tracey MacLeod and Kirsty Wark, Edinburgh Nights: Portrait of Richard Demarco. Broadcast on BBC2, 14/08/91. 3. GMA A37/1/0559. /6/3. 1 x ts. Transcript of BBC Radio Scotland, ‘Festival Orbit’, 23/9/70, 3p. 4. GMA A37/1/0559. 6/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Alasdair Milne, Controller, BBC from Richard Demarco, 30/9/1970, 1p. 5. GMA A37/1/0559. /5. 1 x ts. Letter to Nicholas Fairbairn from Richard Demarco, 30/9/1970, 1p. 6. Joan Bakewell in Richard Demarco Beyond the Fringe. Broadcast on BBC Scotland, 07/08/03. 7. Billy Connolly in The Bigger Picture – A Scottish Renaissance. Broadcast on BBC Scotland, 14/02/1994.

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Above: Joan Bakewell in a BBC studio for a broadcast on Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

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Photography at and in Strategy: Get Arts Karen Barber

The photographs taken before and during Strategy: Get Arts (SGA) provide a fragmentary glimpse into this unprecedented event.1 They are now critical to our understanding of the exhibition and its legacy. Although few SGA artists made direct use of photography, the medium played a vital role in documenting the radically transgressive and iconoclastic work on view. From the commissioned photographs of George Oliver, to the ‘event photographs’ of Richard Demarco, Ute Klophaus, and Monika Baumgartl, the images tell the story of an exhibition that sought to embody the ephemeral nature of contemporary art. The work by these four photographers exists somewhere between installation photography, documentary, and the snapshot. Many are ‘event photographs,’ a new, subjective mode of documentary focused on presenting site-specific installations and process-based forms of art. These photographs are often complex and reflexive, attempting to reveal the full experience of an exhibition’s evolution. For example, one image shows artist Klaus Rinke outside Edinburgh College of Art in consultation with the fire brigade, while Baumgartl documents the scene. In a snapshot by Demarco, we see Klophaus taking a photograph; a camera and tripod in the foreground signal the presence of a third, unknown, photographer. In another image, Oliver stands, camera in hand, documenting the unloading of artworks. These examples reveal the various photographic perspectives involved in SGA. Photographs by Oliver reveal the participatory nature of SGA. Reiner Ruthenbeck and students throw crumpled paper into a pile as part of the artist’s large-scale, nontraditional sculpture. Another sequence shows a group, including Joseph Beuys, pushing a Volkswagen bus (part of The Pack) up the grass, to the side of the building, and through the back door of ECA. Oliver’s sequence reveals the complexities of the installation.

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Oliver’s photographs were used in the SGA catalogue and helped to set the tone for the exhibition. On the cover, Oliver’s images appeared as snapshots strewn on a tabletop, alluding to the chaotic nature of the exhibition. Within, the texts were punctuated by strips from Oliver’s proof sheets. In one image, Rinke is shown mid-swing, smashing a wooden chair on the grand staircase, classical sculptures looking on. Klophaus’s photographs show Beuys during his Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony. Rather than providing an objective unfolding of events, Klophaus restricts her camera to the artist and work to provide subjective depictions of this days-long ‘action.’ Baumgartl used a tripod for a series of carefully composed views, free from the detritus of the exhibition’s whirlwind installation process. Her photograph of Blinky Palermo shows the artist on a ladder high above ECA’s Neoclassical entrance hall, revealing a disjunction between new and old modes of art. Her photograph of Günther Uecker standing at the far end of his Sharp Corridor, suggests the menacing character of the sharpened knives protruding from the walls. The installation was also photographed days after the opening, surrounded by wire fencing, with a sign that reads: ‘Sharp Corridor Blunted by Police.’ The before and after views by Baumgartl and Oliver reference the very real effects of this radical new art and attempts to reign it in. They perfectly exemplify the uses of photography at and in Strategy: Get Arts. 1. For more on photography at Strategy: Get Arts, see: Karen Barber, ‘Documents and Archives: Photography Of, At and In the 1970 Strategy: Get Arts Exhibition’, Studies in Photography (Summer 2019): 28-41.

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Photography at and in Strategy: Get Arts Karen Barber

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Opposite: Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys by the staircase of the Sculpture Department corridor, ECA (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

Right: Left - Right: Klaus Rinke, Monika Baumgartl, and Linden Travers (August 1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

Above: Henning Christiansen, Joseph Beuys, Ute Klophaus (standing). Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony (1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive. Right: George Oliver photographing the arrival of artworks at ECA for Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

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A Turning Point Jennifer Gough-Cooper

It was quite by chance that my mother, Vivien, accompanied by my brother, Henry, walked through the doors of the gallery at 8 Melville Crescent. On this wet day in August 1968, they viewed the inaugural exhibition and met Richard Demarco. Vivien purchased some of the exhibits and was later invited by John Martin and Andy Elliot to become a director. If this appointment added an important dimension to Vivien’s life – for mine, it redirected its course entirely. In January 1969, I joined the Richard Demarco Gallery as gallery administrator. I had recently graduated from Hornsey College of Art. With the assistance of a secretary, I was suddenly responsible for all the practical aspects of running a gallery – learning what to do as we prepared one exhibition after another. I admired Richard’s charismatic art of bringing people and ideas together. He opened a wider world to me. With persuasion and élan, Demarco has always championed pushing boundaries. This was the broad context in which the exhibition Strategy: Get Arts1 was created at lightning speed. When I first arrived at the gallery, Richard introduced me to a number of Scottish artists including Ian Hamilton Finlay. I remember on my first visit to Stonypath, a single tree stood by the croft where Ian lived with Sue and their boys. Only a small kitchen garden had been established near the house. This and the lochan that Ian had already created, were the foundations of the garden of Little Sparta – as it would be named later 2. Among the memorable shows held at the gallery in 1969 was Arthur Boyd’s major series of Nebuchadnezzar canvases3. These powerful paintings made a lasting impression on me. In the last week of January 1970, when Richard arranged an exploratory visit to Düsseldorf, seeds were sown for a German exhibition at the Edinburgh Festival. He invited Vivien to accompany him. From notes in my diary, the proposed exhibition was eventually sanctioned at lunch on 6 March when Peter Diamand4 and Richard Demarco were guests of Brigitte Lohmeyer at the German Embassy, London. Richard returned to Germany the week of 16 March. The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf then became a partner with the Demarco Gallery and I travelled to Germany in early July to meet and finalise details with my counterpart Jürgen Harten. It was he who planned how the fifteen studio spaces at Edinburgh College of Art were to be divided between the artists. Harten’s short visit to Edinburgh coincided with the arrival of the Hasenkamp truck and trailer bringing the art works from Düsseldorf.5 From this date, George Oliver, the Glaswegian photographer, was in attendance daily documenting the artists’ activity in the Art College during the installation period. Many works were made in situ as George’s photographs record.

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The years between 1969 and 1972 were ones of great ferment and energy in the European art world. My involvement with Strategy: Get Arts provided me with a springboard to venture abroad. On 17 January 1972, at his gallery in Chelsea, Nigel Greenwood introduced me to Harald Szeemann, Swiss curator of When Attitudes Become Form.6 Harry was in London to finalise Documenta 5. I was invited to join his team in Kassel, first to assist with the catalogue, and then to help with the installation. In many ways Kassel was an extension of Edinburgh and more. I worked with Jacques Caumont, who had assisted Harry with Happening & Fluxus7– another landmark exhibition. I returned with Jacques to Paris in the summer of 1972. Simultaneously, Pontus Hulten arrived from the Moderna Museet Stockholm to direct the Musée National d’Art Moderne. Hulten refused to open the new Centre Beaubourg8 in Les Halles unless it was graced with a retrospective of Marcel Duchamp who – notably – had never been recognised by the French arts establishment in his lifetime. As well as giving Jacques responsibility for one volume of the catalogue, Pontus challenged us to find a bona fide chocolate grinder for the exhibition. This was the beginning of almost twenty years devoted to Duchampian research culminating in a catalogue of “all Duchamp” – as Hulten directed it should be – for a comprehensive Marcel Duchamp exhibition held at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice in 1993. From my early days of fogging film in a box brownie, my great passion is photography. On one of my return visits to Scotland, I called to see Ian Hamilton Finlay. My photographs taken in the garden led to a collaboration, Paths, a wee book published for an exhibition held in 2001 at Kloster Schoenthal9, near Basel. Another echo rebounding from the days when I worked for Demarco, was in August 2003 when I spent a month at Bundanon10 – the cattle farm in NSW where Arthur Boyd had chosen to settle for the last years of his life. I had read about the place and very much wished to experience the landscape that had inspired his paintings. Many positive reverberations will have struck those who have been privileged to meet Demarco. There have been many high points in Richard’s prodigious life. The exhibition Strategy: Get Arts is certainly one of them. 1. Palindrome by André Thomkins 2. The name Little Sparta appears as early as 1979, see Stephen Bann in Jessie Sheeler’s Little Sparta, a guide to the Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay, p. xiv, University of Edinburgh 2015. 3. Demarco Gallery April-May 1969. 4. Director of the Edinburgh Festival. 5. The Hasenkamp truck was unloaded on 7 August; Harten was in Edinburgh from 8-14 August. 6. Kunsthalle Bern March-April 1969. 7. Kölnischer Kunstverein, 1970. 8. The building was rebaptised Centre Pompidou on the death of the President in 1974 and was opened in January 1977. 9. CH-4438 Langenbrück 10. Bundanon Trust: www.bundanon.com.au

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Opposite: Jennifer Gough-Cooper seen with students behind triplex glass container by Erich Reusch. Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

Right: Stefan Wewerka's bentwood chairs installation on the main staircase of ECA Main Building (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

Below: Jürgen Harten, Jennifer Gough-Cooper, and Mr Fairbairn (joiner), preparation in ECA for SGA (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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Gallery Assistants – SGA Alexander Hamilton

Opp0site: Left - Right Alexander Hamilton, Donald Campbell, Richard White, Don Fitzpatrick, Henry Gough-Cooper, Jürgen Harten, Hamish Pringle, Cordelia Oliver (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) in the 1960s was a conservative institution. The college’s unquestioned policy of recruiting its own graduates and others in the same tradition as the next generation of teachers created an inbred and insular teaching environment, with outside ideas fiercely resisted. Within the painting school this was particularly evident, with the staff lacking international connections. Richard Demarco was the counterpoint to this world. His guiding principle was to see the artist as an international explorer. At this time, there were three centres of creative interest in Edinburgh; the Paperback Bookshop, the Traverse Theatre and the Demarco Gallery. In one place you might experience a performance by Lindsay Kemp and in another, an exhibition by Ian Hamilton Finlay. These became my haunts. In 1969, protest arrived at Edinburgh College of Art, although it quickly fizzled out, as the older students, more concerned with their graduation, accepted some modest changes. It did leave a mark though, as the already-disorientated teaching staff became even more distant and defensive. Into this ECA mix in 1970, was thrust Strategy: Get Arts (SGA). Recruitment of the student helpers for the SGA exhibition happened by chance. A friend on the Student Council mentioned to me that the Demarco Gallery was looking for helpers to work over the summer. I instantly signed up and offered to recruit others, including Don Fitzpatrick, Donald Campbell, Margaret Nisbet, Joan Brydon and Dick White. Richard Demarco’s connection to Glenalmond College yielded Hamish Pringle, with Demarco Gallery administrator Jennifer Gough-Cooper’s brother Henry completing the assistant team. In August 1970 our group assembled outside the college as two German trucks arrived, filled with an exotic mixture of works; with the VW camper the most dramatic to unpack. Our initial attempt to push it through the front door of the college was met by the firm resistance of Mr Brown the College Secretary. Confused by the concept of a VW camper being a work of art, he ordered us to park it outside. All attempts to persuade him of its merits fell on deaf ears. Watching this curious spectacle was Joseph Beuys, who had undoubtedly met similar concerns from the college authorities in Düsseldorf. He calmly sought out a solution, which was to move the VW to a side entrance that led into the sculpture department. Sledges were then joined to the camper, forming The Pack, the first of his three works, the others being Arena and Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony. This VW episode created the spirit that fuelled all our endeavours. Each installation required ingenuity and sometimes nimble solutions to help make it work, led by the efficient Jennifer Gough-Cooper under the direction of Jürgen Harten.

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Gallery Assistants – SGA Alexander Hamilton

A personal favourite was the installation of smashed chairs that cascaded down the staircase, a remarkable work by Wewerka; especially as he arrived with no chairs to instal the work. A trip to the Sam Burns scrapyard at Prestonpans provided a solution. He picked out a group of bentwood chairs and on our return proceeded to smash them against the steps, encouraging others to join in. Our student group quickly became close to many of the younger artists. A firm favourite was Blinky Palermo, whose joyous installation Blue, Yellow, White, Red - a painted frieze above the entrance stairs - required him to balance precariously on a tall ladder. This simple, but effective work was one of the first casualties of the authorities’ reaction after the event, when the college painters were instructed to paint it out. Following the installation of the works, we were hired to act as gallery assistants. Before the exhibition was opened to the public, a committee of City Councillors were required to approve the exhibition. The artists, conscious of Edinburgh’s conservative reputation, had Above: Blinky Palermo making his painting Blue/Yellow/White/Red in August 1970. Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021. Opposite: Henry Gough-Cooper on the main staircase of ECA Main Building, after Stefan Wewerka’s bentwood chairs ‘action’ (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

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expected Dorothy Iannone’s explicit work to be banned, which had previously happened in Switzerland. However, the councillors ignored the pornographic drawings and turned their attention to the water installation by Klaus Rinke, which included a jet of water fired out of the front doors of the college. They saw this waste of water as too much. Further inspections by the police led to the Uecker’s corridor of knives being fenced off. Once all of this had been resolved, the SGA opening took place. An early group to attend were the younger painting tutors, keen to see what had happen to their college. Shock turned into anger; the Wewerka chairs were quickly assaulted and thrown down the stairs. All attempts to calm and discuss were futile and they left in disgust. We were delighted by all of this. To the majority of assistants it was all rather strange; never more so than when watching Beuys perform Scottish Symphony. He had a mesmerising presence which led everyone to be awed and respectful. Robin Philipson, head of the painting school, was particularly taken, seeing something which his younger colleagues missed. However, his staff pushed back, and the conservative world of Edinburgh College of Art closed in.

Gallery Assistants – SGA Alexander Hamilton

Opposite: Firemen from Edinburgh Fire Station outside Gotthard Graubner’s ‘Mist Room’ (1970). Photographer unknown. Richard Demarco Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA A37/1/0987.

The fire that saw the college nearly burn down may also have provoked the backlash.

Right: Firemen from Edinburgh Fire Station outside Gotthard Graubner’s ‘Mist Room’ with Joseph Beuys and Stefan Wewerka present (1970). Photographer unknown. Richard Demarco Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA A37/1/0988

something had changed. We had witnessed a unique event in art history - sharing time and

A room aptly named Homage to Turner, by Graubner, required the setting up of a smoke machine, which, one day, burst into flames. As the room was windowless and foam-lined, it quickly became an inferno. The fire brigade was summoned and they brought the near-tragic blaze under control. This spectacle was carefully watched by Beuys, who left his performance to silently watch the efforts of the fire crew. At the end of Strategy: Get Arts, the college returned to its former self. But for all of us creating relationships with those who are now seen as giants of modern art; Beuys, Uecker, Palermo, Richter. For me, everything shifted. My frustration with the painting programme at ECA led me to move out to Nine Mile Burn in the Pentland Hills, which inspired my diploma show, an installation of leaves – an offering I presented to the Tate in 1972.

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Gallery Assistants in and outside of ECA for Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. Student assistants, Alexander Hamilton, Don Fitzpatrick, Donald Campbell, Margaret Nisbet, Henry Gough-Cooper, Joan Brydon and Richard White.

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Gallery Assistants – SGA Alexander Hamilton

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35 Artists Who Broke the Rules Christian Weikop

H.P. Alvermann, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Claus Böhmler, George Brecht, Peter Brüning, Henning Christiansen, Friedhelm Döhl, Robert Filliou, Karl Gerstner, Gotthard Graubner, Erwin Heerich, Dorothy Iannone, Mauricio Kagel, Konrad Klapheck, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhöfer, Ferdinand Kriwet, Adolf Luther, Heinz Mack, Lutz Mommartz, Tony Morgan, Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke, Erich Reusch, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dieter Roth, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Daniel Spoerri, André Thomkins, Günther Uecker, Franz Erhard Walther, Günter Weseler, Stefan Wewerka

Opposite: Stefan Wewerka and his bentwood chairs action/installation on the staircase of ECA Main Building (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

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Hans Peter Alvermann 1931-2006 Hans Peter Alvermann studied painting and graphics at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from

us) can be traced back to the medieval Teutonic

1954 to 1958. He was a politically-committed artist

Order. Much later, it appeared on the Prussian

involved in the movement against the Vietnam

Iron Cross and coins at the time of German

war and American right-wing politicians such as

Unification, and was inscribed on military helmets

Barry Goldwater, who suggested that nuclear

and belt buckles in the First World War. The Berlin

weapons should be treated more like

Dadaist, George Grosz, produced a lithographic

conventional weapons and could be used in

collection entitled Gott mit uns in June 1920,

Vietnam. He was also part of the 1968 leftist

which led to Grosz and his publisher Wieland

protest movement against the introduction of

Herzfelde being tried for defamation of the military.

Notstandsgesetze (Emergency Laws) in Germany.

Grosz’s Gott mit uns was a caustic attack on

In a scathing review of Strategy: Get Arts for BBC Scotland, Nicholas Fairbairn mentioned Alvermann’s work in the context of what he characterised as the ‘sadistic nature of many of the exhibits in the exhibition’, stating: ‘There is a passage of knives through which one walks; and Alvermann’s obscene one-legged brainless female and his sadistic collages of bones and

German militarism and the officials who still governed during the early Weimar Republic, who utilised a militia to violently suppress the street uprisings of 1919. Alvermann’s work can be seen as channelling Grosz’s ironic Gott mit uns, but with his mind on the contemporary situation of the Vietnam war. Unlike Richter or Polke, Alvermann’s work has

entrails and bottles – very much in the German

not had an impact on the art market, but his art

tradition.’1 One of Alvermann’s contributions (not

was, in many ways, a critique of such capitalist

pictured) is given on a Hasenkamp transport list

structures. He felt art and artists should be

as Das Sparschwein (1965). This was a piggy bank,

socially critical and politically committed even

of which Alvermann produced many, with a

if it was bad for the ‘art business’.

swastika painted over the colours of the Federal Republic of Germany, apparently a comment on the failure of de-Nazification processes in Germany. These ‘piggy banks’ resulted in court proceedings against the artist in 1968. One untitled work was the ‘one-legged female’, which Fairbairn mentioned, a manipulated store mannequin, a colour photograph of which resides in the SGA archive at Modern Two (SNGMA). Homage to Goldwater was an assemblage work with the title Gott mit uns, shown in one of the corridors of ECA, alongside text works by Ferdinand Kriwet. Alvermann can be seen operating this strange object with a crank at documenta III (1964) in an 8mm film by Lutz Mommartz.2

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The origin of the phrase ‘Gott mit uns’ (God with

1. GMA A37/1/0559. /6/3. 1 x ts. Transcript of BBC programme, entitled 'EXTRACT FROM "FESTIVAL ORBIT", 23/9/70, 3p. 2. See https://mommartzfilm.com/FilmeLutzMommartzEN/ 104-Godwithus_e.htm Accessed 29 October 2020.

Right: H.P. Alvermann’s artwork being unloaded, stored, and installed for Strategy: Get Arts (August 1970). © DACS 2021. Top: Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive. Middle and bottom: Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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Bernd Becher 1931-2007 Hilla Becher 1934-2015

Bernd and Hilla Becher met at the Kunstakademie

possibly an abstract visualisation of a mine shaft,

Düsseldorf in 1957 and first collaborated on

or at a bodily level, the deadly circulation of mine

documenting the industrial architecture of the

dust in the respiratory system. This exhibition

Ruhr valley in 1959. They drew inspiration from

space must have seemed like a comment on the

earlier German photographers associated with

industrial revolution, or perhaps its decline, with

New Objectivity, especially August Sander,

the impending collapse of local economies and

who was particularly important to them for his

close-knit mining communities.

taxonomical mode of presentation. The Bechers sent two versions of their typological

in 1965, then spent six months touring England,

grids of pitheads (which they referred to as

Wales and Scotland in 1966 on a grant from the

‘Anonymous Sculptures’) to Edinburgh for

British Council, and took hundreds of photographs

Strategy: Get Arts. In one memorable George

of the coal industry around the Rhondda Valley,

Oliver photograph, these can be seen before they

Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, and Nottingham.

were installed in a studio space, resting on the

Many of the photographs of pitheads, which

balustrade of the balcony overlooking the main

were often used in different grid groupings, were

staircase. Blinky Palermo can be seen in the

therefore taken at British collieries.

background on top of a ladder preparing his Blue, Yellow, White, Red, a wall painting which ran around the architrave. Intriguingly, his position on a very high ladder mirrored the verticality of the frame structures in the photographs, and reflected the Bechers’ own practice when trying to establish the correct viewpoint for taking their taxonomical photographs of industrial sites. Other photographs show the work in situ, but

The Arts Council of Great Britain presented a touring exhibition of the Bechers’ work of industrial landscapes in 1974-5. Of this exhibition, Norbert Lynton wrote: ‘The work of Bernd and Hilla Becher is scarcely known in this country. The art magazines have shown something of them, and in London Nigel Greenwood’s gallery gave them a memorable exhibition in 1972-3.’2 While they were represented by a few key works

behind Erich Reusch’s electrostatic transparent

in Strategy: Get Arts, Lynton neglects to mention

containers. Karen Barber has rightly observed

this point. The Bechers’ first book, Anonymous

that the Oliver photographs of the Bechers’

Sculptures: a Typology of Industrial Buildings, now

Anonymous Sculptures are ‘obscured in every

a standard photographic work, came out in 1970

instance’, stating that ‘the work that would be the

the same year as SGA. And it could be that SGA

most consequential for the history of contemporary

represented the first time that the Bechers’ work

photography seems to have elicited the least

had been seen in Britain. Later, they were to

attention.’1 This applied not only to photographic

become internationally acclaimed, and were

documentation, but also the contemporary press

an influence on Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer,

reaction to SGA, as the Bechers are only ever

Axel Hütte, Simone Nieweg, Thomas Ruff,

briefly mentioned, if at all, in reviews of the

Laurenz Berges, Thomas Struth, and Petra

exhibition. The juxtaposition of Reusch’s transparent

Wunderlich, among many others.

containers with the Bechers’ worker-less frame structures was, however, well curated, as Reusch’s electrostatic boxes dispersed coal dust,

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The Bechers made their first visit to England

1. Karen Barber, ‘Documents and Archives: Photography Of, At and In the 1970 Strategy: Get Arts Exhibition,’ Studies in Photography (Summer 2019): 28-41, p. 40. 2. Norbert Lynton in Bernd and Hilla Becher, exh. cat., (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1974), n.p.

Top: Photograph of ‘Pitheads’ by Bernd and Hilla Becher in the foreground, with Blinky Palermo making his wall painting Blue/Yellow/White/Red in the background (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Demarco Digital Archive.

Below: Photograph of ‘Pitheads’ by Bernd and Hilla Becher installed in studio space with Erich Reusch’s containers (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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Joseph Beuys 1921-1986

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Much has been written on Joseph Beuys’s

It is not possible to do justice to Beuys’s overall

involvement in Strategy: Get Arts and his

significance within the confines of these pages,

repeated visits to Scotland throughout the 1970s

but it is important to briefly summarise his three

and early 1980s (see Further Reading). Richard

major contributions to the exhibition. Time and

Demarco knew early on that Beuys’s presence

again these have been discussed, not just in

at ECA was essential. He was the leader of the

the literature on Beuys, but the literature on

Düsseldorf pack, the teacher of a considerable

post-1945 art more generally. They have become

number of artist contributors to SGA, many of

canonical works of contemporary art, even

whom would achieve professorial positions

though Beuys’s practice was often about

themselves, and many at the Kunstakademie

challenging the canonical.

Düsseldorf. His work garnered more press attention than that of any other artist. In a Daily Telegraph review of SGA, the critic Terence Mullaly stated:

In this short introduction, it is necessary to emphasise that at Strategy: Get Arts (1970), the preliminary version of the photographic installation Arena, later named in Naples in 1972

At the centre of it all is Joseph Beuys […] who

as Arena – Dove sarei arrivato se fossi stato

invests the trivial gesture, or is it the down

intelligente! (Arena – where would I have got

right absurd, with the force of his character

if I had been intelligent!), the ‘action’ Celtic (Kinloch

to the point at which whatever rational

Rannoch) Schottische Symphonie (Celtic (Kinloch

judgement may be, respect is commanded.

Rannoch) Scottish Symphony), and the sculpture

None of the other artists, many of whom are

Das Rudel (The Pack), all located in different

his pupils, almost all his followers, make an

spaces in Edinburgh College of Art, collectively

equal impact.1 And Edward Lucie-Smith, writing for The Sunday Times, speculated on the influence that Beuys was going to have on arts education in the UK:

marked Beuys’s artistic debut in the English-speaking world, and should therefore be understood as a critical moment of international exposure.

To put it mildly, Beuys is going to create problems in British art schools. He points in precisely the direction which currently most attracts the brightest pupils, and which most dismays the teachers and organisers who have to justify the money spent on art education to the suspicious paymasters of the State. Edinburgh has come up with a great subversive.2

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Joseph Beuys Arena

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Arena consisted of photo-documentation of

Richard Demarco has given his recollections of

Beuys’s previous projects: his actions,

Arena and its installation in a studio space very

performances, installations, objects, and sketches,

familiar to him from his own student experiences

representing the development of his practice.

of ECA:

Karen Barber has written the following about this work at SGA:

That room was special to me. It was where I was educated. Anyway, when we were

Beuys showed an early version of Arena,

thinking about installing Arena, I said to

which was in a preliminary and untitled state

Beuys, ‘I don’t have any money for frames’.

at the time of the exhibition in 1970. A large

He said, ‘It doesn’t matter, just put glass on

scale semi-autobiographical work consisting

each image, just put it on the floor or lean it

of one hundred and sixty photographs

against a wall.’ […] I believe Beuys only made

mounted on white mats and placed in simple

one work and he underlined that fact by

glass frames […] Voluminous without being

saying, ‘If you look at all these images [Arena]

comprehensive the photographs withhold as

this is what I have done up to now’. I thought,

much as they disclose […] Over the next two

‘this is the work of a great teacher’. […] And

years he altered and expanded Arena with

when Beuys was asked whether he wanted

additional photographs and massive steel

the floor of this life room to be cleaned (it

frames. It is now in the collection of the

was bespattered with paint), he replied,

DIA Center in New York.3

‘No, no leave it untouched. These marks are evidence of all the human souls who have endeavoured to make art’.4

Opposite top: Students preparing panels for an early iteration of Joseph Beuys’s Arena (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021. Opposite below and right: Exhibition visitors in an ECA studio with some of the panels of Joseph Beuys's installation, Arena. Photos © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

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Right: Henning Christiansen and Joseph Beuys, Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony August 1970. Photo © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021. Below: Photograph of Joseph Beuys on Rannoch Moor. 8 May 1970. Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

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Joseph Beuys Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony

Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony was

Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony was to

an ‘action’, a collaboration between Beuys and the

have an impact well beyond ECA when a variation

Danish Fluxus composer Henning Christiansen.

of it, entitled Celtic +~~~, was performed by

It was inspired by Beuys’s experiences of Scotland

Beuys, again working with Christiansen, at the

during the long summer of 1970. In some ways it

Zivilschutzräume in Basel on 5 April 1971.

was a response to Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides

Photographs by Ute Klophaus of Celtic (Kinloch

Overture (Fingal’s Cave) of 1830, a Romantic

Rannoch) Scottish Symphony at ECA appeared in

composition Beuys knew well, but found too

a visual essay compiled by Johannes Stüttgen

sentimental.5

Beuys’s performance was

accompanied by a film of Rannoch Moor that he

for the fifth issue of the important German art magazine Interfunktionen (1970). Later, the ‘action’

had made on 13 August 1970. In this respect, it

was canonised in the catalogue for the major

was also a collaboration with Demarco, who was

New York Guggenheim retrospective Joseph

responsible for enthusiastically guiding Beuys to

Beuys (1979), curated by Caroline Tisdall, with

these sites in the first place. In November 1970,

Beuys’s contribution to SGA given nine pages

Alastair Mackintosh gave a first-hand account of

of coverage in terms of photos and text, the

the original ‘action’, performed ten times over five

latter mostly drawn from Mackintosh’s article

days at ECA, in the journal Art and Artists:

cited above.7

The room was large, a studio in the college,

Intriguingly, one SGA contribution by Beuys

the lighting drab with neon […] His actions are

intersected with another. Some of the

reduced to a minimum: he scribbles on a

photo-documentation by Klophaus of the ‘action’

board and pushes it around the floor with a

Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony

stick in a 40-minute circuit of Christiansen;

would become incorporated into Beuys’s Arena

shows films of events by himself (not entirely

project, first shown at SGA, which he continued to

successful as the editing destroys the

assemble and expand between 1970 and 1972.

rhythm), and of Rannoch Moor drifting slowly past the camera at about 3 mph. He spends something over an hour and a half taking bits of gelatine off the walls and putting them onto a tray which he empties over his head in a convulsive movement. Finally he stands still Right: Joseph Beuys removing gelatine from the walls, Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony (August 1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021.

for 40 minutes. Thus told it sounds like nothing; in fact it is electrifying.6

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Joseph Beuys The Pack

The VW camper van used by Beuys for The Pack

The Pack was somewhat ‘damaged’ whilst

was owned by the legendary Düsseldorf gallerist

installed at ECA. Just after the end of the

René Block. Initially, Beuys had created the

exhibition in September 1970, Demarco wrote

sledge installation under the title of Die Meute in

to Dr Herbig, informing him of the awkward

the hall of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1969.

matter of the tampering with the installation.

It was then exhibited at the Cologne Art Market

Communicating the loss of torches, Demarco

in the same year, this time with the VW camper in

wrote, ‘I hope you will have no difficulty in

place, where it was offered for the sum of

replacing them, but try as I did I couldn’t find that

110,000 DM and acquired from Block by the

German make Varta No.505 in Britain. Please

natural scientist and art collector Dr Jorst Herbig.

contact me if you have any difficulty in replacing

It was loaned to ECA for Strategy: Get Arts.

the torches.’10

The title Das Rudel (The Pack) was given to the installation when it was exhibited in Edinburgh. Photographs by George Oliver document the

Opposite: Joseph Beuys, The Pack installed for Strategy: Get Arts (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

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The matter did not in fact end there with a lot of wrangling between various parties about the scale of the issue and insurance liability. In a letter

offloading of the VW from the Hasenkamp lorry,

from German curator Jürgen Harten to Andrew

the extensive manoeuvring required to get it into

Elliott, the Executive Director of the Richard

the ECA Main Building, and its installation in the

Demarco Gallery, on 11 November 1970, Harten

Sculpture Department corridor. One Oliver

states: ‘The damage of Beuys’ VW can possibly

photograph shows Beuys carefully arranging the

not be repaired. The 10 missing torches could so

sledges coming out of the VW. The Pack

far not be replaced because this type of torch has

consisted of the VW, children’s sledges, rolls of

for two years not been produced anymore […]

felt, fat, and torches. Of this work Cordelia Oliver

If Beuys is not willing to exchange all of the

wrote: ‘Beuys’s Volkswagen bus spills its load of

torches for other efficient ones, the owner,

small immaculate sledges, thrusting and hurtling

Dr Herbig intends to claim total damage.’11

themselves forward like lemmings to the sea.’8

In correspondence with the Landeshauptstadt

And Beuys explained the rescue elements of the

Düsseldorf in August 1971, Elliott questioned the

work to the journalist Michael Pye, who had also

very large sum of the claim (18,360 DM) and

accompanied him to Rannoch Moor for the film

stated that Demarco had seen The Pack on

shown as part of Celtic Kinloch Rannoch, in many

display in Stockholm in January 1971 where

ways a related work: ‘The light is for orientation,

‘all the torches had been replaced and the new

and the fat, it is butter for food, and the felt is for

models were presumably to the satisfaction

warmth, it is for shelter, for a house. It is the three

of Josef Beuys and Dr Herbig.’12

things that you need in extreme conditions.’9 What is not well documented in the extant literature on Beuys and SGA is the fact that

Joseph Beuys The Pack

On 27 September 1971, over one year after the end

sledges and one had gone missing by the

of the exhibition, Demarco had to make a further

end of the first week. I redoubled the

statement for the legal department of the city

attention paid to ‘The Pack’ and had special

of Düsseldorf about the tampering with The Pack.

instructions given to the staff looking after

In that statement, he commented on the

the exhibition to patrol the area once every

circumstances that led to the torches being

half hour with particular attention paid to the

stolen. It is worth citing at length here because it

torches. However, at the end of the last

reveals some of the challenges of staging such

week, the third week of the Festival, it was

an exhibition in a city art college rather than a

reported to me that quite a number of the

heavily protected ‘white cube’ gallery space:

torches had been removed all at once and

Many children play in the area around the Art College and towards the end of the exhibition I realised that some children were getting into the building through another entrance they had discovered. These children had obviously been fascinated by the torches which were not locked to the Right: Joseph Beuys and ECA students manoeuvring the VW camper van into the Sculpture Department corridor (August 1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021. Opposite: Left – Right: Sally Holman, Richard Demarco, Lesley Benyon, and Joseph Beuys. Beuys installing The Pack for Strategy: Get Arts (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

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that a group of children had been seen in the building and that it had been noticed that one of them had a torch, but they vanished without the possibility of apprehending them. Up until this incident I did not feel that there had been any cause for alarm or special precautions. I was also under the impression that the torches would be replaceable.13

The matter was eventually settled, but it had clearly caused some ripples back in Germany. In 1976, Herbig lent The Pack to the Neue Galerie in Kassel (a long loan) and Beuys set up the room in the museum for its installation, now considered to be one of the most important by the artist. At the end of the 1980s, the Herbigs did not want to extend the loan for another ten years, but in 1993 the State of Hesse, with the support of the Hessischen Kulturstiftung and the Kulturstiftung der Länder, acquired the Beuys room for 16 million DM. The Pack has been loaned out three times since 1976. It was exhibited at the important Guggenheim Beuys retrospective in 1979, then in 2005 at Tate Modern, and for another retrospective, Parallel Processes at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2010-11).

1. Terence Mullaly, ‘Convention Swept Aside by Germans’, Daily Telegraph, 25 August 1970. 2. Edward Lucie-Smith, ‘A Great Subversive’, The Sunday Times, 30 August 1970. 3. Karen Barber, ‘Documents and Archives: Photography Of, At and In the 1970 Strategy: Get Arts Exhibition’, Studies in Photography (Summer 2019): 28-41, pp.38-40. 4. ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with Richard Demarco’, Tate Papers,no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/ publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-interview, accessed 5 November 2020. 5. Ibid. 6. Alastair Mackintosh, ‘Beuys in Edinburgh’, Art and Artists (vol.5, no.8, 1970): 10. 7. Caroline Tisdall (ed.), Joseph Beuys, exhibition catalogue, Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979, pp.190–99. 8. Cordelia Oliver, ‘Dada for the seventies’, Guardian, 24 August 1970. 9. Michael Pye, ‘Joseph Beuys’, Scotsman, 22 August 1970. 10. GMA A37/1/0563. 36. 1 x ts. Letter to Dr. Herbig from Richard Demarco, 17/9/1970, 1p. 11. GMA A37/1/0566. 137. 1 x ts. Letter to Andrew Elliott from Jürgen Harten, 11/11/1970, 2p. 12. GMA A37/1/0563. 12/5. 1 x ts. Letter to Landeshauptstadt Dusseldorf from Andrew Elliott, 25/8/1971, 1p. 13. GMA A37/1/0563./12/2. 1 x ts. Statement by Richard Demarco, 27/9/1971, 1p.

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Claus Böhmler 1939-2017 Claus Böhmler was a sound and media artist who explored the relationship between man and

29 July 1970 with some changes for the lending

technology with an anarchic sense of humour and

lists. For one of the changes, he notes: ‘The film of

a playful sense of language. His practice made

Böhmler is supposed to carry the title “The Flag”

use of the latest technologies, which he combined

instead of “Greetings”. Böhmler is going to send

with an interest in drawing, painting, sculpture,

a small flag that should hang over the video-

graphics and performance. He studied in Stuttgart

recorder’.1 The word ‘video-recorder’ is circled

and Düsseldorf in the 1960s and was a former

in pencil, which indicates his concern about the

student of Joseph Beuys. He became a professor

availability of this technology in Edinburgh in

at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in

order to show the film.

Hamburg in 1974 and remained in position until 2005, teaching artists who went on to achieve international recognition, including Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen. Currently, there is no clear photo-documentation

While there is no clear photographic evidence of Böhmler’s contributions, his Comic-Strip can just be seen propped up against a radiator in one of the George Oliver photographs of students unpacking the work of André Thomkins, the same

of Böhmler’s contributions to Strategy: Get Arts on

photograph of an ECA studio space in which

the Demarco Digital Archive. He was a filmmaker

Sigmar Polke’s paintings can be seen lurking on

who was due to send a film for the SGA film

the back wall.

programme, but his name does not appear in the ‘List of Films’ in the SGA archive at Modern Two, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. In the Hasenkamp transport lists for work to be delivered from Düsseldorf to Edinburgh, Böhmler’s name does surface, and for no less than four artworks. A film entitled ‘Greetings’ is itemised, a video film compatible with a Philips Videorecorder LDL 1000/00, a machine only commercially available in 1969. Then, two screenprints entitled Reisen I and Reisen II are listed, and finally, a Comic-Strip. The Comic-Strip (1970) was mixed media on thin card, one of 100 signed and dated impressions produced by the artist.

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Jürgen Harten contacted Richard Demarco on

1. GMA A37/1/0566 ./104. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Jurgen Harten re: exhibition planning, use of space at Art College, 29/7/1970, 4p.

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George Brecht 1926-2008

Below: George Brecht installation of objects for Almost 17 Events or More Even (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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George Brecht was born in New York in 1926. He was stationed near the Black Forest, Germany in 1945 and changed his name to ‘Brecht’ from MacDiarmid, not in reference to Bertolt Brecht, but because he liked the sound of the name. Brecht studied with the avant-garde composer John Cage between 1958 and 1959, during which time he invented, and then refined his use of spare written instructions for performance, which he called ‘event scores’. Brecht would also become known for his sculptural installations of everyday objects and would create event scores for them as well. For instance, instructions for

This included: 1. CLOTHES TREE, 1969 realisation of 1961 event-score. Clothes tree with objects. 77 x 29 x 29 in. Coll. the artist; 2. CHAIR EVENT, 1969 realisation of 1961 event-score. Chair with objects. 36 x 24 x 21 in. Coll. the artist; 3. WIND RULE, 1965-69. Portfolio of six silk-screen prints. 62 x 62 cm. Published by Galerie der Spiegel, Cologne in an edition of 65 signed and numbered copies.

Three Arrangements from Water Yam (1963) simply

He gave instructions that 1. and 2 must be

read, ‘on a shelf/on a clothes tree/black object

collected from his London studio, while 3. was

white chair.’

to be sent from Düsseldorf. He then writes:

Brecht was an early and significant protagonist of

In addition, I would like to perform a series

the Fluxus movement. His Drip Music (1962) was

of my event-scores, which would last about

performed by George Maciunas from the top of a

20-25 minutes. The materials needed, and

ladder during the Festum Fluxorum/Fluxus/Musik

performance arrangements are listed on a

und Antimusik/Das Instrumentale Theater at the

separate sheet enclosed. This series of events

Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, February 2, 1963.

would be entitled

This now legendary international festival of the

“ALMOST 17 EVENTS OR MORE EVENT”.

most avant-garde tendencies in post-war art was critical for future artistic directions because it encouraged very fluid boundaries between artistic disciplines. It was mostly organised by Joseph Beuys and featured his now legendary ‘action’ Siberian Symphony. In 1970, Brecht maintained a flat in Düsseldorf and a studio in Ladbroke Grove in London. On 11 June 1970, he sent precise instructions to Kunsthalle Düsseldorf Director Karl Ruhrberg about what objects he wanted displayed and what he wanted to perform at Edinburgh College of Art.

Finally, he adds that for the SGA catalogue, he did not want to make a statement, but rather print 11 enclosed cards that relate to his ‘event scores’.1 Brecht was unable to make it to Edinburgh in person and so Oliver’s photographs of Brechtian objects in an ECA studio are relics of a performance that never took place. A ‘nonperformance’ can also be a ‘Fluxus’ strategy. For Brecht’s New York Times obituary in 2008, Ken Johnson wrote: ‘Mr. Brecht said that he did not care if any of his event scores were realized and that he did not think that there was a correct way to perform one’.2 1. GMA A37/1/0558./54. 1 x ts. Letter to Dr. Ruhrberg from George Brecht, [1970], 1p. /55. 1 x ts. Document entitled ‘Edinbugher Festspiele: George Brecht: Preparations for "ALMOST 17 EVENTS OR MORE EVEN"', 11/6/1970, 1p. 2. Ken Johnson, ‘George Brecht, 82, Fluxus Conceptual Artist, Is Dead’, The New York Times, 15 December 2008.

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Peter Brüning 1929-1970

Left: Peter Brüning’s Diversion paintings as seen across the ECA Sculpture Court with Ferdinand Kriwet’s banners descending from the pillars for SGA 1970. Photo © George Oliver, George Oliver Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA AL/08/03. © DACS 2021.

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Peter Brüning was born in Düsseldorf in 1929 and

Like Blinky Palermo, Brüning died young in the

studied from 1950-52 at the Academy of Fine Arts

prime of his years as an artist, just three months

in Stuttgart as a student of Willi Baumeister. In the

or so after the end of SGA, on Christmas Day 1970

mid-1950s he became an outstanding exponent

at the age of 41. His works are exhibited in many

of Art Informel. He was a member of Gruppe 53,

national and international museums e.g. the

which together with ZEN 49 in Munich and

Staatliche Kunsthalle in Mannheim, the Carnegie

Quadriga in Frankfurt, was one of the germ cells

Institute in Pittsburgh, the Neue Galerie in Aachen,

of Art Informel in Germany. He was also a friend of

and the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle.

Cy Twombly and under his influence Brüning’s painting became lighter in palette, more gestural and dynamic. By the late 1950s, Brüning was one of the most successful artists of the burgeoning Düsseldorf art scene. He achieved international acclaim, including exhibiting at the documenta in 1959, 1964 and 1968. From 1969 he held a professorship for free painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In the mid-1960s, Brüning’s approach shifted from expressively tachist and lyrically abtract pictorial composition to a new kind of landscape-painting, the emblematic ‘Verkehrslandschaft’, a playful combination of pictograms, cartographic and traffic signs, which all gradually became part of his imagery. Two Umleitung (Diversion) and two Aufgehobene Umleitung (Cancelled Diversion) paintings from this period were shown at Strategy: Get Arts, specifically Aufgehobene Umleitung Nr. 18/69, Umleitung Nr. 21/69 (1969), Umleitung Nr. 22/69 (1969), and Aufgehobene Umleitung Nr. 7/70 (1970). In a George Oliver photograph, they can be seen dramatically located on a first-floor balcony of the Sculpture Court under the processional classical frieze, cleverly juxtaposed with Ferdinand Kriwet’s

Above: Peter Brüning’s Diversion paintings installed on First Floor in the Sculpture Court (North Corridor) for SGA 1970. Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

banners descending from classical columns.

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Henning Christiansen 1932-2008 Danish composer and active member of the Fluxus movement, Henning Christiansen, appeared in eight of Joseph Beuys’s actions between 1966 and 1971. He collaborated closely with Beuys in Edinburgh on the ‘action’ Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony and he maintained a strong connection with Richard Demarco, returning to Scotland in 1995 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Strategy: Get Arts.

Right: Henning Christiansen and Joseph Beuys, Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony (August 1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021.

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Alastair Mackintosh, who witnessed Beuys’s ‘action’ in 1970, wrote: Christiansen, the composer who provides the music for the performance, seated surrounded by five tape recorders – Beuys immediately visible sitting waiting. Which leads to the first extraordinary thing; his first action is to continue sitting, but he manages to turn a spotlight so to speak on himself. The onset of the music (a piano being tuned) helps, but it is mainly a sense of concentration, of possessing himself, of being 100 per cent Joseph Beuys, and it is this ability to ‘frame’ himself that is the dynamic of the performance.1 Peter van der Meijden, an art historian who was able to access Christiansen’s archive on the Danish island of Møn, has discovered that the initial arrangements concerning the form and content of the piece were made by phone. Van der Meijden writes: ‘It is unclear who decided that they needed the sound of a piano being tuned, but Christiansen ordered, from his flat in Denmark, a piano tuner in Scotland. When he came, Christiansen lay down underneath the piano with his tape recorder to record the tuning process, while Beuys walked around, tapping a stick on the floor, singing and finally thanking the piano

tuner.’2 Van

der Meijden has also outlined

the complex multi-part nature of Christiansen’s collaboration with Beuys, as well as the sonic side of the performance. The first thing to be played after the Scottish Symphony was Christiansen’s film of Eurasian Staff, accompanied by the first movement of fluxorum organum. Next, Trans-Siberian

Railway (Transsibirische Bahn) 1970, a film recording an action performed by Beuys during the exhibition Tabernakel in Humlebæk, Denmark, was shown, accompanied by sounds recorded by Christiansen on the ferry from Esbjerg to Newcastle. After this came a piece by Arthur Køpcke called Worm in the Brain and several of Christiansen’s own compositions (Perceptive Constructions, The Arcadian (Den arkadiske), a part of Music as Green (Musik als grün)). The tapes were once again played one after the other, so the rhythm was provided by the succession of pieces, rather than by the density of the texture created by playing several pieces at a time’.3 A very original thank you letter to Demarco from Christiansen, dated 8 September 1970 ends, ‘Strategy get arts well done’.4 This ‘letter’, which takes the form of musical notation, headed ‘Holyrood Park - Brief an Richard Demarco’, can be considered both a visual artwork and piece of music. Kirstie Meehan notes in her article in this current special edition of Studies, that this was recorded and played, possibly for the first time in a public space, at the National Galleries of Scotland 2016 archive exhibition of Strategy: Get Arts. 1. Alastair Mackintosh, ‘Beuys in Edinburgh’, Art and Artists (vol.5, no.8, 1970): 10. 2. Peter van der Meijden, ‘“Not Incorrect and Particularly Not Irrelevant”: Joseph Beuys and Henning Christiansen, 1966–71’, ed. Christian Weikop, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tatepapers/31/joseph-beuys-henning-christiansen, accessed 5 November 2020. 3. Ibid. 4. GMA A37/1/0560. /1/3. 1 x ms. Document featuring musical score by Henning Christiansen, entitled 'HOLYROOD PARK: Brief an Richard Demarco', [1970], 1p.

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Friedhelm Döhl 1936-2018 Friedhelm Döhl was a German composer and teacher who studied composition, as well

sound. It was a successful experiment and a

as musicology, German philology, art history

Klang-Szene II (Sound-Scene 2) was performed

and philosophy at the universities of Freiburg

at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin the following year.

and Göttigen. He was a lecturer at the

Richard Demarco has described the experience

Robert-Schumann-Konservatorium in Düsseldorf

of Sound-Scene 1 in the following terms:

(1965–8), and became acquainted with Günther Uecker during this time. In 1969 he was appointed chief lecturer in music theory at the Freie Universität of Berlin, where he was made professor in 1971. He was influenced by Art Informel, and developed after 1962 a spontaneous, associative style. Furthermore, from 1965 he ‘tended towards an ascetic, meditative and expansive manner in which sound and form, construction and expression are intimately connected’; and from 1970 to 1976, he wrote experimental works, ‘trying new ways of linking music with space, the stage, language and graphics.’1 At Strategy: Get Arts (1970), Döhl collaborated with Uecker in a ‘concert’ that was held in the grand classical space of the Edinburgh College of Art Sculpture Court, a work called Sound-Scene 1. Uecker installed

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a ‘cloth sculpture’ for this concert of electronic

The concert was performed […] under an enormous white cloth, reminiscent of a great billowing sail, recalling images of the Flying Dutchman. The concert-goers stood or sat or lay recumbent on the wooden floor, most of them motionless under the mood of contemplation engendered by the music. When the synthesised music was seen to be synchronised in the intensity of the lights shining upon the white cloth (which at certain points came sloping down from the 40-foot high ceiling to within 3 or 4 feet from the floor), the experience of sculpture aspiring to the condition of music became positively tactile.2 1. Wilfried Brennecke and Erika Schaller, ‘Döhl, Friedhelm’, Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 14 Oct. 2020. 2. See Richard Demarco, ‘Günter Uecker: The Artist as Explorer of the New Europe’, in Euan McArthur and Arthur Watson (eds.), 10 dialogues: Richard Demarco, Scotland & the European Avant Garde, Royal Scottish Academy, 2010, unpaginated.

Above: Günther Uecker in the Sculpture Court at ECA, with his ‘cloth sculpture’ installation for his collaboration with composer Friedhelm Döhl, Sound-Scene, a 'concert' of electronic sound.

Concerts were given on 1 and 2 September 1970, as part of Strategy: Get Arts. Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © Günther Uecker. All rights reserved. DACS 2021.

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Robert Filliou 1926-1987 The very cosmopolitan Robert Filliou was born

The Winter 1970 issue of Pages: International

in Sauve, France in 1926. In 1943, he became a

Magazine of the Arts, a neo-avant-garde periodical

member of the French Communist Party and

edited by David Briers, which included an anthology

served in the resistance during the Second World

of British press reaction to Strategy: Get Arts,

War. He moved to Los Angeles in 1947 and

opened with an article by Richard Demarco

earned a Master’s degree in Economics whilst

reflecting on the exhibition. Demarco devotes

working for Coca-Cola. In 1951, he took dual

the first three paragraphs to Filliou’s work, stating:

French-American nationality and worked for the United Nations in South Korea, which is where he discovered Zen Buddhism. From 1954-59, he was in Egypt, Spain, and Denmark, before returning to France and settling in Paris, where he met Daniel Spoerri, who introduced him to his artistic circle. From 1969 to 1972, he lived in Düsseldorf, amidst a vibrant artistic scene, including Dieter Roth, Dorothy Iannone, George Brecht, and Joseph Beuys, among many others who would also participate Strategy: Get Arts in 1970. Filliou was connected to Fluxus and he challenged the status of art as a finished product, instead favouring the handmade and indeterminate

“Strategy: Get Arts” on the first day of the Exhibition. I glued eight small, cube-shaped pieces of wood on the strawboard base he provided, knowing that whatever I did, I should make clear that the exhibition had emerged from the world within Edinburgh that had created the Traverse and the Demarco Gallery. Whatever this world is it cannot be defined as specifically Scottish; it is maintained by those who instinctively need the cosmopolitan life.2

qualities of the artistic process. He embraced a

More recently, Demarco has stated that ‘Paolozzi

variety of media and strategies that went beyond

refused to play it when he came in’, observing

any conventional understanding of ‘art’ in his

that ‘his reasons for making sculptures were

interactive and dialogue-based projects.

rather different to those of these artists.’3 In 1979,

In an undated letter to the art critic Georg Jappe, who was instrumental in organising SGA, Filliou wrote, ‘in Edinburgh, I will create works on the spot that I will leave behind me, as I intend to demonstrate what I call the Principle of Equivalence.’ He added, That Vocational Thing is a new concept, and should be given preference. Within the framework of the Festival, it combines performance, action, concept, audience participation, spontaneous creation of works, etc ..., which seems fitting to the circumstance.’1

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Robert Filliou asked me to play his “Vocational Game”, his contribution to

Filliou moved to Dordogne close to a center for Tibetan studies. In 1982, he received the first Schwitters prize of the city of Hanover. 1. GMA A37/1/0564. 2/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Georg Jappe from Robert Filliou re: 'That Vocational Thing', [1970], 1p. 2. Richard Demarco, ‘Reflections on ‘Strategy: Get Arts’, Pages, International Magazine of the Arts, no.2, Winter 1970: 9-13, p.9. 3. ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with Richard Demarco’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/ tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-interview, accessed 5 November 2020.

Above: Visitors playing Robert Filliou’s The Vocational Game (Robert Filliou in white overalls). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper, Left: Girl in mini-skirt playing Filliou’s game, Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive.

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Karl Gerstner 1930-2017 The Swiss artist Karl Gerstner trained as a graphic designer. He designed new typefaces and

documentation of Gerstner’s contribution to

published books on Concrete and Constructivist

Strategy: Get Arts to be found on the Demarco

art, typography, and colour theory. In 1958 he

Digital Archive, but there are a few photographic

formed the Gerstner+Kutter advertising agency

prints and some undeveloped negatives buried

in Basel. In 1968, he moved to a new main office

in the SGA archive at Modern Two, SNGMA in

in Düsseldorf to manage the huge Ford account

Edinburgh. One photograph in the archive shows

in Germany. It would prove difficult for him to

Gerstner’s Times Square being offloaded from

balance these high-level commercial demands

the Hasenkamp transportation lorry. Another

with an independent artistic practice, but as an

photograph shows the same artwork being

artist he was interested in the idea of ‘non-ego’

moved within the college by Alexander Hamilton

based forms of expression. Jürgen Harten wrote to Jennifer Gough-Cooper about Georg Jappe’s selection of Gerstner’s work: ‘Jappe selected […] one of his light pieces called “Times Square” instead of the 3 colour reliefs […]. Gerstner who agrees to Jappe’s proposal, needs electrical power: 220 Volts, 50 Cycles, 4000 Watts. Will this be available?’1 Times Square (1965) was a flashing constellation of coloured lights with different patterns, which depended on punched card strips placed in a box by spectators, a work which rhythmised the form of the construction. In many ways Gerstner can be seen as emerging from a Constructivist and Bauhaus design and kinetic art tradition, inheriting the legacy of artists such as Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy.

128

At the time of writing, there is no photographic

and others. This artwork by Gerstner was placed together with work by Adolf Luther to create a room of Kinetic art and light sculpture. This studio space, according to the plan of ECA printed on the back of the SGA catalogue, was off the north corridor on the first floor in the vicinity of the Sculpture Court. 1. GMA A37/1/0566. 96/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Jennifer Gough-Cooper from Jürgen Harten re: queries relating to artists for exhibition, 13/7/1970, 2p.

Top: Karl Gerstner’s Times Square (1965) being unloaded from Hasenkamp lorry (August 1970). Photographer unattributed (likely G. Oliver). Richard Demarco Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA A37/9/36/95.

Right: Karl Gerstner’s Times Square (1965) being moved in ECA studio space by Alexander Hamilton and others (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Richard Demarco Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA A37/9/36/14.

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Gotthard Graubner 1930-2013 Gotthard Graubner was born in 1930 in Erlbach, Saxony. He studied both in Berlin and Dresden

Friedrich’s painting by filling a room with mist by

in the late 1940s, but like many other artists who

using a fog machine. The idea was that the visitor

contributed to Strategy: Get Arts, he left the GDR

would lose all normal orientation and have a

in the 1950s to continue his studies in Düsseldorf.

different kind of experience of sublime

On arriving in 1954, he was initially taught by

boundlessness, one not relying exclusively on

Otto Pankok at the Kunstakademie and Günther

sight but other senses too. Over three decades

Uecker was his classmate. He graduated in 1959

before Olafur Eliasson installed his Weather

and came into contact with Otto Piene and

Project (2003) in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern,

Heinz Mack, the founders of ZERO. Graubner was

where a mist permeated the space, albeit on

appointed to teach at the Hamburg Art Academy

a much more expansive scale, Graubner had

in 1965, becoming professor of painting there

conceived of a ‘Mist Room’. Graubner could be

in 1969.

seen as a forerunner of Eliasson in some respects.

In the 1960s, Graubner mounted picture-size

Sadly, at ECA this idea backfired. Graubner’s

coloured cushions onto his paintings and covered

Homage to Turner, was another ‘Mist Room’ in

them in Perlon fabric in an attempt to enhance

a confined space, in this case the art college’s

the spatial effect of colour surfaces. These

photography studio, which was utilised for this

‘Kissenbilder’ (Cushion Pictures) were first

purpose. This led to a serious situation. One of

displayed in Alfred Schmela's gallery in Düssel-

the student helpers, Alexander Hamilton recalled

dorf and later shown in Edinburgh at Strategy: Get

what happened:

Arts, in the same studio space as a construction by Erwin Heerich and hyper-realist paintings by Konrad Klapheck. Much later on in 1988, Graubner would be commissioned by the Federal President to create two monumental cushion pictures for the Great Hall of the official residence, Schloss Bellevue.

Once we got the machine started, it burst into flames, and because the walls were covered in foam to protect those walking into the mist room from injuring themselves, within minutes the room was ablaze … Beuys stopped his performance, came out, and stood watching very quietly as these

Given that he was born in Saxony and studied

firemen arrived in full smoke protective

for a while at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts,

apparatus.1

it is not entirely surprising that Graubner was drawn to the work of Caspar David Friedrich, who settled in the Saxon capital in 1798. Friedrich’s iconic Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) sparked an idea for Graubner’s experiential Nebelräume (‘Mist Rooms’) from 1968-1972, the first of these being Homage to Caspar David Friedrich (1968). Graubner wanted to physically

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envelop the observer in the atmosphere of

Monika Baumgartl took a photograph of Graubner outside ECA, standing with the debris of his ‘Mist Room’ (see p.20). The fire incident led to statements being made to the authorities and for insurance purposes, all of which is documented in the SGA archive at Modern Two, (SNGMA).2

In 1976, Graubner became a professor of painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He became a leading German artist who presented work at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and whose paintings were shown in London at the important RA exhibition A New Spirit in Painting (1981) and German Art in the Twentieth Century: Painting and Sculpture 1905-1985 (1985), alongside many other exhibitions. He was the recipient of prestigious prizes including the August Macke Prize (1987), the North German Art Prize (1988), and Otto Ritschl Prize, honouring a life's work in colour painting (2001). 1. See Christian Weikop, ‘“More Impact than the Venice Biennale”: Demarco, Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/ tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-strategy-get-arts, accessed 6 November 2020. 2. See folder GMA A37/1/0562 for various documents relating to the fire, including statements by Gotthard Graubner, Jennifer Gough-Cooper, and Alexander Hamilton.

Above: Gotthard Graubner’s paintings (Cushion Pictures) on the walls of an ECA studio with Erwin Heerich’s construction in the foreground (SGA 1970). Photo © George Oliver, George Oliver Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA AL/08/03. © DACS 2021.

Right: Gotthard Graubner in his ‘Mist Room’ (Homage to Turner) in ECA (August 1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021.

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Erwin Heerich 1922-2004 Erwin Heerich was born in Kassel in 1922, where he went to school and then art school,

cardboard geometric objects were exhibited in

a city that would later become synonymous with

a room with paintings by Konrad Klapheck and

the documenta. Heerich was one of the older

Gotthard Graubner. It was not exactly a white

participants in Strategy: Get Arts, born a year later

cube environment at Edinburgh College of Art.

than Joseph Beuys. Like Beuys he was drafted

The clean minimalism of Heerich’s spatial

into military service during the Second World War,

constructions contrasted somewhat with the

and when he resumed his artistic studies in 1945,

messy paint-splattered floor of a working

he attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

art college.

He entered the sculpture master class of Ewald Mataré and ended up studying alongside Beuys. In 1957, he became an assistant of Mataré in the Summer Academy of Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg, and in 1969 he was invited to teach back at his alma mater in Düsseldorf. He remained there as a professor there until 1988. Heerich took a different artistic path to Beuys.

From 1982 to 1994, Heerich created eleven exhibition pavilions for the Museum Insel Hombroich, in Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia, developed when art collector Karl Heinrich Müller, who made a fortune in real estate, purchased Rosa Haus, an industrialist’s villa with garden. Heerich’s sculptures became the design base for these pavilions. Some artists who retired

While Beuys continued to explore the artistic

from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf took up

possibilities of organic forms and natural materials

residence on this museum island, including

and was fascinated by world mythologies,

Graubner, whose work could be seen with

Heerich engaged with geometric architectural

Heerich’s elemental sculptures at SGA, and

forms and his work can be seen as sharing

who had a pavilion named after him by Heerich

the analytical objectives and formal axioms

at this museum.

of American minimalism. From 1959 onwards, he used cardboard as his primary artistic material, which he folded, cut and glued together. He presented ten of these ‘Kartonplastiken’ at the documenta IV in 1968. For Heerich, unlike bronze, marble, or even wood, cardboard had no specifically aesthetic or historical connotations. He stressed that the material was ‘value-neutral’ and that this quality (or lack of it) was important to him.

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At Strategy: Get Arts, five of Heerich’s delicate

Below: Erwin Heerich’s Kartonplastik (Cardboard Sculpture) in ECA studio space (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

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Dorothy Iannone b.1933 Dorothy Iannone is an American artist from Boston, whose paintings, texts, and visual

Untitled works in felt pen (from 1968 and 1970

narratives, often autobiographical, depict themes

respectively), were shown at SGA and can be

of friendship and erotic love, partly inspired by

seen in George Oliver photographs.

her interest in Japanese woodcuts and motifs from Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Tantrism. Her work can be explicit and male and female figures appear in her drawings (often fellow artists, curators, or city officials) dressed but with genitals visible, or indeed undressed and in sexual union. Iannone met Dieter Roth in Iceland in 1967 and lived with him in Düsseldorf, Reykjavik, Basel, and London until 1974. Her work from this period often captures their exploits together as a couple. She was one of only two female artists whose work was exhibited in Strategy: Get Arts, the other being Hilla Becher. In 1969, Iannone achieved a certain notoriety when the Kunsthalle Bern attempted to censor her work in the exhibition Freunde, Friends, d'Fründe (centred around Roth, Daniel Spoerri, André Thomkins, and Karl Gerstner), by requesting that she cover up the genitals of her drawn figures. In protest, and in support of his partner, Roth threatened to drop out of the exhibition and the director of the museum, Harald Szeemann, who had also just mounted his radical 1969 exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunshalle Bern, resigned. Freunde, Friends, d'Fründe then transferred to the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, and after much debate, the director Karl Ruhrberg, who would collaborate with Richard Demarco the following year, decided in favour of an uncensored show. In 1970, Iannone produced an artist book entitled The Story of Bern, which conveyed this scandal and saga from Bern to Düsseldorf in sixty-nine, often explicit, drawings. This book, along with another in

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a larger format entitled, Extase (1970), and two

At ECA, artists and students were expecting the drawings to be banned and were preparing to walk out in support, but there was no need as the police did not seem to object. Iannone attended the exhibition and arrived in Edinburgh with Robert Filliou. In a letter written by Richard Demarco to Iannone after the exhibition had closed, he wrote: ‘Everything seems to have gone magnificently. I am sending you full crits and you will see that the police were kept at bay although they did prove to be troublesome.’1 Their proving ‘troublesome’, however, did not result in the banning of the drawings. Kasia Redzisz, a Senior Curator at Tate Liverpool, has commented on how Iannone has frequently been accused by feminist art historians for ‘cultivating patriarchal models’, but Redzisz has argued that she advocated for the ‘unlimited autonomy of female libido and the physical and intellectual emancipation of women through the experience of free love.’2 Her work might be divisive, but she has received high-level recognition in the art world, especially in the last ten years with a retrospective at the Berlinische Galerie in 2014 and a solo exhibition at Centre Pompidou in 2019, along with many other international exhibitions. 1. GMA A37/1/0567. /79/1. 1 x ts. Richard Demarco to Dorothy Iannone, 16/9/1970, 1p. 2. See http://moussemagazine.it/dorothy-iannone-kasiaredzisz-2019/ Accessed 21 October 2020

Above: Page from Dorothy Iannone’s artist book, The Story of Bern (1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

Above: Dorothy Iannone’s artist book Extase (1970) hanging from a chain next to palindromes by André Thomkins. Photo © George Oliver, Richard Demarco Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA A37/L2/17.

Top: Two visitors looking at Dorothy Iannone’s artist book Extase (1970) in an ECA studio. Photo © George Oliver, George Oliver Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA AL/08/03.

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Mauricio Kagel 1931-2008

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Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine

watching graphically violent films. In Stanley

composer who was also active in the fields of film

Kubrick’s film adaptation of Burgess’ novel,

and photography. His film Ludwig van (1969) with

released in 1971, this sequence makes use of

its soundtrack of modified fragments of

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It is not known

Beethoven’s works, was screened at Strategy: Get

whether Kubrick was aware of Kagel’s earlier

Arts. Commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk

film, but certain points of connection between

in 1969, it was intended as a surreal, slapstick,

the English novelist, German-Argentine

and somewhat dark tribute to Beethoven on

composer-filmmaker, and the American film

the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth

director, seem likely.

in 1970. In one film sequence, the composer, transported to the late 1960s, visits the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, where he is confronted

In a letter to Jennifer Gough-Cooper, SGA curator Jürgen Harten wrote:

by death masks, ear trumpets, and rotting busts

Kagel informed us, that unfortunately the TV in

of his own form. Kagel was partly inspired by the

Köln did not agree to the showing of his film

Frankfurt School theorist Theodor W. Adorno and

“Ludwig van” at the Edinburgh festival. They

the film functions as a quirky critique of both the

have a special option on this film. As we all

nationalist appropriation of Beethoven and the

regret this decision very much, we will make

‘culture industry’ responsible for turning this

a last attempt. If we fail in succeeding, Kagel

revered cultural icon into a consumer product.

cannot participate.

Düsseldorf artists who participated in SGA one

A cross is then placed by this sentence and an

year later, namely Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth,

addendum given at the foot of the page in

Robert Filliou, and Stefan Wewerka, assisted

Harten’s handwriting:

Kagel in the set design and have important cameos in the film, which captures this Rhineland cauldron of creative talent at the end of the sixties. In doing so, the film provides an interesting counterpart to Tony Morgan’s film

Otherwise, it may be possible to invite Kagel, who is one of the most avant-garde musicians of the region, to perform a concert.1 Clearly this ‘last attempt’ worked because of

Description (1970) also shown at SGA (see entry

Kagel’s presence in the SGA catalogue and the

on Morgan). The title of Kagel’s film is intriguing

existence of an overseas telegraph dated

because ‘Alex’, the violent antihero of Anthony

30 September 1970, requesting that the film be

Burgess’ dystopian novel Clockwork Orange

sent from the Richard Demarco Gallery to the

(1962), refers to the composer as ‘Lovely Ludwig

German Embassy in Oslo.

van’ (Kagel has disavowed any connection between the novel and his film). In Clockwork Orange, Alex is convicted of murder and chosen

1. GMA A37/1/0566. /96/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Jennifer Gough-Cooper from Jürgen Harten, 13/7/1970, 2p.

to undergo experimental behaviour treatment called the Ludovico Technique, where he is injected with nausea-inducing drugs while

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Konrad Klapheck b.1935 Konrad Klapheck was born in Düsseldorf. From 1954–56 he studied painting under Bruno Goller

1970 SGA catalogue reads: ‘My chief weapons

at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he was

are humour and precision. It is only through the

encouraged to develop his interest in figurative

coldness of precision that you gain entry to the

painting rather than the Tachisme which

fires of the soul.’1 The art critic, Georg Jappe,

prevailed during this time. In 1955 he painted

underscored the artist’s significance in his SGA

Schreibmaschine (Typewriter) after an obsolete

catalogue essay, arguing that Klapheck’s success

typewriter that he had acquired, with the idea

‘restored self-confidence to painters on canvas

of taking an approach as far departed from

as evidenced by Richter’s grisailles’, further

Tachisme as possible. This precisely painted but

stating that he was the ‘first to establish an

strange and slightly menacing machine picture

international price-level (with his exhibition at

marked the start of a fascination in creating

Sidney Janis). Up to then contemporary German

hyper-realistic representations of everyday

art had seemed to suffer from an inferiority

objects, such as sewing machines, steam irons,

complex through being underpriced.’2

and telephone handsets. Stylistically his subtly anthropomorphised work seemed to absorb aspects of Neue Sachlichkeit and Surrealism (especially Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Max Ernst). And indeed at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, he made contact with René Magritte, Parisian Surrealists such as André Breton, and various figures of Pop Art. Duchamp (who was also intrigued by the sublimated eroticism of machines), especially as seen in his various versions of The Chocolate Grinder (1913/1914), seems to have been a particular inspiration. Klapheck exhibited the following paintings at Strategy: Get Arts: 1) Der Chef (The Chief; 1965), 2) Die gefräßige Zeit (Voracious Time; 1967), 3) Die Scheidung (The Divorce; 1968), 4) Vergessense Helden (Forgotten Heroes; 1965), 5) Der Krieg (War; 1965). His work was located in an ECA studio along with the constructions of Erwin Heerich and the paintings of Gotthard Graubner.

138

A statement by Klapheck on his own work in the

From 1979 to 2002, Klapheck held a professorship for free painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since the 1990s his work has taken on the human figure as can be seen in paintings such as Die Küche II (The Kitchen II; 1998). He has also painted colleagues and celebrities from the international art scene. His work has been exhibited widely in Europe and beyond. 1. Konrad Klapheck in Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 2. Georg Jappe, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, in ibid., n.p.

Above: Konrad Klapheck paintings on walls of an ECA studio with Erwin Heerich’s construction in the foreground (SGA 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

139

Imi Knoebel b.1940 Imi Knoebel was born Klaus Wolf Knoebel in Dessau in 1940, but he was five when his family

projectors. For his Innenprojektionen (1968–1970)

moved to Dresden, where as a young boy he

he started using carousel slide projections,

witnessed the terrible firebombing of the city. His

creating empty squares of light, projected on

single mother left East Germany with Imi and four

a wall or in a darkened, closed-off room.

other children in 1950, described by Knoebel as a

Alternatively, he would mark the blank

night-time ‘escape through a cornfield, the barks

photographic slides with ink to create minimalist

of the border guard dogs who we felt were at our

geometric projections, in effect abstract painting

heels.’1 The name Imi, was an abbreviation of

with light. In his negative summing up of Strategy:

‘Ich mit Ihm’ (I with him), a reference to his close

Get Arts for BBC Scotland, Nicholas Fairbairn

friendship with Rainer Giese (known as Imi Giese)

stated incredulously, ‘Knoebel’s room has two

whom he met at art school in Darmstadt in 1962,

slide projectors perpetually showing blank

united by their shared reverence for Kazimir

slides,’3 whereas Demarco defended the work,

Malevich. The duo called themselves Imi&Imi. They encountered Joseph Beuys shortly after he was attacked during his performance at the Fluxus Festival of New Art, Technical College Aachen, 20 July 1964. Knoebel has stated: ‘We saw this art professor with a bloodied nose in the newspaper, holding up his hand in messianic fashion, and we said ‘We have to help that man, without knowing why he had been attacked.’’2 Knoebel moved to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1964 and was taken on by Beuys, becoming one of his first students to use photography as

writing, ‘Knoebel proved that paintings are valid as projected images,’4 approving of the artist’s radical departure from the materiality of conventional painting. After SGA, Knoebel continued to explore the possibilities of projection, and during a nocturnal drive through the city of Darmstadt, he would project a large X onto the walls and buildings of the city from inside his vehicle, recording the ‘action’ in a 40-minute video entitled Project X (1972), a project he remade in 2005. Knoebel is one of Germany’s leading artists,

an independent artistic medium. It was here that

known beyond his light projections for his

he also became a close friend of Blinky Palermo.

minimalist abstract painting and sculpture,

Knoebel would be devastated by the suicide of

particularly his Messerschnitt (knife cut) paintings.

Imi Giese in 1974 and Palermo’s drugs-related

In June 2011, his six stained glass panes were

death in 1977. Whilst in Düsseldorf, Knoebel became interested in projection technologies. Key figures of the ZERO group were among the first to use projectors. Already in the late 1950s, Otto Piene had created artworks from light projected through punctured

140

surfaces. Knoebel followed Piene in using

unveiled within the apse of Notre-Dame de Reims Cathedral, a gesture of reconciliation by the artist. 1. Kate Connolly, ‘Interview: Artist Imi Knoebel: “If you want to stay alive, you have to do something radical”’, The Guardian, 15 July 2015. 2. Ibid. 3. GMA A37/1/0559. /6/3. 1 x ts. Transcript of BBC programme, entitled 'EXTRACT FROM "FESTIVAL ORBIT", 23/9/70, 3p. 4. GMA A37/1/0559. /7/2. 1 x ts. Typed manuscript entitled '"Strategy - Get Arts" - Contemporary Art from Dusseldorf by Richard Demarco', [1970], 2p.

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Christof Kohlhöfer b.1942 Christof Kohlhöfer is a filmmaker who studied with Karl Otto Götz and Joseph Beuys at the

Germany and was a co-founder of the artist

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1965 to 1971.

collective ‘Colab’. In May 1979, he also became

In 1967 he met Sigmar Polke and photographed

the first art director of the New York cultural

his graphic art series Höhere Wesen befehlen

magazine The East Village Eye, which was in

(Higher Beings Ordain), published in 1968. For

circulation until 1987. In 1999, he accepted

Strategy: Get Arts, Kohlhöfer contributed the films,

a visiting professorship at the University of

Feuer (Fire; 1968), produced on a Double-8

California, Los Angeles.

camera, and Tanzstunde (The Dancing Lesson; 1968) on 16mm film, the subject of the latter being a trip to a Düsseldorf dance studio to visit young people with Down’s Syndrome. He also exhibited psychedelic comic strips at SGA. In 1969, he again collaborated with Polke, this time to make the film Der ganze Körper fühlt sich leicht und möchte fleigen… (The Whole Body Feels Light and Wants to Fly…). This collaboration, which was Polke’s first film is simply listed as Polke-Film (see entry on Polke). Kohlhöfer appears with his partner in the film Description by Tony Morgan and can also be seen in the iconic photograph of the opening of SGA, with Richard Demarco holding court.

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In 1977 Kohlhöfer moved to New York from

143

Ferdinand Kriwet 1942-2018 Ferdinand Kriwet was born in Düsseldorf in 1942, an artist and experimental radio play author,

16 mm Campaign (1972-73), which montaged

who also developed theoretical manifestos on

TV footage of Richard Nixon and George

acoustic literature. He was a pioneer in the field

McGovern’s US presidential campaigns in 1972.

of multimedia art, who explored the impact of mass media representations of major historical events, analysing the language of advertising and television in the process. Kriwet made a very considerable contribution

As well as this film and multi-projector installation on the moon landing, Kriwet displayed various concentric text-signs, whirlpools of words and sans-serif swirls on stamped aluminium. The circular use of text could be seen as relating to

to Strategy: Get Arts with a focus on visual texts:

the geometric configuration of symbols of the

nine aluminium text signs, four poem-prints, six

mandala, spiritual guidance tools that can be

comic-strips (screenprints), a forty-metre-long

seen in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Shintoism.

corridor text carpet entitled Walk Talk, Text-Dia,

Examples from his series Text Dia (1970), rings

and hanging text banners that cascaded down

of words printed on clear PVC sheets measuring

from the first to the ground floor of the Sculpture

over three-by-three metres, were also draped

Court, as well as the projector installation Apollo

across the Sculpture Court.

Amerika (requiring six Kodak carousel projectors and stereo equipment), a 16mm film entitled Apollovision, and more besides. His distinctive typographical kaleidoscopic forms were ever-present throughout the exhibition. Kriwet had created the seminal work Apollo

While all the Düsseldorf artists who participated in SGA had never exhibited as a collective in the UK before, Kriwet had participated in a concrete poetry exhibition at the ICA in London, curated by Jasia Reichardt, entitled Between Poetry and Painting (1965). His work was also included in the

Amerika in 1969 whilst in the United States at the

more recent ICA exhibition Poor. Old. Tired. Horse

time of the Apollo 11 moon launch. He gathered

(2009), which looked at text-based art practices

together newspaper articles, photographs,

from the 1960s to the present day. The title of

sounds, advertisements, illustrations, diagrams,

this exhibition was inspired by the title of an

concrete poems, collages, radio transmissions,

art periodical edited from 1962 to 1967 by

and television footage all relating to the moon

Ian Hamilton Finlay, whose work also featured

mission. With the use of six Kodak projectors,

in the exhibition. There are interesting parallels

combined with fragments of audio commentary,

between Kriwet and Finlay and both can be

Kriwet aimed for perceptual and auditory overload.

described as visual poets. Kriwet also had

He sought a comparable mesmeric effect in his

a solo exhibition at The Modern Institute,

16mm film Apollovision, which again intercut many

Glasgow, in 2008.

media sources, sometimes allowing the footage to flow and sometimes cutting down to looped announcements and single repeated words.

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After SGA he would do something similar in his

Above: Ferdinand Kriwet’s Text Dia (1970) draped across the Sculpture Court Left: Apollo Amerika (1969) multiple slide projector installation (SGA 1970). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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Adolf Luther 1912-1990 Adolf Luther is widely recognised as a pioneer of post-war ‘Light Art’, a leading representative

concave mirrors, was exhibited at ECA in Edinburgh

of kinetic and optical sculpture whose work

in 1970. This is not well documented. At the time

can be found in numerous museums and public

of writing (October 2020), there is no photographic

collections. In many ways, he can be seen as

evidence of the Focusing Room under Luther’s

a pathfinder for a number of contemporary

name on the Demarco Digital Archive (DDA), or

artists, including the Danish-Icelandic artist

rather there is a photograph, but it has not been

Olafur Eliasson. Some of Luther’s best work utilises concave mirrors, often spotlit from above. His Focusing Room (1968) was first exhibited at Utrecht University (now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Goslar, Germany) and cigarette smoke was used to accentuate cones of light, dissociating the shafts from the concave mirrors beneath, creating an ethereal sculpture. The initial idea was that viewers who smoked would effectively contribute to and become part of

placed in Luther’s DDA webpages. A photograph of the Focusing Room appears instead in Gotthard Graubner’s webpages, where it is wrongly identified as the ‘Mist Room’ and incorrectly attributed to Graubner. The ‘Mist Room’ (Homage to Turner) was another SGA exhibit altogether (see entry on Graubner). The confusion may be due to the fact that both installations used smoke or fog. The same error of identification appears in the print publication 10 Dialogues: Richard Demarco, Scotland and the European Avant-Garde (2010).

the installation, although later on, fog machines

Adolf Luther can be seen with his partner in

would be used to achieve this effect. In the

Tony Morgan’s film Description (1970) and the

Strategy: Get Arts catalogue, Jappe wrote that

two of them also appear on Morgan’s poster

after ZERO ‘[…] other artists realised the principle

advertising the premiere of the film at SGA on

of making light visible. Luther did this literally by

23 August 1970 (see entry on Morgan).

means of concave focussing mirrors which reflect light-rays in a dark room’.1 Luther’s work was shown in London in May-June 2017, at a pop-up Art Circle exhibition, entitled Focusing Room at 48 Albemarle Street, Mayfair. On that occasion, the curator Bettina Ruhrberg, who intriguingly is the daughter of Karl Ruhrberg, the Kunsthalle Düsselfdorf Director who helped make SGA happen, suggested in interview that it was an installation that had never been shown outside of Germany.2 That is technically true for that particular installation from Goslar, but a larger

146

version of it, utilising thirty-five rather than twenty

1. See Georg Jappe, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 2. See https://artattackapp.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/ artcircle-bettina-ruhrberg-focusing-room-interview/ accessed on 23 October 2020.

Right: Adolf Luther’s Focusing Room in ECA studio (SGA 1970), Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

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Heinz Mack b.1931

Above: Heinz Mack’s aluminium foil cross sculpture, and telegram ‘Make my Absence Positiv’ (SGA 1970). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

148

Heinz Mack studied painting at the Kunstakademie

Edinburgh, utilised by David Tremlett for his

Düsseldorf from 1950 to 1953. By the mid-1950s he

rooftop installation of 16 Industrial Scarecrows).

developed his first ‘Dynamic Structures’ in painting,

Demarco stated, ‘It is essential that I get the Heinz

drawing, plaster, and metal reliefs, and he became

Mack completed with mirror glass. I would like it to

well known for his light and kinetic art. Together

be completed before the end of the Exhibition so

with Otto Piene he founded the celebrated ZERO

that I can photograph it and document it as part of

group in 1957 and organised now legendary

the Exhibition’.4 Demarco was referring to the

evening exhibitions at his studio in Düsseldorf.

‘MAKE MY ABSENCE POSITIV’ telegram by Mack.5

Along with fellow ZERO member Günther Uecker,

The strange cross in the George Oliver photograph,

Mack represented Germany at the 1970 Venice

most likely a response to Kazimir Malevich,

Biennale and exhibited works at documenta in

appears to be covered in aluminium foil. Mack has

1964 and 1977. In his essay for the Strategy: Get Arts

sometimes worked with light-reflecting aluminium

catalogue, Georg Jappe wrote: ‘Heinz Mack trapped

foil, often in combination with mirror glass, as

the light in aluminium-foil, had mirrors rotating

indicated by Jappe’s statement above. Mack

behind fluted glass – giving the impression of suns

returned to the cross theme in 1992 with another

in water’.1 Karl Ruhrberg, Director of the Kunsthalle

artwork, this time in acrylic on wood, for his

Düsseldorf, explained in his catalogue contribution

Greetings to Malewitsch (Chromatic Constellation).

that ZERO was core to SGA: ‘In an exhibition which is intended to demonstrate the progressive vitality of modern Düsseldorf, it is necessary to place the emphasis on the latest trends and developments. Hence the consensus of opinion between artists, organisers and advisers was that Group Zero should provide the starting point’.2 In summing up the exhibition, Richard Demarco wrote: Heinz Mack was prevented by illness from making his environment. A telegram from him told me “to make his absence positive” and the mirrored surface of the cross which dominated the centre of his room did in fact do that.3

Recent retrospectives of Mack’s work have been held at the Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (2009); Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (2011); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2011); ARNDT, Berlin (2012-13); Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden (2015); and Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul (2016). 1. Georg Jappe, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 2. Karl Ruhrberg, ibid., n.p. 3. GMA A37/1/0577. /9. 1 x ts. Typed manuscript entitled 'STRATEGY-GET ARTS: Contemporary Art from Düsseldorf by Richard Demarco', 2p 4. GMA A37/1/0563. 44. 1 x ts. Letter to Mark Goldberg from Richard Demarco, 8/9/1970, 1p. 5. Confirmed by Richard Demarco in email to the author, 10/11/2020.

On the 8 September 1970, in an attempt to enhance the artist’s contribution in his absence, Demarco wrote to Mark Goldberg of A. Goldberg & Sons. Goldberg had department stores throughout Scotland, (including one in Tollcross,

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Lutz Mommartz b.1934 Lutz Mommartz is considered to be one of the pioneers of experimental film. He has lived in

banned in several countries due to its overtly

Düsseldorf since 1937 and was Professor of Film

sexual content. The orgasmic nature of Weg zum

at the Kunstakademie Münster from 1978 to 1999.

Nachbarn was enthusiastically commented upon

Sixteen of his films were shown at Strategy: Get

by the critic John Gale in his Observer article on SGA,

Arts, including Selbstschüsse (Self Shots; 1967),

‘Italian Scots wha hae’, dated 30 August 1970.

which had been awarded a prize at the experimental film festival in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium in the year of its production, and Weg zum Nachbarn (Way to the Neighbour; 1968). On Thursday 27 August 1970, just four days after the opening, the police seized the films from SGA, including all those by Mommartz, because they had not been certified by the British Board of Film Censors.

On Monday 31 August 1970, Mommartz wrote to Demarco, informing him that his films had been confiscated by the Edinburgh police and that he gave him authority to pick them up from the police station on his behalf. He states, ‘Please make it possible that the films can pass the customs and arrive without calamity’ before thanking Demarco for the night-time sightseeing tour through Edinburgh, which he describes as

Richard Demarco informed the press that there

‘the lovely town of the North’.2 In the same letter

was ‘no question of any objection to the contents

he mentions his 3-day trip to the Highlands. This

of the films. None of them, for instance, is

is an excursion that he took with Günther Uecker

pornographic.’1 Weg zum Nachbarn, however,

and Gotthard Graubner. On this trip, he made

would certainly have been challenging for some

another experimental film, Das Atem des Schafes

ECA visitors. This film is not explicit in terms of

(The Breath of Sheep), which shows the artists’

nudity, but it does show a young woman (the

car journey through Scotland, with memorable

actress Renate Meves) in the act of making love,

scenes of Uecker traipsing across moorland in

simulated or otherwise, staring lustfully at the

white trousers and shoes, as well as exploring

viewer for the duration. The male actor, Gerd

Eilean Donan Castle and other sites.3

Hübinger, is out of view (apart from his feet) and

The soundtrack to the film is ‘Moon, Turn the

the focus is exclusively on Meves in the ‘cowgirl’

Tides … Gently Gently Away’ a psychedelic piece

position and wearing a near diaphanous vest.

by Jimi Hendrix from the 1968 album Electric

Throughout the film, and in one take, she looks

Ladyland. The film becomes much more surreal

directly at the viewer as she moves towards

towards the end with blurry shots of thousands

orgasm to the sound of a rhythmically creaking

of maggots emerging from a dead sheep.

bed. In some respects, this might be seen as the experimental film equivalent of Je t’aime… mois non plus, a 1967 song by Serge Gainsbourg,

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famously recorded with Jane Birkin in 1969 and

It is worth comparing Mommartz’s Das Atem des Schafes with the ‘road trip’ film by Rory McEwen and Mark Littlewood, also shot in August 1970, of Beuys heading out to Rannoch Moor with Demarco and others to sculpt a great lump of calf’s foot jelly on the edge of the moor. In the opening title sequence for Das Atem des Schafes, the credits state in German that Mommartz first presented his film to the ‘Düsseldorf Künstlermafia’ at the end of September 1970. It is clear from this film that Scotland gave him, and other artists who physically came from Germany, much in terms of artistic inspiration. 1. GMA A37/1/0565. /3.1 x ts. Clipping from unidentified newspaper source. 'Police seize German Festival Films', 30/8/1970, 1p. 2. GMA A37/1/0567. /11/2. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Lutz Mommartz, 31/8/1970, 1p. 3. See https://mommartzfilm.com/FilmeLutzMommartzEN/ 136-Edinburgh_STRATEGYGETARTS_e.htm Accessed on 29 October 2020. Mommartz had also filmed Beuys in a 16mm b/w film Soziale Plastik (1969), in which Beuys stares directly into the camera for eleven-and-a-half minutes.

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Tony Morgan 1938-2004 Tony Morgan studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and was the only British artist at

so, with couples in and out of focus. We slowly

Strategy: Get Arts. He made nearly fifty films

become aware that we are watching a film of a

between 1968 and 1976. In the SGA catalogue

video. The 16mm film switches quickly between

entry for Morgan, the artist refers to his interest

on-screen couples and there are snippets of

in the idea of ‘people as art’ and describes five

mostly female voices describing their partners.

of the twelve films to be shown at the festival

It seems as if these ‘descriptions’ are taken from

exhibition, including Munich People, Us, Please

unused footage of moments captured shortly

put your tongue out, Vis-à-vis, and Description.

before or after what we actually see, rather than

Description was screened at 7pm on the official opening of SGA (Sunday 23 August) in the Film Room. Four posters advertising the event were placed either side of the main staircase of ECA main building, two of which can be seen in a detail from a George Oliver photograph. The poster on the wall is a still from Description and shows the artist Adolf Luther with his partner. Oliver also captures the artist Monika Baumgartl, who can be seen on the stairs by Wewerka’s broken chairs, setting up her camera and tripod with the intention of documenting the ‘water sculpture’ created by her partner, Klaus Rinke. Oliver’s photograph underscores the importance of photography and film to SGA, as well as providing evidence of the premiere of Description at the opening.

being later reflections on the footage. Semidetached from their subjects, the voices also lead the viewer to question the reality of what is being said, with the process of filmed video having a similar distancing effect. The male artists are passive, or chewing, smoking, smiling, and making bemused facial expressions, whilst they are scrutinised by their female partners. The comments can be wittily misleading, questioning the very possibility of really describing anybody e.g. ‘He has blue eyes, or maybe brown […] ‘I am looking at Ferdinand Kriwet, a man I have known since 5 minutes’ […] ‘He goes to the hairdresser about once every two or three days’ […] ‘I don’t know who he is!’ […] ‘Beuys is about 30, 40, or 50 years old’ […] ‘I look at your face and I see all and I see nothing’ […] ‘I think it is very hard to describe your own husband’ […] ‘He is getting fatter and

Morgan’s black and white film shows most of the

fatter!’ […] ‘I think he is a very difficult person’.

artists who would participate in SGA, including

Sometimes ‘descriptions’ are given in English and

those whose international reputations and fame

sometimes in German. Gerhard Richter’s partner,

were very much in the ascendency, although

for instance, says: ‘‘Ich weiß es gar nicht, was

still not well known in the UK. The film starts

ich noch sagen soll. Er ist unsportlich!‘ (I really

with head-and-shoulder shots of couples - male

don’t know what else to say. He is not sporty).

artists viewed frontally with their female partners in side profile. The couples are not ‘talking heads’, they are not speaking to each other or to the

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camera. The camerawork is shaky, deliberately

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Tony Morgan

Lutz Mommartz is exceptional in terms of

There is a document in the Demarco archive at

appearing in side profile, repeatedly saying to his

SNGMA, which indicates that Morgan wanted to

silent partner ‘Excuse me, I can’t speak English!’

make a film in situ at SGA. It is not clear whether

Heinz Mack and Stefan Wewerka appear without

this was ever produced. It is not given in the ‘list

partners and attempt to describe themselves.

of films’ document, also in the archive, so was possibly never realised. It reveals Morgan’s interest in experimenting with the relatively new medium of video tape, playing with ideas of ‘spectatorship’ and critique. In a typed letter to Richard Demarco, Morgan writes: I could also make another film idea “STATEMENT” where each person gives a statement during five minutes. (As you know video tape records immediately sound and image which can immediately be shown on a TV set: the same principle as a tape recorder). The “STATEMENT” film could be made with each person, who wished to participate, who entered the show. A criticism of the show itself within the show. The video

Above: Film poster advertising premiere of Tony Morgan’s film Description (1970) in ECA Main Building vestibule (August 1970). The photographer Monika Baumgartl is on the staircase. Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

Mack is seen reflected in a mirror, whilst Wewerka stumbles over words, comically failing to say anything about himself at all. Rinke is shown without his partner Monika Baumgartl, but he describes the photographer in her absence. Notably, Dorothy Iannone, who along with Hilla Becher, were the only female artists included in SGA, are not included in Morgan’s film. Morgan’s films, along with the films of other artists, were confiscated by the police in Edinburgh.

Opposite: Poster advertising Tony Morgan’s Five Hung Red (1969) also shown in SGA 1970, repurposed to promote the resumption of film screenings. Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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A makeshift Morgan poster, recycled from an earlier Kunsthalle Düsseldorf exhibition, refers to this situation, with the caption: ‘Films Released by the Police. Screenings as Usual’. This repurposed Düsseldorf poster from February 1969, was originally for a fibreglass sculptural installation entitled, Five Hung Red, an artwork also prominently shown in SGA.

taped film can be made with both the artists and the visitors. It would break down the distance between what’s goin’ on, the artists and the ‘onlookers’. A sort of mirror of the people who come to look, they find themselves looking and listening to themselves, an inside voice.1 Whether STATEMENT came to fruition or not, Description did have an afterlife, and was shown in a display at Tate Britain (May 2003 to April 2004), entitled ‘A Century of Artists' Film in Britain: Programme 3: Conceptual Film: Propositions’. It was also shown in the exhibition Tony Morgan: Some films (and videos) 1969-1973, at Thomas Dane’s gallery, London, 9 December 2011 – 29 January 2012. 1. GMA A37/1/0564. 39/3. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Tony Morgan, 6/8/1970, 1p.

Blinky Palermo 1943-1977

Above: Blinky Palermo making his wall painting Blue/Yellow/White/Red (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021. Left: Blinky Palermo (left) and Stefan Wewerka (right) in Silhouette. Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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Blinky Palermo was born Peter Schwarze in Leipzig

follows: ‘I think I need one more day for

in 1943 and brought up as Peter Heisterkamp by

installation because I don’t know exactly what

his foster parents. He adopted the sobriquet by

time I need to realise my piece (I think the

which he became known as an artist in 1964.

opening is on the 23rd?)’2

The name refers to Frank ‘Blinky’ Palermo, a boxing promoter and American Mafioso who owned prize-fighters and fixed fights, and who had a major stake in the contract of Sonny Liston, who won the World Heavyweight Championship in 1962. Palermo studied at the Kunstakademie

This reveals the pace at which Palermo needed to work in order to create his Blue, Yellow, White, Red, a wall painting comprising a horizontal band of primary colours, which ran around the architrave of the Beaux-Arts ECA building, beneath which the broken chairs of Stefan Wewerka lay scattered on the main staircase.

Düsseldorf between 1962 and 1967 and was a

Palermo’s simple elegant intervention into the

star student of Joseph Beuys. In 1969 he shared

fabric of the main building provided a fascinating

a studio with Imi Knoebel and after a stint in New

contrast to the Panathenaic procession of the

York in the early 1970s he moved in to Gerhard

West Frieze Parthenon casts, for which the

Richter’s former Düsseldorf studio. Palermo’s

Sculpture Court is well known.

reputation continued to grow after his tragic early death in 1977. Palermo was known for his monochromatic canvases and one-colour fabric paintings. He also painted on wood, steel, aluminium, and Formica, sometimes creating lines out of tape rather than paint. From 1968 to 1978, Palermo realised more than 20 murals and wall drawings at various sites in Europe, including Edinburgh. In these paintings, geometric forms echoed the contours of the rooms and Palermo recorded them in photo-documentation. Jennifer Gough-Cooper wrote to ‘Herr Palermo’ on 16 June 1970, informing him that she had ‘reserved a single room at the Pollock Halls of Residence’.1 And on the 7 August, Palermo wrote to Richard Demarco asking him to change his

Palermo’s wall painting was whitewashed, along with any other trace of SGA, shortly after the exhibition ended. With that gesture, the memory of this extraordinary takeover of the art college, a remarkable Gesamtkunstwerk by artists from Düsseldorf in the late summer of 1970, and certainly the most significant moment in the history of the art college was symbolically wiped out. The Palermo work was reconstructed in 2005 as part of ECA’s controversial Palermo Restore project (see Andrew’s Patrizio’s contribution to this publication). 1. GMA A37/1/0564 1 x ts. Letter to Blinky Palermo from Jennifer Gough-Cooper, 16/6/1970, 1p. 2. GMA A37/1/0567. /108. 1 x ms. Blinky Palermo, letter to Richard Demarco, 7/8/1970.

flight day to the 19 August, noting that he would arrive in Edinburgh one day earlier with Richter, Imi Knoebel, and Gotthard Graubner. Palermo gave the principal reason for this change as

Following pages: Blinky Palermo making his wall painting Blue/Yellow/White/Red (August 1970). Photos © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021.

157

158

159

Sigmar Polke 1941-2010 Sigmar Polke was a close friend and colleague of Gerhard Richter and Blinky Palermo, who like

Get Arts (1970) is not listed in the exhibition history

them, and other artists at Strategy: Get Arts, was

given by Sotheby’s, which leaps from the Galerie

a Grenzgänger (border-crosser), who left the

Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne, 1969 to the Städtische

GDR for West Germany, in his case in 1953. From

Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1973.

1961 to 1967, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and was taught by Joseph Beuys, among others. Along with Richter, Manfred Kuttner, and Konrad Lueg, he founded a ‘movement’ ironically called ‘Capitalist Realism’ in 1963. Polke’s reputation was in the ascendency in the late 1960s and between 1966 and 1970 he had a number of solo exhibitions in Germany and Holland. The fact that Demarco visited Polke’s studio at 4 Düsseldorf Kirksfeldstraße 133 on 29 January 1970 is a signal that he was aware of his rising status, or at least was directed to him by his German advisers. In examining the entry on Polke on the website

This absence from the Demarco Digital Archive and the auction house exhibition history seems mysterious, but a closer inspection of all Oliver’s SGA photographs is revealing. In a photograph of Alexander Hamilton holding a palindromic sign by André Thomkins, Dogma: I am God, Polke canvases can be seen resting against the back wall of an ECA studio. There looks to be some damage to the first canvas in view. This is confirmed by a document in the SGA archive at Modern Two (SNGMA) where the paintings by Polke are simply listed as ‘Works which arrived in Edinburgh damaged’.1 The same paintings can be seen in another Oliver photograph, taken from

of the Demarco Digital Archive (DDA), there is,

a different angle, with the curator Jürgen Harten

at the time of writing, no clear photographic

standing by the studio door, in front of the last

documentation by George Oliver or Demarco of

canvas in the sequence. It is possible that they

Polke’s contribution to Strategy: Get Arts. The only

remained in storage for the duration of the

evidence of his participation is the artist profile

exhibition. At some point after SGA and before

page from the SGA catalogue. In scrutinising the

the 1973 Lenbachhaus exhibition, the paintings

floor plans for ECA on the back cover of that

would have been restored.

catalogue, works by Polke are indicated as being shown on a connecting balcony corridor of the first floor overlooking the Sculpture Court, but the lack of photo-documentation for his work in situ is unusual. In checking the Hasenkamp transport list for

160

New York in May 2013 for 3,525,000 USD. Strategy:

Lösungen I-IV (Solutions I-IV) is an important artwork from Polke’s early career, which seems to be a witty response to the rise of Conceptual Art and the importance of seriality and repetition in Minimalist art, as exemplified by the practice of artists such as Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth.

artworks arriving from Düsseldorf in the SGA

In these four canvases, Polke subverts the

archive at Modern Two (SNGMA), four paintings

‘beauty’ of mathematical formula which attracted

(Lösungen I-IV) and one film are listed. Further

LeWitt and his peers by giving the wrong answers

research on this grouping of four reveals that they

to simple arithmetic e.g. 1 + 1 = 3, 2 + 3 = 6 etc,

were lacquer on canvas paintings comprising one

thereby frustrating the expectation of the viewer

artwork from 1969. They were sold at Sotheby’s

for an elegant ‘solution’ as suggested by the title.

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Sigmar Polke

It is known that Polke also contributed a film to SGA. This was most likely his first film, a

a Madame Baumgartner, representing gallerist

collaboration with Christof Kohlhöfer entitled

and publisher Claude Givaudan, who requested

Der ganze Körper fühlt sich leicht und möchte

the film for a projection in Switzerland, stating

fleigen… (The Whole Body Feels Light and Wants

that ‘It is very important for us and for Mr Polke

to Fly…) produced in 1969. In the list of films in

too’, with a PS which noted that ‘Mr Harten or

the Modern Two SGA archive it is simply given

Mr Kohlhöfer have not received the copy.’3

as Polke-Film, which is also the title by which it

Jennifer Gough-Cooper chased the matter up

was exhibited elsewhere in 1970-71, under the

with the Edinburgh Police and responded to

auspices of XSCREEN, a group created by

Madame Baumgartner on the 10 May 1971,

underground filmmakers in Cologne. This film,

informing her that Tony Morgan collected his

with very unusual perspectives and typical

films and those of Polke and Kohlhöfer, as given

anarchic humour, sends up the earnestness

in a police statement.4

of early performance art. In one scene, Polke repeatedly scratches himself over his clothes and waves around a metallic strip as two songs by American singer Brenda Lee play over each other. In another scene, he interacts with a swinging pendulum and a rubber turkey baster. Kohlhöfer creates strange sounds by plunking a metal knife on a table and processing the vibrating noise through multiple cassette tape players. This Polke-Film went missing at SGA. It was one of many films by artists confiscated by the Edinburgh police in late August 1970, but unlike the other returned films it did not end up back in Germany on schedule. In a letter dated 22 April 1971, some eight months after SGA, the curator Jürgen Harten wrote to Demarco, stating: Sigmar Polke has several times already pointed out to me that so far he did not get his film back […] I figure it was one of the films censured [sic] by the police department for a while.2

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And on 26 April 1971, Demarco was contacted by

1. GMA A37/1/0566. /121/2. 1 x ts. Document: 'Damaged Items from Exhibition "STRATEGY GET: ARTS" in Edinburgh 1970'. 2. GMA A37/1/0558. /78/2. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Jürgen Harten re: Polke film, 22/4/1971, 1p. 3. GMA A37/1/0558. /77. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Mariette Baumgartner re: Polke film, 26/4/1971, 1p. 4. GMA A37/1/0558. /72/1. 1 x ts Letter to Madame M. Baumgartner from Jennifer Gough-Cooper, 10/5/1971, 1p.

Top: Sigmar Polke’s paintings Solutions I-IV (1969) on back wall of ECA studio (August 1970). Photos © George Oliver, Richard Demarco Archive, National Galleries of Scotland, GMA A37/9/36/14. © The Estate of Sigmar Polke, Cologne/DACS 2021. Left: Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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Erich Reusch 1925-2019 Erich Reusch was born in the Wittenberg district of Lutherstadt in 1925 and studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin from 1947 to 1953. He then joined a Düsseldorf architectural firm before going freelance as an architect. He was involved in many town planning projects and was the initiator of the satellite town

source of tension is provided by the flow of the soot which deposits itself in tracks on the surfaces and contrasts with the inflexibility of the glass boxes, resulting in a peculiar clash of dynamic and static forces.1

of Meckenheim-Merl near Bonn and became

George Oliver took striking photographs of

increasingly active as a sculptor in the 1960s.

student helpers moving Reusch’s containers

He conceived of his first minimalist floor

into position and posing with the work. In other

sculptures, dispensing with a pedestal, in the

photographs by Oliver, art critic Cordelia Oliver

early 1950s, years ahead of Carl Andre and

can be seen standing behind Reusch’s sculptural

Richard Serra. He was interested in the potential

work. At SGA, the Reusch boxes were

of sculpture to redefine space to create a specific

appropriately displayed next to photographs

and unmistakeable ‘location’ rather than focusing

of pitheads by Bernd and Hilla Becher

on sculptural form in itself. As early as 1957,

(see their entry).

Reusch had designed a 1:100 model for an acoustic memorial in Auschwitz of four large discs (the largest being 60m in length) on a trapezoidal granite slab with electric bells located in hidden chambers.

Reusch has a large number of works in public collections and public display, including a water relief for the campus of Ruhr University in Bochum in 1973. His work was very recently celebrated in Bochum with a retrospective,

Reusch became known for his electrostatic

Erich Reusch: grenzenlos. Artworks 1951-2019

objects of containers made from Plexiglas and

at the Foundation Situation Kunst / Musuem

containing soot, objects which were exhibited

unter Tage, Bochum (6 May – 23 August 2020).

at Strategy: Get Arts. These created a visible but inaccessible interior space. The boxes were a translucent presence and due to the electrostatic charge the work was in a constant process of transformation. In the SGA catalogue entry on

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Reusch, Klaus Honnef is cited. He states that a

1. Klaus Honnef cited in ‘Erich Reusch’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p.

Top: Alexander Hamilton posing with one of Erich Reusch’s electrostatic triplex containers (SGA 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

Right: Student Joan Brydon pushing one of Erich Reusch’s electrostatic triplex containers into position (SGA 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

165

Gerhard Richter b.1932 Gerhard Richter, alongside his compatriot Anselm

Feldmühle were shown in international exhibitions

Kiefer (b.1945), is considered by many art critics to

after Edinburgh.2 Feldmühle was gifted to

be one of the greatest painters of the post-1945

Demarco, as revealed by correspondence in the

period. Kiefer was mentored by Joseph Beuys in

SGA archive at Modern Two, SNGMA, Edinburgh.

Düsseldorf in the early 1970s, but he was not

In a letter of 1 September 1970, Richter writes:

involved in Strategy: Get Arts. Neither was Kiefer part of Richter’s circle, which included the likes of Sigmar Polke, Blinky Palermo, and Günther Uecker. The idea for an exhibition of Düsseldorfbased artists in Edinburgh started to take shape in Richter’s studio on the 29 January 1970, two days after Richard Demarco left Edinburgh for Germany. Uecker and Richter were involved in leading the discussion with Demarco, with various other artists present. At this point, nineteen artists were

which is hanging in the reception of the Art-College (“Feldmühle”, Nr. 263, 50 x 60 cm). But if you don’t like it so much, then I’ll try and give another of my future works […] Please be patient with the other plans, Scottish landscape exhibition etc.3 Alexander Hamilton, one of the student helpers

suggested as potential contributors. Later on, this

at SGA (and now series editor for Studies books),

number would expand to thirty five. Three weeks

recalls handling Richter’s paintings in ECA and

before the exhibition was due to open, Demarco

astonishingly foiling a potential art heist.

wrote to Richter inviting him to stay at his home and to ‘discover the beauty of Edinburgh and the Scottish landscape’. Demarco wrote: ‘I am especially grateful to you for the way you helped me to make the Exhibition of Art from Düsseldorf possible’.1 This would be the first time Richter’s work had

Richter’s work we installed in one of the upper rooms in the art school, a group of amazing paintings […] I remember on one occasion, I was in the room with the paintings and a couple of guys turned up in brown overalls to say that they had been hired to remove some of them. I thought it was rather

ever been shown in the UK. By the summer

strange because we had only just installed

of 1970, Richter had decided that his own

them, so why would they need to be

contribution would comprise seven oil-on-canvas

removed? While we checked them out, we

landscape paintings of varying sizes. These were:

said ‘No, we can’t have people taking things

Korsika Feuer (Corsica Fire), 1969; Abendstimmung

out...’ Again, there was no security and clearly

(Evening Mood), 1969; Abendlandschaft mit Figur

they were trying to steal them. Luckily, we

(Evening Landscape with Figure), 1970;

did stop a major art theft! 4

Landschaft mit Baumgruppe (Landscape with Clump of Trees), 1970; Kanarische Landschaft (Canarian Landscape), 1970; Alpen (Alps), 1970; Feldmühle (Field Mill), 1970. According to the Gerhard Richter website, which very helpfully has webpages devoted to the Richter artworks shown in SGA, all paintings asides from Alpen and

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Dear Ricky, Because you are such a nice man, I want to give you the small painting

Five of the paintings shown at SGA were based on photographic images of landscapes included in Richter’s Atlas project (Atlas sheets 173, 174, and 180). Atlas was a collection of the artist’s photographs and other amateur snapshots, newspaper cuttings, and sketches that Richter

167

Gerhard Richter

Below: Artists’ meeting in Gerhard Richter’s studio on 29 January 1970. Richter facing camera, Richard Demarco facing painting. Photographer unknown, Demarco Digital Archive. Below right: Gerhard Richter pouring a drink in his studio. Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive. Opposite: Gerhard Richter paintings being moved by student assistants in ECA studio in preparation for Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photos © George Oliver, Richard Demarco Archive, National Galleries of Scotland. GMA A37/9/36/14.

had been assembling since the mid-1960s,

abstract paintings, but he was only interested

a huge repository of pictorial source material for

in my first landscape, which was Corsica (Fire).’5

his photo-paintings. Three of the paintings are

In George Oliver photographs, recently enlarged

now in public collections. Abendstimmung is in

from the original negatives by NGS for this SGA50

the collection of the Kunsthalle zu Kiel, while

project, images identified by this author and not

Abendlandschaft mit Figur can be found in the

published before, we can just see Corsica (Fire)

Sprengel Museum in Hannover, and Kanarische

under the arm of a female student helper, while

Landschaft in the Institut Valencià d'Art

a male student helper presents Richter’s larger

Modern, Spain.

canvas Abendstimmung. The largest Richter

Landschaft mit Baumgruppe was sold by Sotheby’s New York for USD 453,500 on 19 November 1997, while Korsika Feuer (Corsica Fire), a smaller but highly significant artwork from the collection of Count Christian Duerckheim, was sold at Sotheby’s London for GBP 2,057,250 on 29 June 2011, a clear

canvas in SGA, however, was Abendlandschaft mit Figur (150 cm x 200 cm) and this can also be seen on its side in one of these rare photographs, as well as being carried across the studio by students in another. Richter’s landscapes, a reinvention of the genre,

indication of the rising art market values for Richter.

have sometimes been compared with those

Of this otherworldly, luminous, and meditative

of the early nineteenth-century Romantic artist

painting, Richter has stated, ‘I remember just a

Caspar David Friedrich, especially after Richter’s

little story that took place when I was first in New

first retrospective at the Kunstverein in Düsseldorf

York with Palermo. We had some photographs of

in 1971. Both artists had close ties to Dresden.

our work – just in case. And we showed them to

Richter studied in the Saxon capital in the late

someone – I think it was Bob Ryman – and

1950s, and the city is home to one of the most

I thought that he would, of course, prefer the

extensive collections of Friedrich’s paintings, which Richter knew well. It should be noted that three of the paintings shown at SGA were based on Richter’s holiday snapshots of Corsica and the

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Canary Islands (Atlas sheets 180 and 174), so are not specifically German landscapes, although arguably a Romantic sensibility is not necessarily dependent on the national identity of ‘place’. Many German Romantic writers and artists would express a longing for the Mediterranean South, although Friedrich did not. In the case of Korsika Feuer and Abendstimmung, it is Richter’s conception of the sublimity of light and a boundless sky, which connects him to Friedrich. In 1994, paintings by Richter would again be exhibited in Edinburgh at the important exhibition, The Romantic Spirit in German Art: 1790–1990, co-curated by Keith Hartley, author of the Foreword to this special SGA50 edition. And Hartley would also be involved with a major retrospective on Gerhard Richter at the National Gallery Complex in Edinburgh (8 November 2008 – 4 January 2009).6 Recently, Richter’s life and work inspired the Oscar-nominated film Never Look Away (German title: Werk ohne Autor), released in 2018, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. And in 2020, a major retrospective of Richter’s work was staged at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met Breuer) in New York. This exhibition was scheduled to run from March 4 to July 5 2020, but due to Covid-19 closed after just a week on March 12. 1. GMA A37/1/0567. /3. 1 x ts. Letter to Gerhard Richter from Richard Demarco. 31/7/1970, 1p. 2. See https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/ exhibitions/edinburgh-international-festival-strategyget-arts-272 3. GMA A37/1/0567./4. 1 x ms. Letter to Richard Demarco from Gerhard Richter. 1/9/1970, 1p. 4. Christian Weikop, Strategy: Get Arts. In Conversation with the Artist Alexander Hamilton. RFGVC film documentary, Edinburgh College of Art, 2018. 5. Gerhard Richter in Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, MoMA, 2002, p. 302. 6. See Keith Hartley on Gerhard Richter, https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/videos/exhibitions/ paintings-from-private-collections-22/ ?&tab=information-tabs

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Further Observations on the Seven Gerhard Richter Paintings at Strategy: Get Arts (1970) Christian Weikop

Below: Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke, Blinky Palermo, and Gerhard Richter outside Galerie Heiner Friedrich in Dumont-Verlaghaus for the exhibition Demonstrative, Cologne, 1967.

The ‘slow’ medium of painting may have

time, which archly commented on West German

appeared a little out of place in Strategy: Get Arts

consumerism and middle-class taste,

with its energetic iconoclasm. Gerhard Richter’s

Schloss Neuschwanstein comes across as a

desire to explore the time-honoured genre of

knowing cliché of a Romantic scene, based on

landscape could be seen as its own kind of

a cover photo illustration for Stern magazine

provocation in the face of the ‘actions’ of a slightly

(18 August 1963). The painting was displayed in

younger ‘68 generation of artists, a refusal to

the Düsseldorf furniture store, Berges, for Lueg

abandon the practice of painting at a time when

and Richter’s performance-cum-exhibition,

its status and relevance was being challenged,

Leben mit Pop – Eine Demonstration für den

especially in Düsseldorf. Of course Richter was

kapitalistischen Realismus (Living with Pop –

not a one-man band detached from the

A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism), on

‘Düsseldorf scene’; rather he was integral to it,

11 October 1963. Yet Richter’s turn to landscape

collaborating with the likes of Konrad Lueg,

painting in the late 1960s, using his own

Sigmar Polke, and Blinky Palermo. But he had

snapshots rather than ‘found’ photographs from

another kind of mission when it came to keeping

magazines and other sources, marked another

faith in painting. His practice was not an act of

kind of foray into the genre, one that was rather

regression in relation to new directions in art, but a different kind of subversion. He sought to expand and complicate the idea of painting in relation to photography, painting the photograph rather than the direct subject, exploring distancing effects and questioning our visual cognition of surface and image, the very nature of perception. Landscape motifs have been evident in Richter’s

Korsika Feuer (Corsica Fire) from 1969 is a key early landscape, one of a series of five Corsica canvases executed in Richter’s Düsseldorf studio between 1968 and 1969, based on photographs he took of the Mediterranean island while on a two-week family holiday in 1968. This experience sparked a renewed interest in the possibilities of landscape painting, an interest that has endured throughout his long career. Korsika Feuer looks almost celestial; it has both an austere beauty and a sense of artificiality, as if montaged, even

oeuvre since the early 1960s, and notably in his

though the image is in fact based on a single

Schloss Neuschwanstein (1963), a representation

photograph (Atlas sheet 180).1 It is a visual essay

of King Ludwig II’s fantasy castle in Bavaria,

on light effects, with the heat shimmer of the

rising vertically from the surrounding forest and

blurred foreground fire smudging the silhouetted

mountains above the huge artificial Lake Forggen.

peaks on the horizon.

In keeping with other German ‘Pop’ artworks that Richter, Polke, and Lueg were producing at this

170

less ironic and rather more conceptual.

Abendstimmung (Evening Mood) (1969) was

Abendstimmung, is stylistically very different in his

another hazy atmospheric painting with a low

use of a monochrome palette with a comparatively

horizon line and wide expanse of sky, in this case,

rough handling of paint. Here, Richter seems to

with a glimpse of the sea, suggestive but not

be imitating gestural abstraction. He did this quite

imitative of various works by Caspar David

deliberately, stating, ‘I no longer felt like painting

Friedrich. In 1970, Richter would state his

those soft Photo pictures. Perhaps I also wanted

motivation concerning his landscape painting

to correct the false impression that I had adopted

to Rolf-Gunter Dienst, and he elaborated the

an aesthetic viewpoint.’6 In Alpen, the application

same point in interview with Robert Storr in 2001:

of paint is thick and chaotic, in contrast with those

And then the affirmation was naturally there, the wish to paint paintings as beautiful as those by Casper David Friedrich, to claim that this time is not lost but possible, that we need it, and that it is good.’2 Whether we can take this statement at face value or not, whether it was a deliberate provocation or not, it is tempting to further chase the intriguing Richter connection to Friedrich, especially considering their common ground in Dresden. Equally, Richter’s landscape paintings could be interpreted, as they were by some critics who considered his early Kunstverein Düsseldorf show in 1971, as shallow rehashes of the motifs of his Romantic predecessor, generating empty homages that express little other than escapist nostalgic yearning.3 But the fact that these canvases were mediated by the photographic lens, with the artist sometimes copying the very tonalities of Kodachrome film itself, made a

other Richter landscapes seen at SGA. Neither is there any calm contemplation of a distant mountain landscape, as in Friedrich’s iconic Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer above the Sea of Fog) of 1818, with its famous ‘Rückenfigur’ compositional device. Rather, Richter generates a giddy sense of disorientation in moving towards abstraction. Other disorientating effects on the viewer are brought about by Richter’s paintings, Landschaft mit Baumgruppe (Landscape with Clump of Trees) (1970) and Kanarische Landschaft (Canary Landscape) (1970), based on photographs that he took on a trip to the Canary Islands in 1969 (Atlas sheet 174).7 It is as if the camera that took the snapshots on which these paintings are based was well out of focus, but the topographical features are deliberately blurred by Richter, feathering the still wet paint with a dry brush. As the art historian Oskar Bätschmann has stated: The blurring of the original

critical and complex difference, one revealing

photographic image draws attention

Richter to be very much an advanced painter

to the painting as a medium […] Blurring

of his own time. In another statement, Richter

results in a flickering effect, obscures

gives us a helpful steer, suggesting that his

things in a swimmy mist, disturbs

romanticising images are ‘cuckoo’s eggs’,4 since,

the viewer’s perception and partially

to borrow Hubertus Butin’s take on Richter’s

prevents communication.’8

astute observation, ‘they recall images by Caspar David Friedrich, without being able to repeat or renew their transcendental symbolism’.5

Richter’s landscapes are typically peopleless, but in Abendlandschaft mit Figur (Evening Landscape with Figure) (1970), a diminutive male figure,

Richter did not maintain a single ‘signature’

possibly a self-portrait, can just be discerned in

approach to painting. For instance, Alpen (Alps)

the right foreground, sat on a rock, supporting his

(1970), while no less of a Romantic subject than

head with his hand in a pose slightly reminiscent

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Further Observations on the Seven Gerhard Richter Paintings Christian Weikop

of the central subject in Albrecht Dürer’s

Richter’s position in relation to Friedrich and

Melencolia I (1514), an engraving that was also an

the German Romantic tradition more generally

important inspiration for Friedrich. Of course, the

is still open to question, especially with respect

lone figure in a vast landscape was very much a

to his later abstract landscapes from the 1980s

Friedrich-esque Romantic trope. The photograph

onward, a subject that warrants further scholarly

used for this painting can be seen on Atlas sheet

investigation.

173. Dietmar Elger has suggested that Richter manipulated this image in such a way as to ‘articulate a sort of “sight irritation,” introducing a sense of uneasiness into the viewer’s experience’.9 This ‘sight irritation’ is also the effect of looking at Richter’s Feldmühle (Field Mill) (1970), again based on Atlas sheet 173, which is so blurred it is impossible to make any perceptual sense of the architectural structure of the building, set in the landscape against a luminous sky. The Friedrich-Richter connection was first discussed in the early 1970s, but was later subtly suggested by the Dumont exhibition catalogue cover for Gerhard Richter: Bilder; 1962-1985, a major Richter touring retrospective, organised by Strategy: Get Arts co-curator, Jürgen Harten, and shown at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Nationalgalerie Berlin, and at the Museum moderner Kunst, Vienna, in 1986. The cover is an artfully lit photograph of an easel, painting, and chair arrangement in Richter’s studio space, and asides from certain compositional differences and the absence of Richter himself, it carries an echo of a famous painting of Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio (1819) by Georg Kersting. Ten years later, the points of contact and departure between the artists were further explored in the exhibition and attendant catalogue, From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter, German Paintings from Dresden, staged at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles in 2006.

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1. In 1970, the same year as SGA, Richter displayed his preparatory photographs along with some graphic work at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, under the title Studies 1965-1970. Two years later at a Hedendaagse Kunst exhibition in Utrecht (December 1972), his expanding collection of photographs, along with news clippings, reproductions, collages, and drawings, would officially become the Atlas project. 2. Robert Storr, ‘Interview with Gerhard Richter’, in Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter. Forty Years of Painting, MoMA, New York 2004, p. 302. 3. This exhibition included five of the seven Richter paintings that were shown in SGA the previous year. For a discussion of the Düsseldorf reception of Gerhard Richter’s early landscapes, see Mark Godfrey, ‘Damaged Landscapes’, in Gerhard Richter: Panorama, Tate Modern, London and New York 2011, p. 79. 4. Gerhard Richter, ‘Interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, 1986’ in Dietmar Elger and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter, Text: Writings, Interviews and Letters, 1961-2007, London 2009, p. 185. 5. Lisa Ortner-Krell, Hubertus Butin, and Catherine Hug (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Landscape, Berlin 2020, p. 17. 6. ‘Interview with Rolf-Gunter Dienst’, in David Britt and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews, 1962-1993, London 1995, p. 64. 7. Landscape with Clump of Trees (1970), Evening Mood (1969), and Evening Landscape with Figure (1970) are all reproduced in the first publication dedicated to this important aspect of the artist’s work, in connection with an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum, Hannover. See Dietmar Elger (ed.), Gerhard Richter. Landscapes, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998. 8. Oskar Bätschmann, ‘Landscapes at One Remove’, in ibid., p. 34. 9. Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009, p. 176.

Korsika Feuer (Corsica Fire), oil on canvas, 60 cm x 85 cm, 1969. Catalogue Raisonné: 212. Private Collection. © Gerhard Richter 2021 (0049).

173

Gerhard Richter

Abendstimmung (Evening Mood), oil on canvas, 120 cm x 150 cm, 1969. Catalogue Raisonné: 243. Kunsthalle zu Kiel. © Gerhard Richter 2021 (0049).

174

Alpen (Alps), oil on canvas, 53 cm x 62 cm, 1970. Catalogue Raisonné: 256. Private Collection. © Gerhard Richter 2021 (0049).

175

Gerhard Richter

Landschaft mit Baumgruppe (Landscape with Clump of Trees), oil on canvas, 80 cm x 100 cm, 1970. Catalogue Raisonné: 258. Private Collection, Hong Kong. © Gerhard Richter 2021 (0049).

176

Kanarische Landschaft (Canary Landscape), oil on canvas, 120 cm x 150 cm, 1970. Catalogue Raisonné: 259. Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain. © Gerhard Richter 2021 (0049).

177

Gerhard Richter

Abendlandschaft mit Figur (Evening Landscape with Figure), oil on canvas, 150 cm x 200 cm, 1970. Catalogue Raisonné: 260. Sprengel Museum Hannover. © Gerhard Richter 2021 (0049).

178

Feldmühle (Field Mill), oil on canvas, 50 cm x 60 cm, 1970. Catalogue Raisonné: 263. Private Collection. © Gerhard Richter 2021 (0049).

179

Klaus Rinke b.1939 Klaus Rinke was born in Wattenscheid in 1939. He trained as a poster painter in Gelsenkirchen

Jennifer Gough-Cooper to inform her that the

from 1954 to 1957. He then studied painting at the

authorities had contacted ECA to say that this was

Folkwang School in Essen from 1957 to 1960 and

not permissible.2 Curiously, blasting members of

had various studios in Paris and Reims from 1960

the public with water as they were trying to walk

to 1964. He returned to Germany, moving to

into ECA was not cited as an issue. Newspaper

Düsseldorf in 1965 and would work with the likes

critics responded more favourably to the humour

of Joseph Beuys and Bernd and Hilla Becher.

of Rinke’s water installation with Edward Gage

From 1974 to 2004, Rinke was Professor of

announcing ‘Giant German happening floods the

Sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In the early 1960s, he started experimenting with

Art College’, warning visitors, ‘as you enter, keep a sharp lookout for Klaus Rinke’s water snake.’3

body and performance art and he saw himself as

Rinke was very present at Strategy: Get Arts

a sculptor in the broadest possible terms. This

and he appears in a number of photographs by

included experimenting with water as ‘sculpture’.

George Oliver, sometimes with his partner,

Just as another SGA artist, Adolf Luther,

the artist and photographer, Monika Baumgartl.

attempted to use light as a sculptural material,

Baumgartl took some of the most striking

so Rinke considered water for its elemental

photographs of SGA, using a camera and tripod.

sculptural possibilities. Operation Poseidon (1969),

From 1970 to 1976 she organised performances

for instance, a work that featured in MoMA’s huge

and joint exhibitions together with Rinke.

group exhibition Information in August 1970 (at the

Rinke twice exhibited at the documenta and

same time as his participation in Strategy: Get Arts),

twice at the Venice Biennale and has had solo

explored the continual passage of time by

exhibitions all over the world, including at the

diverting the flow of water into tubes and

Pompidou, MoMA, and Tate Modern. He now

conservation tanks. Of his MoMA piece in 1970,

lives and works between Neufelden in Austria

Rinke said, ‘I especially like the idea of shipping

and Los Angeles.

the Rhine across the Atlantic Ocean on a boat’.1 For SGA, Rinke created a huge installation in the entrance vestibule to Edinburgh College of Art. This involved a water tank and a giant hose that spouted water out of the doors of the main building as the public were walking in. It was a work that did not attract police attention, but it did annoy other city authorities, who sought to prohibit the use of the fire hose on the grounds that it was a misuse of a fire appliance and that a large amount of mains water was being wasted.

180

The College Secretary, Mr Brown, wrote to

1. See https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/ press_archives/4486/releases/MOMA_1970_JulyDecember_0005_69H.pdf accessed 6 November 2020. 2. GMA A37/1/0566. /25. 1 x ts. Letter to Jennifer Gough-Cooper, Gallery Administrator from J.R. Brown, Secretary and Treasurer, Edinburgh College of Art re: prohibition of use of fire hose at main entrance, 28/8/1970, 1p. 3. Edward Gage, ‘Giant German happening floods the Art College’, Scotsman, 24 August 1970.

Klaus Rinke’s water installation at the entrance to ECA Main Building (August 1970). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

181

Dieter Roth 1930-1988

Below: Dieter Roth’s ten framed ‘Watercolours of Düsseldorf’ can be seen on the back wall of the ECA studio (August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

182

Dieter Roth, who had multiple spellings of his

There is currently no evidence of any contribution

name, was a renowned artist who taught at the

by Roth to SGA on the Demarco Digital Archive

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1968 and

website, but it is known that he participated.

1971. He frequently collaborated with other artists

The Fruitmarket Gallery staged an exhibition

who participated in Strategy: Get Arts, including

of Roth’s Diaries in Edinburgh in 2012. In their

Mauricio Kagel for the film Ludwig van (1969).

publicity they stated that Roth ‘had a particular

He was also an artistic collaborator and partner of

connection to Edinburgh, having been part of

the artist Dorothy Iannone, whom he met on a trip

Richard Demarco’s exhibition Strategy Get Arts […].

to Reykjavik in 1967 and whom he nicknamed

This was the first time his work had been seen

‘lioness’. He became Iannone’s muse and he

in Scotland since.’3

features in a number of her often sexually explicit artworks, including those shown at SGA.

So what work by Roth was exhibited? In a summary of the exhibition, Demarco simply states

In a letter dated 13 July 1970, Richard Demarco

‘Dieter Rot provided ‘watercolours of Düsseldorf’

wrote to the pop artist Richard Hamilton with

which were in fact not watercolours at all’.4

a request: ‘As you know we are including the work

A further clue is given in a review of Strategy:

of Dider Rot and we would be delighted if you

Get Arts by Nicholas Fairbairn for BBC Scotland’s

could consider lending the pieces of the work

Festival Orbit, the transcript of which was sent

which you have to the Exhibition.’1 Demarco had

to Demarco on his request. Fairbairn said: ‘And

visited the London home of Hamilton with Joseph

Rot (?) has ten framed pieces of blank lavatory

Beuys on the 9 May 1970 and discussed the

paper’, which the critic argued was an example

Edinburgh exhibition with him then. In a letter

of ‘an inability to create disguised as originality –

dated 14 July 1970, Hamilton, who was unable

the ultimate arrogance’.5 While there is no

to attend SGA, responded to Demarco, stating:

photograph in the DDA that clearly shows Roth’s

‘I will lend anything that Diter wants me to lend.

work, it is possible to catch a glimpse of the

He is coming to London next week and I can

‘ten framed pieces’ on the back wall of an

discuss it with him. Some are very fragile and

ECA studio in a George Oliver photograph that

I would have serious concerns about the handling

shows Robert Filliou’s The Vocational Game in

problems.’2 Due to the risks of transportation,

the foreground.

Demarco ultimately decided against including Roth artworks in Hamilton’s possession.

1. GMA A37/1/0563. /82. 1 x ts. Letter to R. Hamilton from R. Demarco, 13/7/1970, 1p. 2. GMA A37/1/0563. 81/2. 1 x ms. Letter to R. Demarco from R. Hamilton, 14/7/1970, 1p. 3. See https://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/archive/ dieter-roth-diaries/ Accessed 20 October 2020 4. GMA A37/1/0577. /9. 1 x ts. Typed manuscript 'STRATEGY-GET ARTS: Contemporary Art from Düsseldorf By Richard Demarco', 2p. 5. GMA A37/1/0559. BBC Transcript, 23/9/70, 3p.

183

Reiner Ruthenbeck 1937-2016 Reiner Ruthenbeck was a sculptor and conceptual

Ruthenbeck would participate in four documentas

artist, a contemporary of Gerhard Richter, Blinky

and presented work with Beuys and Jochen Gerz

Palermo, and Sigmar Polke. He was known for

in the German pavilion at the 1976 Venice

transforming space using unconventional

Biennale. His practice has continued to prompt

materials like giant swathes of fabric and

the question ‘How is this art?’ In 2014, he reprised

crumpled paper. He began his career in the 1960s

his renowned 1971 installation, Overturned

as a photographer, documenting performances

Furniture, this time at the Serpentine Gallery in

and exhibitions by ZERO, Fluxus, and Joseph

London. It was first displayed at the Kabinett

Beuys, and indeed he studied under Beuys in his

für aktuelle Kunst, Bremerhaven. The initial

sculpture class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

inspiration for Ruthenbeck’s installation may

from 1962 to 1968. A year before he participated

well have come from Strategy: Get Arts (1970),

in Strategy: Get Arts, Ruthenbeck was involved in

and specifically Stefan Wewerka’s smashed

the important group exhibition When Attitudes

chairs ‘action’ on the main staircase of ECA.

Become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann at

Equally, Ruthenbeck may have been thinking

the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969.

of Brecht’s use of chairs in his sculptural

At SGA, Ruthenbeck, along with student assistants, would create a small mountainous pile of crumpled black paper on a studio floor, which he referred to

installations, also seen at ECA. At the Serpentine, the chairs were exhibited next to his signature pile of crumpled paper.

as a ‘highland’. He was one of several artists at SGA, including Günther Uecker, keen to create an environment in situ. The presence of these artists and the inspiration they gave to the student helpers and onlookers was partly what made SGA such an exciting event. Intriguingly, Hamilton has said that Ruthenbeck’s ‘highland’ was one of the first works that somebody wanted to buy: The principal dancer of the Netherlands Dance Company was very keen to acquire it, but there was a strange conversation that he had with Ruthenbeck where he argued, ‘I need to have something on a piece of paper saying you will never make this work again.’ And Ruthenbeck said, ‘But it is only a pile of crumpled paper.’ There was an interesting debate about the nature of the art contract.

184

Opposite: Reiner Ruthenbeck’s ‘highland’ installation being assembled by Ruthenbeck and students, including Alexander Hamilton. Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

185

Daniel Spoerri b.1930

Opposite left: SGA visitor in poncho sitting in front of Daniel Spoerri’s fetish objects (SGA 1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021. Opposite right: Daniel Spoerri’s The Banana Trap Dinner in boardroom of ECA (23 August 1970). Left – Right: Ronald Mavor (Director, Scottish Arts Council), Cordelia Oliver (art critic of The Guardian), Stanley Wright (Principal of ECA), and unidentified. Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

186

In his diary entry for Tuesday 27 January 1970,

Spoerri’s work has a strong Dadaist attitude,

Richard Demarco mentioned that on arrival in

especially with his Eat Art project, which can be

Düsseldorf and after meeting Vivien Gough-Cooper

traced to the early 1960s, but this project really

they ‘dined at the Restaurant Spoerri, created

developed when he opened his own restaurant

by a famous local artist, Daniel Spoerri, and

in June 1968. Another source of inspiration for

“meeting place” of all artists.’ Demarco adds,

Eat Art may well have been Filippo Tommaso

‘The walls are papered with correspondence

Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook (1932), which

between Spoerri and artists and directors of the

outlined some very unusual and highly

international art world.’1

performative recipes.

Daniel Isaac Feinstein was born in Romania

In a letter to Spoerri, dated 15 June 1970, Jennifer

in 1930. His Jewish father, Isaac Feinstein,

Gough-Cooper, thanked him for offering a ‘Gala

converted to Christianity after Romania entered

Dinner’ for invited guests in the ECA boardroom

the war on the side of the National Socialists,

as part of the exhibition. What Spoerri was offer-

but he was arrested and killed in 1941. His mother

ing was an experimental meal in line with his

emigrated to Switzerland in 1942 and Daniel was

‘Eat Art’ project. In a letter to Spoerri, dated

adopted by his maternal uncle Professor Theophil

8 August 1970, Demarco refers to the

Spoerri. He studied classical dance, becoming the

experimental Banana Trap Dinner (with a request

lead dancer at the State Opera of Bern in 1954.

for two sittings) stating: ‘I have asked John Martin

He also performed in and/or directed several

of Forth Studios what it would cost to print

avant-garde plays, including Desire Trapped

seventy “Menus”. He estimates it would probably

by the Tail (1944) by Pablo Picasso and The Gas

be approximately £70’.2 The menu travesti

Heart (1921) by his Romanian predecessor, the

(‘disguised menus’) were limited edition (signed

Dadaist Tristan Tzara. And during the 1950s and

and dated) artworks by Spoerri.

early 1960s, Spoerri would meet a number of lead figures of Dada and Surrealism, including Marcel Duchamp, as well as those artists who would later become associated with Fluxus, especially Dieter Roth and Robert Filliou, and the three of them would have work exhibited in the same ECA studio space at Strategy: Get Arts in 1970.

The artist intended a mismatch between the senses of sight and taste, with dishes such as mashed potato resembling ice cream and garnished with a salty biscuit, or a marzipan sausage for dessert; the dinner was served by candlelight to further confound the senses. The whole prospect slightly concerned the pragmatic Gough-Cooper, who wrote: ‘We like

Spoerri was also one of the original nine

the idea of some experiments, but I think that

signatories of the manifesto of Nouveau réalisme

people may be quite hungry!’3

in April 1960, an artistic movement founded by art critic Pierre Restany, a manifesto which proclaimed ‘new ways of perceiving the real’.

The menus can be seen in various photographs by George Oliver, including one with ECA Principal Stanley Wright and Guardian art critic Cordelia Oliver, the partner of George. Spoerri would go on to open his ‘Eat-Art-Gallery’ in the upstairs of Restaurant Spoerri in Düsseldorf on 18 September 1970, not long after the dinner at ECA. In addition to cooking the infamous Banana Trap Dinner, Spoerri also exhibited a series of fetishlike objects in cases known as Magie à la noix (1967) that had been created on the Greek island of Symi. Today the whole series is located at the Museum Schloss Morsbroich in Leverkusen. 1. GMA A37/1/0566. /162. 1 x ts. 'DIARY REPORT: RICHARD DEMARCO'S TOUR OF WEST GERMAN ART CENTRES, January 27 - February 7, 1970, 11p. 2. GMA A37/1/0567./10. 1 x ts. Richard Demarco, letter to Daniel Spoerri, 8/8/1970, 1p. 3. GMA A37/1/0567. /119. 1 x ts. Jennifer Gough-Cooper, letter to Daniel Spoerri, 15/6/1970.

187

André Thomkins 1930-1985 The artist, André Thomkins, was a painter, illustrator, sculptor, and poet, especially celebrated for his

was not too dispersed across the ECA campus.

use of anagrams and palindromes (a sequence of

Harten then writes the following: ‘In front of the

letters and words that can be read the same way

entrance there should be attached a big sign

both forwards and backwards). Twice a participant

with the Palindrome of Thomkins « STRATEGY:

in documenta, he is considered to be one of the

GET ARTS »’. Other detailed instructions on the

most important Swiss artists of the second half

organisation of the exhibition are given, before

of the twentieth century. He was very much

Harten writes bullet point 3: ‘Exhibition title.

influenced by Dada and Surrealism and was a

We would like to suggest as the title of the

close friend and collaborator of other artists who

exhibition the above mentioned palindrome by

came to Edinburgh in 1970, including Dieter Roth,

Thomkins. The subtitle should then be: ART AND

George Brecht, Karl Gerstner, and Daniel Spoerri.

ANTI-ART FROM DÜSSELDORF’.2 A letter from

The enamelled palindromes exhibited in SGA

Gough-Cooper to William Thomley, Artistic

(1970), created in 1968, were affixed like street

Assistant at the Edinburgh International Festival

signs to the external wall of ‘Restaurant Spoerri’

Society confirmed the matter: ‘The main part of

in Düsseldorf at the end of the 1960s. In the SGA catalogue, Thomkins makes a statement in German beneath his list of exhibitions, which translated reads: This is a palindrome and a program that I dedicate to the Edinburgh Festival. It shows that one can ‘turn the tables’ on the idea that strategy primarily relates to the art of war. The success of this strategy versus that strategy is an advertisement for the arts: GET ARTS!1 The circumstances by which the name Strategy: Get Arts came about can be discovered in a key document in the SGA archive at Modern 2 (SNGMA), in a letter from Jürgen Harten to Jennifer Gough-Cooper at the Richard Demarco Gallery. Harten makes a number of important points about the organisation of the exhibition, including the fact that he and Thomkins, who had been on a reconnaissance trip to Edinburgh with Spoerri on June 18 1970, felt that the exhibition

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should be confined to the old building so that it

the title is a palindrome by André Thomkins, one of the artists taking part in the Exhibition. It makes a rather unusual and dramatic title, don’t you think!’3 Spoerri established a sculpture garden sixty kilometres south from Sienna in the early 1990s, in a majestic terrain on the slopes of Monte Amiata. Since 1997 it has been a foundation: ‘Hic terminus haeret – Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri’. Thirty two of Thomkins’ palindromes, including those shown at Strategy: Get Arts, can be seen on the walls of buildings in this Tuscan ‘Giardina’. 1. André Thomkins, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 2. GMA A37/1/0566. /83. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco and Jennifer Gough-Cooper from Jürgen Harten re: sign at entrance, plans for placement of artists in exhibition, 22/6/1970, 4p. 3. GMA A37/1/0567. /24/1. 1 x ts. Jennifer Gough-Cooper, letter to William Thornley, 6 July 1970.

Top: Students holding the palindromic signs of André Thomkins, and close up of signs (SGA 1970). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

Right: BBC studio with presenter Sheridan Morley, preparing for a broadcast about Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © Richard Demarco, Demarco Digital Archive.

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Günther Uecker b.1930 Günther Uecker was of great importance to

In August 1970, in anticipation of the SGA exhibition,

Richard Demarco. By the time the Demarco

a reviewer for The Scotsman wrote ‘personally

Gallery opened in 1966, Uecker’s work was

I am looking forward to the striking nail

already familiar to him, aware that he, along with

constructions of Günter Uecker’.2 Uecker had

Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, belonged to ‘Gruppe

been hammering thousands of nails into wooden

Zero’ or ZERO, a circle that came into being in

boards covered with linen, as well as pieces of

1957, after the idea that this was the zero hour

furniture, musical instruments, and household

from which they would start art afresh, an

objects since the late 1950s, exploring the

emancipation from traditional principles and

possibilities of ‘nail fields’ in a play of light and

genres of art. Demarco has stated that Uecker

shadow to create the illusion of movement,

was ‘among the names of artists, which gave me

as well as through kinetic installations. Demarco

hopes of a European cultural revival unyielding

has stated that Uecker’s compulsion to use nails

to a North American Cultural Imperialism.’1

related to the advance of pillaging Russian

He would first meet Uecker in Dublin at the

soldiers during the Second World War:

opening of the inuagural ‘ROSC’ exhibition in November 1967, which is where the artist told him that he should take very seriously the vibrant and burgeoning art scene in Düsseldorf. Uecker introduced Demarco to Mack and others. His friendship with the artist would ultimately lead him to the studio of Gerhard Richter in

the poor German population, especially the womenfolk, were in complete fear for their lives. The young Uecker, who is exactly my age, boarded up every window and every door of their house, hammering in nails so the house was impregnable.3

January 1970, which is where the idea for what

What Uecker created in situ in ECA was not a

became Strategy: Get Arts was first shaped.

‘nail field’ but something rather more dangerous –

At the same time that SGA was held in Edinburgh

a corridor of knives. These butcher knives were

from 23 August-12 September, Uecker also

positioned sticking out from the wall of the

represented Germany at the 35th Venice Biennale

corridor leading down to the Sculpture Department

(24 June-25 October, 1970).

where Beuys’s The Pack could be found. Later, the police insisted on the knives being covered and so cages were used. Uecker quite liked this caged environment, which somehow added to the sinister nature of the piece. He also explicitly and wittily referred to the police intervention

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because across the cages he placed a banner that read ‘SHARP CORRIDOR BLUNTED BY POLICE’. In addition, Uecker rigged up a 12-foot high banging door installation, which drew the visitor down the same corridor of knives out of curiosity, resulting in frustration outside a room a visitor could not easily enter because of the constant opening and closing. Uecker is also listed as contributing three films to the SGA film programme: Join the Party Scene, Mail Film No.2, and Come Film,4 as well as creating a work called Sound-Scene, in collaboration with Friedhelm Döhl (see entry on Döhl). 1. See Richard Demarco ‘Günther Uecker: The Artist as Explorer of the New Europe’, in Euan McArthur and Arthur Watson (eds.), 10 dialogues : Richard Demarco, Scotland & the European Avant Garde, Royal Scottish Academy, 2010, n.p. 2. Anonymous, ‘Art and Anti-Art’, The Scotsman, 24 August 1970. 3. See ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with Richard Demarco’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/ tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-interview, accessed 14 October 2020. 4. GMA A37/1/0558. /68/2. 1 x ts. 'LIST OF FILMS SHOWN AS PART OF THE EXHIBITION STRATEGY GET ARTS INVOLVING SIX ARTISTS', 29/8/1970.

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Günther Uecker

Right: Günther Uecker in his Sharp Corridor at ECA (SGA 1970). Photo © Monika Baumgartl. © Günther Uecker. All rights reserved. DACS 2021. Below: Günther Uecker rigging up his banging door installation and laying out his knives. Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © Günther Uecker. All rights reserved. DACS 2021.

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Opposite: Günther Uecker’s Sharp Corridor Blunted by Police at ECA (SGA 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive. © Günther Uecker. All rights reserved. DACS 2021.

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Franz Erhard Walther b.1939

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Franz Erhard Walther was born in 1939 in

On 15 August 1970, Walther wrote to Richard

Fulda, Germany. In 1962 he transferred to the

Demarco unable to confirm when he could come

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from Frankfurt and

to Edinburgh, and that he had contacted Harten

studied there under Karl Otto Goetz at the same

to suggest ‘somebody, familiar with my work,

time as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and

to demonstrate in my place.’3 Walther then

Gotthard Graubner. Walther’s work was included

wrote again to Demarco on 25 September 1970

in the pioneering exhibition, When Attitudes

apologising for not being able to come to

Become Form (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969) curated

Edinburgh in person.4

by Harald Szeemann, and in the MoMA exhibition Spaces (1969-70), another groundbreaking exhibition, which also included work by Michael Asher and Dan Flavin. Walther’s First Work Set (1963–69), which was composed of fifty-eight individual canvas objects, was installed in MoMA’s lobby, next to floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on 54th Street. Walther was still in New York in the period leading up to Strategy: Get Arts. In the SGA catalogue, Georg Jappe said the following about the artist, ‘For him art is no longer something visual, material objects are only there to be used.’1

Like Beuys, Walther wanted to really expand the concept of ‘art’ and he became internationally renowned for his fabric-based performance art. As a pioneering figure of the Düsseldorf art scene in the 1960s, who went on to achieve international success, there has been considerable interest in Walther in recent years. His desire to encourage us to question through participation the traditional idea of the artist as creator and audience as spectator seems remarkably contemporary. His work can be found in major permanent collections all over the world and Stellwerk (1979), part of his Wall Formations series, was recently

In July 1970, Jürgen Harten wrote the following to

shown in Tate Modern in room 3 devoted to

Jennifer Gough-Cooper:

‘Performer and Participant’. He was interviewed

Walther will be in Europe beginning of September. He considers it impossible to get loans from Ströher or Wember, which I think is true, but he will have sent a total set of his “objects to be used” to Europe, so there will be only an inner-European transport. He would also like to act in Edinburgh as late as possible. Which date can you propose? I think he should have at least 3 days. His performance is very peculiar and one of the best events.2

at the Tate in April 2020.5 1. Georg Jappe, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p. 2. GMA A37/1/0566. 96/1. 1 x ts. Letter to Jennifer Gough-Cooper from Jurgen Harten, 13/7/1970, 2p 3. GMA A37/1/0567. 86/2. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Franz Erhard Walther, 15/8/1970, 1p. 4. GMA A37/1/0567. /75/2. 1 x ts. Letter to Richard Demarco from Franz Erhard Walther, 25/9/1970, 1p. 5. See https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/franz-erhardwalther-11627/franz-erhard-walther-it-jumps-out-time Accessed 26 October 2020.

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Günter Weseler 1930-2020 Günter Weseler grew up in Allenstein [Olsztyn] in East Prussia [now Poland]. As a fifteen year

evening meal on a table of fluffy rex rabbits in clay

old he helped build anti-tank traps against the

bowls, with bread made from breathing creatures,

Red Army in the last days of the Second World

all accompanied by a recording of the sound of

War. He fled with his parents to Parchim in

cicadas. Of course this formed an interesting

Neubrandenburg and then relocated to Niebüll

counterpart to Spoerri’s Banana Trap Dinner

in North Frisia. Before turning to study art

staged in the main boardroom and the two

he completed an apprenticeship as a sound

artists had collaborated in Düsseldorf on Spoerri’s

engineer, developing a technical understanding

experimental Eat Art project. In an ECA studio

of small machinery which would serve him well

space, Weseler created a dramatic installation of

in his artistic practice later on. He then studied

hairy indefinable creatures, a ‘new species’ almost

architecture at the Technical University of

looking like dismembered bits of Highland cattle,

Braunschweig from 1953 to 1958 before moving

in cots, cages, or attached to walls, as well as on

to Düsseldorf in 1962, where he became friends

a table, all rigged up in such a way that they

with Daniel Spoerri.

appeared to be alive. One possible art historical

Weseler was interested in acoustic as well as visual expression and from 1962 to 1963 he developed his ‘Atmen für Töne’ (Breaths as Sounds), and his ‘Atemmusik’ (Breath Music) was to become fully developed in the score for Hoquetus per otto suonatori by the composer Di-

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At Strategy: Get Arts, Weseler presented a bizarre

source of influence for Weseler might have been Thomas Theodor Heine’s poster and programme cover for the tenth Elf Scharfrichter (Eleven Executioners) Munich cabaret from 1902, which featured the cabaret singer Marya Delvard in front of eleven furry devil heads.

eter Schönbach in 1964. The rhythmic element of

While he did not become a ‘star’ artist like

breathing would determine the musical

Gerhard Richter or Sigmar Polke, Weseler is

sequence. He moved from creating ‘Atemmusik’

considered to be one of the most important

to ‘Atemobjekte’ (Breathing Objects) in 1966

artists of the 1960s Düsseldorf art scene.

and these were to be seen in Edinburgh in 1970.

He continued making his ‘breathing objects’ for

These objects initially ‘breathed’ courtesy of

fifty years and gained international recognition

a VW windscreen wiper motor (the utilisation

for this achievement even though he was a fairly

of VW here providing an interesting connection

reclusive artist. His ‘breathing objects’ continue

to Beuys’s The Pack), but he then started using

to be shown, most recently at the Galleria

small commercially available electric motors.

Allegra Ravizza in Lugano, Switzerland

The effect was mesmerising.

(6 March – 3 April 2020).

Right: Günter Weseler’s Breathing Objects (1970) in an ECA studio (SGA 1970). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

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Stefan Wewerka 1928-2013 One of the most dramatic ‘happenings’ at Strategy: Get Arts was instigated by the

was simply too much for many college staff to

charismatic artist Stefan Wewerka, who came

accept, an abuse of the order and the clean

from several generations of artists. His father,

geometry of the entrance vestibule, with some

Rudolf Wewerka, was a sculptor and founding

seeing Wewerka’s piece as tantamount to

member of ‘Die Kugel’, who knew Bruno Taut

hooliganism. The Germanic barbarians were

and others associated with late Expressionism.

coming to sack Rome, or rather disturb the calm

Stefan was a freelance artist associated with the

grandeur of the inspiration of classical Greece as

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and was also connected

reflected in ECA’s main building. Joseph Beuys’s

to a number of artists at the Kunstakademie.

young son Wenzel can be seen clearly smiling

He appears in both Tony Morgan’s film Description

and enjoying the spectacle in one of George

(1970) and Maurico Kagel’s Ludwig van (1969).

Oliver’s memorable photographs. And an

He designed sets for the latter and also appears

equally striking, though rather more composed

in the opening sequence shaving and mumbling

photograph of this staircase activity, was taken

‘Beethoven…Bummelei…Bumserei’ and some other

by Rinke’s partner, Monika Baumgartl. In this

nonsensical words. In the 1960s Wewerka began to cut up and reassemble objects of everyday life and especially chairs. Alexander Hamilton, a student

photograph (see p. 25) she captures Wewerka adopting a mock-heroic pose in imitation of the Neoclassical plaster casts on plinths that could be seen throughout the main building.

helper at SGA, recalls assisting him source

Intriguingly, Wewerka would turn from iconoclast

a dozen or so bentwood chairs from Sam Burns'

to designer later in the 1970s when he designed

Yard in Prestonpans. Wewerka, Klaus Rinke, and

chair sculptures for TECTA, a company founded

other artists and student helpers then proceeded

in 1956, largely focusing on producing licensed

to smash the chairs on the main staircase of ECA,

Bauhaus furniture, as well as developing their

in an unusual nod to the ‘the Odessa Steps’

own design concepts. For instance, Wewerka

sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship

would create the three-legged B1 armchair,

Potemkin (1925). Wewerka’s broken chairs,

which was designed according to the Bauhaus

arranged at irregular intervals, lay beneath an

principle of form follows function.

intervention into the fabric of the building by Blinky Palermo, a wall painting comprising a horizontal band of primary colours, which ran around the architrave.

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The smashing of chairs on the grand staircase

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Stefan Wewerka

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Opposite: Stefan Wewerka’s ‘Bentwood Chairs Action’ on the main staircase of ECA Main Building (SGA 1970). Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

Above: Sequence of twelve photographs of Stefan Wewerka on main staircase of ECA Main Building. Photos © Monika Baumgartl.

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Sound in Space Christian Weikop The Richard Demarco Gallery presented Sound

The two events will be linked, and we hope

in Space experimental concerts in a ‘musical

that out of this unity, maybe this Critchlow

environment’ created by the artist Keith Critchlow

Structure will tour Germany, going to the

(1933-2020) and Alan Hacker (1938-2012),

Kunstvereins and Kunsthalles of Düsseldorf,

a professor of the Royal Academy of Music,

Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich. The fact

on 25, 26, 28, 29 August 1970 at ECA. It was not

that the first ‘performance’ took place at the

officially part of the Strategy: Get Arts programme,

Edinburgh College of Art would be very

but ran in parallel. In a letter from Richard

important for Scottish art.1

Demarco to Professor Stanley Wright, dated 18 February 1970, he informed the ECA Principal of his desire to secure the Sculpture Court of Edinburgh College of Art for the planned Critchlow steel structure, within which experimental concerts would take place, including new works by British composer Harrison Birtwistle (b.1934)

The four experimental concerts proved to be successful and the striking Critchlow structure impressed those who saw it, even the otherwise sceptical Conservative MP, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, who reviewed SGA for a BBC Scotland programme. He stated,

and French composer Pierre Boulez (1925-2016).

there is the search for beauty and expression

Demarco was keen that the visiting artists from

in new forms; in the hall, there is the intensely

Düsseldorf would also engage with the Critchlow

delicate music machine, which is not a

structure and wrote that he would like to use

machine but a sculptured frame in which

some of the ‘adjacent space’ for the German

players sit and play weird cosmic sounds

Exhibition entitled ‘Düsseldorf in Edinburgh’:

of ethereal beauty.2 The modular steel structure also fascinated the Düsseldorf artists and George Oliver took a number of memorable photographs of Joseph Beuys and his children, Jessyka and Wenzel, playing and posing on or within the frame.

Left: Joseph Beuys with his children Wenzel (left) and Jessyka at ECA, on the scaffolding for Keith Critchlow and Alan Hacker's 'musical environment' Sound in Space (25-29 August). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

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1. GMA A37/1/0566. /1. 1 x ts. Letter to Professor Stanley Wright, Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, from Richard Demarco re: use of Sculpture Court, 18/2/1970, 1p 2. GMA A37/1/0559. /6/3. 1 x ts. Transcript of BBC programme, entitled 'EXTRACT FROM "FESTIVAL ORBIT", 23/9/70, 3p.

Opposite: Joseph Beuys sitting on the platform for Keith Critchlow and Alan Hacker's 'musical environment' Sound in Space presented at ECA by the Richard Demarco Gallery (25-29 August, 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive.

David Tremlett b.1945 16 Industrial Scarecrows 1970 Christian Weikop In parallel with Strategy: Get Arts, David Tremlett, an English/Swiss sculptor and graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, installed 16 Industrial Scarecrows on the Italian roof garden of the nearby Goldberg’s department store. This was an imposing five floor building, with an entrance façade of marble and glass flanked by copper sculptures, a building sadly demolished in 1996. A connection to SGA was established in a Times review of the ECA exhibition by the art critic Guy Brett, who used a photograph of Tremlett’s rooftop installation to illustrate his piece. In this review, ‘Up in Beuys’s room’, Brett wrote, ‘Another work, or set-piece which has humour and presence is the English sculptor David Tremlett’s ragged squad of scarecrows lining a store roof in central Edinburgh, like sooty spirits attempting to ascend. It is not part of the Art School exhibition, but can just be seen from the entrance.’1 Tremlett would rise to prominence in the 1970s, later exhibiting with major international art museums, including the Tate in London, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and MoMA in New York. He built a reputation on his ability to execute site-specific work, especially his many wall drawings displayed around the world (the first in 1969). He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1992. 1. Guy Brett, ‘Up in Beuys’ Room’, The Times, 3 September 1970, p.6. Right: David Tremlett’s 16 Industrial Scarecrows on the roof of Goldberg’s Department Store, Tollcross, Edinburgh. Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © David Tremlett. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2021.

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Palermo Restore Rewind Andrew Patrizio The very first hour of my life as an art student, in October 1981, was spent no more than thirty paces from Blau/Gelb/Weiss/Rot (trans. Blue/yellow/white/red) by Blinky Palermo. I had no idea that under what was then only eleven years of overpainting lay one of Palermo’s most significant staircase pieces. I also knew nothing about Palermo’s international status, particularly among some significant young students and teachers at ECA, who in 1970 had the privilege to see the work rise majestically on its aerial axis as a centre-piece of Strategy: Get Arts. Blau/Gelb/Weiss/Rot was a great lost work of the neo-avant-garde. Fast-forward nearly quarter of a century, I helped to lead a small group of artists, academics, conservators and curators keen to explore the possibility of a recovery. This became Palermo Restore: a collective and ultimately divisive conversation that led to an archival exhibition at the Talbot Rice Gallery, a series of talks and workshops and a documentary. Blinky Palermo’s contribution to Strategy: Get Arts was this wall painting in the main stairwell of the college: a horizontal band of four colours running around the architrave: blue (north), yellow (east), white (south), and red (west). By the end of September 1970 the work, like the rest of the exhibition, was gone but not forgotten. That said, the work is easily missed (as its reconstruction is today). The performative heroism of Palermo’s effort in August 1970 marks a lost world – one that existed after the fall of the classical gods yet before the rise of the health and safety officer. The photographs (by Monika Baumgartl and George Oliver) of Palermo atop an unsupported ladder, working his way slowly along the architrave, have themselves become iconic and speak to the work as something performed as much as painted into existence. Austere, grave and not, in any sense, easily accessible. Things started to move in 2003, when Professor Dr. Anne-Marie Bonnet, Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institute, Bonn, and Dr Dieter Scheier of the Kunstmuseum Bonn came on board. Palermo’s estate were happy for us to explore options; the main three being to uncover the original painting, to repaint the four colours, or to leave the work as it was. Beyond that lay knotty questions on the nature of artistic intention, permanent, impermanent and hidden works of art, as so forth. Such ideas were discussed at meetings over February, April, and August 2004 and January 2005, which was attended variously by Drs Bonnet, Scheier and our many city partners.

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Historic Scotland carried out architectural paint analysis of the work (incidentally made more challenging by me pointing them towards the wrong part of the architrave – an error they soon discovered and corrected). They concluded that ‘whilst it is possible to remove the overlying and subsequent coats of emulsion paint this would be an enormously difficult, time-consuming and expensive process and is not recommended.’ By this time, I had stepped back to take a sabbatical, but ECA moved on to repaint as a ‘homage’ to Palermo. This was completed in October 2005, shortly before a conference held to discuss his work and legacy. The emerging tensions are not so complicated to understand. Whilst not all the Edinburgh actors were directly involved, they must have felt this was a moment to seize. Opponents, Prof Bonnet prominent among them, preferred the open-ended exploration of the complex issues that rested on ownership, intention and the ethics of restitution. To rush it would be to turn a nuanced research project and highjack a journey that might have instructed future reconstructions of other Palermo wall-works. To put it simply, Blau/Gelb/Weiss/Rot was reinstated way too early for some; way too late for others. There is no easy resolution between the impatient energy of Scottish artists wishing to honour Edinburgh’s place in twentieth-century advanced practices, to claim a lineage, and the patient untangling of international museological and conservation criteria. I was curious to see what the original might have looked like and did not take much pleasure in the notion of Palermo’s painting being yet another of Edinburgh’s many ghosts. I wanted Blau/Gelb/Weiss/Rot to re-insert itself into the legacy of the College, the architecture and the psychology of any curious students. Would Palermo have approved of this reconstruction? We don’t know but I wonder, when he left Edinburgh in 1970, he could have imagined that thirty-five years after it was made, a passionate group of artists and the institution that hosted Blau/Gelb/Weiss/Rot, really wanted it back. Maybe Palermo would have appreciated the gesture. Following pages: Blinky Palermo making his wall painting Blue/Yellow/White/Red (August 1970). Photos © Monika Baumgartl. © DACS 2021.

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208

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Exhibiting an Exhibition: Strategy: Get Arts in the Richard Demarco Archive Kirstie Meehan Forty-six years after the seminal exhibition Strategy: Get Arts took place in 1970, a small display on the show was staged in the Keiller Library at Modern Two (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, SNGMA). The rest of the building had been taken over by Joseph Beuys: the top floor showed ARTIST ROOMS: Joseph Beuys - A Language of Drawing, while the Penrose Gallery on the ground floor was occupied by Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys – A Unique Partnership. We decided to use the Keiller Library - a small room adjacent to the Penrose Gallery, dedicated to showing archive material and special books - to throw a spotlight on Strategy: Get Arts, using letters, documents, photographs and ephemera from our archive to convey a sense not just of the content of the 1970 show, but also the behindthe-scenes process of staging such an ambitious exhibition. We drew on the archive of Richard Demarco, an enormous collection of hundreds of folders containing photographs, correspondence, scrapbooks, exhibition catalogues and ephemera (all of which is available to consult at SNGMA). National Galleries of Scotland purchased the archive directly from Demarco in 1995 and Demarco’s refusal to throw anything away (a boon for the historian: sometimes a headache for the archivist) meant that Strategy: Get Arts was very well represented, containing artists’ correspondence, ECA floorplans and even the plane tickets which brought the exhibiting artists from Germany to Scotland. It was difficult for co-curator Alex Singerman and I to convey the artistic scope and vibrancy of Strategy: Get Arts through two-dimensional archival material alone: so many artworks in the original exhibition were kinetic or interactive in nature (like Günter Weseler’s uncanny ‘breathing’ sculptures) or took the form or happenings or performances (Joseph Beuys’ performance of Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony). Such activity survives only through contemporaneous documentation: photography (by George Oliver and others), published responses by the press and public and the anecdotal recollections of the curators, visitors, artists, and ECA staff.

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Exhibiting an Exhibition: Kirstie Meehan

Despite the quantity and variety of archive material available, the story we could tell could only ever be partial, representing the vagaries of what survives and is preserved in an archive, and what is lost. We were further constrained by the modest physical size of the Keiller Library space, which forced us to squeeze a narrative about a rangy and intellectually uncontainable exhibition which occupied multiple spaces at ECA (even spilling out of the building) into just one. But these constraints created an intimacy between viewer and object in the darkened space of the Keiller Library, no doubt enhanced by the presence of original rather than facsimile material. We also played audio recordings on a loop: snippets of a 2016 interview with Richard Demarco and we recorded and played what we believe to be the first performance of Henning Christiansen’s piece Holyrood Park, written at the time of the 1970 exhibition. The result did, we hope, convey some of the strange and wild energy of Strategy: Get Arts, albeit on a radically different scale. Kirstie Meehan Archivist, Modern & Contemporary Art National Galleries of Scotland

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SGA50 Douglas and Matilda Hall

On 20 February 2019, a film crew left Edinburgh for the Borders to film Douglas Hall OBE, the first Keeper of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and his wife Matilda Hall née Mitchell. Douglas took up the post as Keeper in November 1961 and with a single-minded focus built up an impressive collection, establishing the Gallery’s international reputation. Hall expressed a great interest in German art, acquiring artworks by the likes of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, long before Tate showed any interest. Matilda also had an impressive career in the arts and had a major role in developing the University of Stirling’s art collection, as well as establishing Painting in Hospitals Scotland (PiHS) in 1991, now known as Art in Healthcare. Both recalled Strategy: Get Arts in 1970. What follows is a heavily edited transcript of that filmed conversation at their home in the Borders. This was the last interview with Douglas Hall before he sadly passed away on 23 April 2019 in Kelso, aged 92. CW (Christian Weikop), DH (Douglas Hall), TF (Ted Fisher), MH (Matilda Hall), AH (Alexander Hamilton), KB (Karen Barber - sound recording)

CW: Douglas, I’m a specialist in German art of the twentieth century in the History of Art Department at the University of Edinburgh. I was particularly interested that you acquired works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and others for the collection. And you seemed to be doing this before the Tate acquired anything by these artists. DH: I did it because I wanted to avoid criticism that I was neglecting those people. And one thing that [Lord] Crawford did for us was to make a resounding declaration about the nature of the gallery. "This is not a gallery of modern Scottish art. It's a collection of modern art for Scotland." CW: So in 1970, then, at the Edinburgh College of Art, there was this exhibition, you know, organised by Richard Demarco … Strategy Get Arts… DH: …I took Joseph Beuys to heart. Well, Ricky is always counted as the man who introduced Joseph Beuys and other continental fine artists into this country.

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CW: Douglas, was your first encounter with Joseph Beuys in 1970? Was that the first time you had seen him, at Strategy: Get Arts? Were you aware of Beuys before 1970? DH: I was aware of him, yes, but I hadn’t met him until then. I was pretty impressed by him when I did meet him. He was very much a sort of … how do you describe him? When he was first known, he was singular in many ways. He never took his hat off, never took his coat off, and this and that. Well, I got him to break those rules by inviting him to my home… TF: The Strategy: Get Arts show, in 1970. Would you take us through the story of you going to it, what you saw, and what you experienced, and what you felt about it? MH: We went to the private view together, love, and it was electrifying. DH: Yes, one had to recognise that there was an ingenuity behind the whole movement. Far more than just the artistic quality of it, if you like, which seemed to come along on the back of the former […] and very much of it I simply could not accept. TF: Did you go into the hall of knives? DH: Oh I did, yes. I thought it was a very, very, bad … very bad thing to do. I saw no … no merit in it whatsoever … TF: [to Matilda] So go back to that moment when you walked in to see that show. Give us your feeling and experience and what it was like to go and to see that ... MH: It was very exhilarating. Very exhilarating. But I reckon I didn't understand it much. I was willing to suspend any sort of judgment I might have and simply carry on looking and being. And I think the thing I got most out of it was a sense of personal experience. The knives in particular [Günther Uecker’s corridor of knives installation]. This was something new. It was literally grabbing. You could be grabbed by them if you tripped, let's say. And then when I reached the Joseph Beuys, I thought it was something else again…

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SGA50 Douglas and Matilda Hall

TF: …Did you get a feeling that this was new and radical? Or was this the same as other shows you had been to? MH: No, clearly it was new and radical and I wondered, I suppose, what would happen next … AH: … So you found the Uecker. Now, again describe going down that corridor. MH: It was something completely new. And one thought, as one often does, you know ... "Gosh, why has nobody thought of doing this before?" Rather like the fur cup and saucer. [Meret Oppenheim; 1936]. It was immediately, it seemed to me, immediately iconic. So obvious to do that ... to make a space that was really threatening. And I felt a great exhilaration of being threatened like that. A pleasurable sensation, though, because you know I could get out at the far right, couldn't I? But it was definitely new. AH: Now you know that that particular piece was eventually caged in? Because the police were concerned about public safety... DH: Quite right, too. CW: So you saw it before it was caged? MH: Oh, sure. Private view! AH: The "city fathers" had not worried about the knives. They hadn't worried about the Dorothy Iannone nude drawings. What they complained about was the Klaus Rinke waste of water. So for the private view the knives were not caged. MH: Unprotected. Or like … you as the viewer were unprotected… CW: … Günther Uecker put a banner up. He had to cage the knives and he put a banner up which said: "Sharp Corridor Blunted by Police." MH: I remember… Can I go back to the work in Douglas's gallery? I remember particularly the Otto Dix nude girl on the fur. So beautifully painted. So meticulously painted. I was in there one day and decided to see what the public's response was. And I think I saw about a dozen people through the gallery. They couldn't bring themselves to look at it. They would look at everything else. They would even read the label on the Dix, but they couldn't actually stop and look at it. I think I came home and told you that. DH: You did, yes. MH: I was hugely amused. That's Scotland for you!

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TF: When someone says "new art," "performance art," "installation art," you're always led to imagine it happened in New York. And this show is here, and part of Scottish identity. Could you talk about that for a minute? MH: It was no doubt a complete shock for Edinburgh. But I mean if you look back to the Fifties ... the outward-looking Scottish artists cottoned on very smartly to American Expressionism. TF: If I were the average person who would be in Edinburgh in 1970, how would I have reacted or thought? MH: "This is horrible. I really don't like it. Especially not the knives. I don't see any point of this. Where is the beauty? Where is the art? How do they call this art? This is a disgrace. The college ought to be shut down." AH: Which is exactly the reaction Ricky was looking for. MH: Yes. Well he won, hands down! MH: I think I must have known about Beuys. Because I looked at the sleds and the Volkswagen with a growing sense of interest. And the beginnings of an understanding of what the concept, of what it was all about. It is a concept. So I must have learned something about it beforehand, but not very much. AH: Well, we tried to get it into the main sculpture court. MH: Oh yes? AH: And we were pushing it up the steps at the main entrance, when the college secretary Mr. Brown stopped us and said: "You don't bring a vehicle into an art college." And then: "Take it out." MH: Wonderful! MH: Yes. Well undoubtedly Strategy: Get Arts certainly turned things upside down.

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Contributors connection to Strategy: Get Arts as he was born on 5 September 1970 at the same time that the exhibition (23 August – 12 September) was in full swing. Dr Karen Barber is a photography historian and curator. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Mississippi. Previously, she worked in the photography departments at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Professor Juan Cruz (Palencia, Spain 1970) is an artist and Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, having previously held roles as Dean of Arts & Humanities at the Royal College of Art in London and Director of Liverpool Christian Weikop Author and Guest Editor Photo © Robin Gillanders 2021

Dr Christian Weikop is a Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary German Art at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), University of Edinburgh. Much of his research has focused on Expressionism and Dada, but also prominent German artists of the post-1945 era, especially Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, and Joseph Beuys. He has written and edited high profile publica-

218

School of Art and Design, where the Exhibition Research Centre was established in 2013. He studied Painting and History and Theory of Modern Art at Chelsea College of Art and is currently Deputy Chair of REF2021 Sub Panel: Art & Design History, Theory and Practice; director of the IAAC (International Awards for Art Criticism) and a trustee of the John Moores Painting Prize.

tions on these artists for Tate, the Royal Academy

Ted Fisher is an Assistant Professor at Delta State

London, the Nationalgalerie Berlin, and the

University in Cleveland, Mississippi. He has an

Burlington Magazine. Additionally, he has worked

M.F.A. in Film Directing from the University

on publications for the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the

of Edinburgh, an M.F.A. in Photography from

Kirchner Museum in Davos, National Galleries of

Claremont Graduate University, and a Graduate

Scotland, the Neue Galerie in New York, Harvard

Certificate in Documentary Media Studies from

University, and the Los Angeles County Museum

The New School. His films have screened at

of Art, as well as writing and presenting a critically

over 40 festivals around the world, including

acclaimed BBC Radio 3 documentary on Wassily

San Francisco Documentary Film Festival and

Kandinsky. He has been interested in Strategy:

Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Get Arts (SGA) since organising an international

He produced 32 episodes of the “Frugal Traveler”

Beuys symposium at ECA in 2016 and has

series for the New York Times, winning the Webby

published on this subject for Tate Papers (2019),

Award in the Travel Category for Online Film

as well as making a film about SGA with the artist

& Video twice. His filmography is at:

Alexander Hamilton. He feels a certain

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3299032/

Jennifer Gough-Cooper is a photographer and

Keith Hartley is an art historian and curator, who is

a writer. She studied at Hornsey College of Art

Deputy Director of Modern and Contemporary Art

in the 1960s and then worked at the Richard

at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Demarco Gallery from 1969 to 1971. With Jacques

He has worked at the Scottish National Gallery of

Caumont, she worked for many years on Marcel

Modern Art from 1979, first in Inverleith House in

Duchamp. Their research culminated in the book

the Royal Botanic Garden and then at the modern

Marcel Duchamp, Work and Life (MIT Press),

art campus on Belford Road.He studied German

published in 1993 to coincide with the exhibition

and French at Oxford University and art history

at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice. A volume of her

at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University

photographs, Apropos Rodin, inspired by the work

and at the Freie Universität, Berlin.

of the French sculptor in its setting at the Musée Rodin, Paris, was published by Thames & Hudson in 2006. She lives and works in Cape Town. Alexander Hamilton (Series Editor) is an artist,

Kirstie Meehan is Archivist (Modern & Contemporary Art) at National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), where she has worked since 2006. She is responsible for the acquisition,

Chair of the Scottish Society for the History

preservation and care of the archive and special

of Photography, and Co-Editor of the journals

books collections and facilitates access to this

Studies in Photography and Leaves, responsible

material by researchers and the public. She

for publishing journals on contemporary and

regularly curates displays of archive material

historic photographic work. He studied drawing

at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

and painting at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA)

and contributes to major NGS exhibitions (most

in the 1970s. As an artist he has exhibited his

recently Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema).

cyanograms throughout UK and Europe. He was

She has a BA and an MPhil in Art History (University

awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship and received

of Cambridge) and an MLitt in Archives & Records

a Darwin Award through the British Council,

Management (University of Dundee).

allowing him to take up residencies with a focus on the art and writings of John Ruskin. In recognition of his work in this area he was made a Companion of the Guild of St George. While an ECA student, he was employed to work on the Strategy: Get Arts exhibition. He participated in the 2016 symposium at ECA, and continues to collaborate with Christian Weikop on the wider dissemination of SGA’s importance.

Professor Andrew Patrizio has been at ECA since 1997, first as Director of Research before it merged with the University, then moving in 2011 to History of Art to take the Chair of Scottish Visual Culture. He has also had curatorial posts at the Hayward Gallery in London, Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle, and Glasgow Museums. He teaches (e.g. Radical Nature: Art and Ecology from Joseph Beuys to the Present, and Scottish Art in an Age of Change, 1945-2000) and writes on Scottish post-1945 art (e.g. Ilana Halperin, Christine Borland, Elizabeth Ogilvie) and on ecological artists, themes and methods more widely, culminating in his book The Ecological Eye: Assembling an Ecocritical Art History (Manchester University Press, 2019).

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Further Reading Books and Chapters in Books Bernd and Hilla Becher, exh. cat., Arts Council of Great Britain, London 1974. David Britt and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter: The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings and Interviews, 1962-1993,  MIT Press in association with Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1995. Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelly (eds.), Joseph Beuys: Arena - where would I have got if I had been intelligent!, Dia Art Foundation, New York 1994. Elizabeth Cumming, Robin Philipson, Sansom & Company, Bristol 2018.   Richard Demarco, A Unique Partnership: Richard Demarco, Joseph Beuys, Luath Press, Edinburgh 2016. The Richard Demarco Gallery, 1966-1976, 10th Anniversary Exhibition Catalogue, The Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1976. Dietmar Elger (ed.), Gerhard Richter. Landscapes, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998. Dietmar Elger and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (eds.), Gerhard Richter, Text: Writings, Interviews and Letters, 1961-2007, Thames and Hudson, London 2009. Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2009. B.H. Friedman (ed.), School of New York: Some Younger Artists, Grove Press, New York 1959. Mark Godfrey, ‘Damaged Landscapes’, in Gerhard Richter: Panorama, Tate Publishing, London 2011, pp. 73-122. Keith Hartley (ed.), The Romantic Spirit of German Art, 1790-1990, exh. cat., National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 1994. Elizabeth Hipp and Jeanne Anne Nugent (eds.), From Casper David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden, Getty Publications, Los Angeles 2006. Georg Jappe, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh International Festival Exhibition, Edinburgh College of Art, Forth Studios Ltd, Edinburgh 1970, n.p. Euan McArthur and Arthur Watson (eds.), 10 dialogues: Richard Demarco, Scotland & the European Avant Garde, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh 2010. Christine Mehring, Blinky Palermo: Abstraction of an Era, Yale University Press, London 2009. Gerald Nordland and Richard Ingleby, Jon Schueler: To the North, Merrell, London 2002. Lisa Ortner-Krell, Hubertus Butin, and Catherine Hug (eds.), Gerhard Richter: Landscape, Hatje Cantz, Berlin 2020. Sean Rainbird, Joseph Beuys and the Celtic World: Scotland, Ireland and England 1970 - 85, Tate Publishing, London 2005. Craig Richardson, Scottish Art Since 1960: Historical Reflections and Contemporary Overviews, Ashgate, Farnham 2011. Jon Schueler, The Sound of Sleat: A Painter’s Life, Magda Salvesen and Diane Cousineau (eds.), Picador, New York 1999. Merilyn Smith, ‘Joseph Beuys: Life as Drawing’, in David Thistlewood (ed.), Joseph Beuys: Diverging Critiques, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 1995, pp. 177-84.

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Robert Storr, Gerhard Richter. Forty Years of Painting, MoMA, New York 2004. Caroline Tisdall (ed.), Joseph Beuys, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979. Caroline Tisdall, Bits and Pieces, The Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh 1987 Victoria Walters, Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: a language of healing. Lit Verlag, Münster 2012. Journal Articles Karen Barber, ‘Documents and Archives: Photography Of, At and In the 1970 Strategy: Get Arts Exhibition’, Studies in Photography, Summer 2019, pp. 28-41. Benjamin Buchloh, ‘Twilight of an Idol: Preliminary Notes for a Critique’, Artforum, vol.18, no.5, 1980, pp. 35-43. Richard Demarco, ‘Reflections on ‘Strategy: Get Arts’, Pages, International Magazine of the Arts, no.2, Winter 1970, pp. 9-13. Georg Jappe, ‘A Joseph Beuys Primer’, Studio International, vol.182, no.937, 1971, pp. 65-69. Kunst-Zeitung, no.5, Sept 1971 (whole issue in newspaper format). Alastair Mackintosh, ‘Beuys in Edinburgh’, Art and Artists, vol.5, no.8, 1970, p. 10. Peter van der Meijden, ‘“Not Incorrect and Particularly Not Irrelevant”: Joseph Beuys and Henning Christiansen, 1966–71’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019,  https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/joseph-beuys-henning-christiansen Jay Parini, ‘Jon Schueler: The Castelli Years’, The New Criterion, November 2010, pp. 46-47. See https://www.jonschueler.com/essays.html Johannes Stüttgen, ‘Joseph Beuys: Celtic (Schottische Symphonie)’, Interfunktionen, no.5, 1970, pp. 55-97 (includes photographs by Ute Klophaus). Susannah Thompson, ‘‘Cod Liver Oil’: The Art and Criticism of Cordelia Oliver’, Visual Culture in Britain, vol.21, no.1, 2020, pp. 30-56. Christian Weikop, ‘“More Impact than the Venice Biennale”: Demarco, Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts’,  Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-strategy-get-arts Christian Weikop, ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with Richard Demarco’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-interview Selected Newspaper and Magazine Articles Guy Brett, ‘Dusseldorf baroque’, The Times, 25 August 1970; Guy Brett, ‘Up in Beuys’ Room’, The Times, 3 September 1970; Simon Field, ‘London-world Art Centre – Ugh!’, Time Out, 19 September - 3 October 1970; Edward Gage, ‘Giant German happening floods the Art College’, The Scotsman, 24 August 1970; Edward Gage, ‘Of Making and Believing – and Make-believe’, The Scotsman, 14 September 1970; Edward Gage, ‘Demarco: Art as an Adventure’, The Scotsman, 24 August 1970; John Gale, ‘Italian Scots wha hae’, The Observer, 30 August 1970; Nigel Gosling, ‘Unique Gothic rites’, The Observer, 30 August 1970; Nigel Gosling, ‘Performing Creations’, The Observer, 6 September 1970; Georg Jappe, ‘Mehr Kraft als auf der Biennale in Venedig. Britische Pressestimmen zu “Düsseldorf in Edinburg”’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 October 1970; Alison Lambie, ‘Art for Whose Sake?’, Scotsman, 14 September 1970; Edward Lucie-Smith, ‘A Great Subversive’, The Sunday Times, 30 August 1970; Cordelia Oliver, ‘Napoleon in a Scottish Pond’, The Guardian, 18 August 1970; Cordelia Oliver, ‘Dada for the seventies’, The Guardian, 24 August 1970; Michael Pye, ‘Joseph Beuys’, The Scotsman, 22 August 1970; Terence Mullaly, ‘Convention Swept Aside by Germans’, The Daily Telegraph, 25 August 1970; Michael Shepherd, ‘Up with Imports!’, The Sunday Telegraph, 6 September 1970. 221

Index Photograph pages in italics

Abramović, Marina 56 Alvermann, H.P. 50, 102, 103 Art into Society - Society into Art 43, 58 Bakewell, Joan 81, 83 Bauhaus 56, 128, 198 Baumgartl, Monika 21, 28, 47, 68, 72, 73, 84-5, 87, 130, 152, 154, 180, 198, 206 Baxandall, David 68 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 38, 80-2, 83 Becher, Bernd and Hilla 24, 27, 64, 104-5, 134, 154, 164, 180 Bentwood chairs 50, 94-5, 100, 200-1 Bernea, Horia 36, 64 Beuys, Joseph 12, 13-16, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30-6, 40, 41, 43, 45, 50, 52, 55-6, 57, 58, 60-2, 64-5, 67, 68, 69, 70-4, 76-7, 80, 82, 84-5, 86-7, 93-7, 106-7, 111, 112, 116, 119, 122, 123, 126, 130, 132, 137, 140, 142, 151, 152, 157, 160, 166, 180, 183, 184, 190, 195-6, 198, 202-3, 204, 210, 213-5, 217 Arena 108-9 Black and White Oil Conference 57, 62 Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony 110, 111 experience of Scottish landscape 30, 31, 42 friendship with Jon Schueler 56-78, 57, 68, 69, 77 New Beginnings are in the Offing 76 The Pack 112, 113, 114-15 Birtwistle, Harrison 68, 202 Blue/Yellow/White/Red 23, 94, 156, 157, 158-9, 206-7, 208-9 Böhmler, Claus 106-07, 116 Bonnet, Prof. Dr. Anne-Marie 206-7 Boulez, Pierre 202 Brecht, George 27, 118-19, 126, 184, 188 Brown, John 38, 50, 61-2, 93, 180, 217 Brüning, Peter 27, 120, 121 Brydon Joan 93, 99 Buchloh, Benjamin 43, 50 Calvocoressi, Richard 13-14 Campbell, Donald 93, 99 Christiansen, Henning 28, 36, 50, 70, 73, 74, 87, 111, 122-3, 212 Critchlow, Keith 80, 202-3 Cruz, Prof Juan 28 Demarco Digital Archive (DDA) 26, 36, 65, 116, 128, 146, 160, 164 Demarco, Richard 13ff, 21-3, 26-7, 30ff, 40, 41, 43-7, 52, 55-61, 64, 66, 80-2, 84, 86, 88-9, 93, 107, 109, 111-2, 114, 122-3, 124, 126, 135, 142, 149, 150, 154, 157, 160, 162, 164, 166, 186, 190, 202, 210, 212, 214, 217 Gallery 13, 27, 30, 36, 37, 46, 56-7, 58, 60-1, 64-7, 88, 75, 76, 88, 190, 202 visit to Germany 30-6 Strategy: Get Arts planning 40ff relationship with Beuys 40-3 Diamand, Peter 22, 34, 35-6, 43, 88

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Dix, Otto 13, 14, 216 Docherty, Michael 36, 64 documenta 4 39, 54 documenta 5 35, 89 Döhl, Friedhelm 72, 73-4, 124-5, 191 Douthwaite, Pat 36 Dürer, Albrecht 70 Düsseldorfer Szene 35 Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) 12, 13, 15, 17-20, 21, 28, 36, 55, 56, 61, 84, 88, 98, 100, 124, 201, 202, 203, 208-9 Edinburgh International Festival 13, 21-2, 30, 34, 59, 66, 73, 75, 76, 80, 82 Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas 80, 81, 102, 140, 183, 202 Festival Orbit (BBC) 80, 202 Filliou, Robert 44, 71, 126-127, 134, 137, 183, 186 Finlay, Ian Hamilton 88, 89, 93, 144 Fitzpatrick, Don 93, 98 Fluxus 64, 89, 119, 122, 140, 184, 186 Friedrich, Caspar David 70, 71, 130, 168-9, 171-2 Gerstner, Karl 27, 33, 34, 47, 50, 80, 128-9, 134, 188 Goldberg’s 149, 204 Gough-Cooper, Henry 92, 93, 95, 98 Gough-Cooper, Jennifer 17, 24, 26, 27, 30, 34, 35, 38, 40, 44, 45, 46, 61, 90-1, 93, 128, 137, 157, 162, 186, 188, 195 Gough-Cooper, Vivien 30, 186 Graubner, Gotthard 20, 27, 28, 33, 44, 47, 50, 51, 55, 96-7, 130-1, 132, 138, 146, 150, 157, 195 Green Party 57, 74 Grosz, George 13, 102 Hacker, Alan 202, 203 Hall, Douglas 13, 214, 215 Hall, Matilda 214, 215 Hamilton, Alexander 59, 60, 62, 75, 90, 98-9, 129, 130, 166, 214 Hamilton, Richard 43, 58, 62, 183 Harten, Jürgen 12, 16, 17, 24, 28, 34, 40, 44-5, 47, 54, 55, 57, 59, 88, 91-2, 93, 112, 116, 128, 137, 138-9, 160, 162, 172, 188, 195 Hartley, Keith 28, 169 Heerich, Erwin 33, 80, 130-1, 132-3, 138 Henri, Adrian 16 Herbig, Dr Jorst 112, 115 Holyrood Park 123, 212 Homage to Turner (‘Mist Room’) 20, 47, 93, 96, 97, 130, 131 Hornsey College of Art (HCA) 62, 63, 88 Hüdepohl, Dr Ernest 35 Hünermann, Hete 31-33, 32, 33, 45 Iannone, Dorothy 24, 53, 94, 126, 134-5, 154, 183, 216 Interfunktionen 47, 48-9, 72 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) 43, 52, 58

Jappe, Georg 22, 24, 40, 43-4, 47, 55, 71, 126, 128, 134, 146, 149, 195 Joseph Beuys - A Language of Drawing 14, 210, 211-12 Kantor, Tadeusz 56, 57, 76 Kiefer, Anselm 14, 15, 50, 54, 166 Kagel , Mauricio 27, 136-7, 183, 198 Klapheck, Konrad 33, 130, 132, 138-9 Klee, Paul 13, 14, 59, 70 Klophaus, Ute 21, 50, 68, 72, 84-5, 87, 111 Knoebel, Imi 27, 33, 140-1, 157 Kohlhöfer, Christof 27, 44, 142-3, 162 Kokoschka, Oskar 13, 59, 61, 132 Kriwet, Ferdinand 82, 102, 121, 144-5, 152 Kunstakademie Düsseldorf 26, 30, 56, 112, 131, 132, 138, 140, 142, 149, 157, 160, 183, 195, 198 Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 16, 22, 36, 45, 54, 88, 146, 154, 160, 155, 156, 198 Late Night Line-Up (BBC) 81 Lohmeyer, Brigitte 30, 34, 36, 43, 89 Lucie-Smith, Edward 54, 107 Luther, Adolf 27, 44, 80, 128, 146-7, 152, 180 Mack, Heinz 33-5, 44, 130, 148-9, 154, 190 Martin, John 27, 47, 56, 65, 88, 186 McEwen, Rory 36, 64, 151 Mommartz, Lutz 27, 102, 150-1, 154 Morgan, Tony 27, 33, 45, 137, 142, 146, 152-5, 162, 198 Mullaly, Terence 107 Neagu, Paul 34, 36, 64 Nebelung, Hella 31 New Directions 36, 37 Nicholson, William 69 Nisbet, Margaret 93, 99 Nolde, Emil 13, 14, 59, 214 Oliver, Cordelia 26, 37, 45, 56, 59, 61, 80, 112, 164, 187 Oliver, George 14, 21, 26, 38, 45, 68, 80-1, 87, 88, 104, 112, 152, 164, 180, 202, 206, 210 Palermo, Blinky 14, 23, 27, 28, 33, 44, 47, 50, 55, 60-1, 85, 94, 97, 104, 105, 121, 140, 156, 157, 158-9, 160, 166, 168, 170, 184, 198, 206-7, 208-9 Paolozzi, Eduardo 126 Paperback Bookshop 14, 66, 93 Park, Alistair 36, 64, 68 Patrizio, Prof Andrew 22-3 Pavel, Ilie 36 Philipson, Robin 38, 60-1, 68, 75, 94 Polke, Sigmar 14, 27, 33, 44, 50, 64, 102, 116, 142, 160-62, 163, 166, 170, 184, 195, 196 Read, Herbert 22, 59 Redzisz, Kasia 134 Research Forum for German Visual Culture 15, 22, 24 Restaurant Spoerri 30, 183 Reusch, Erich 27, 104-5, 164-5

Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys - A Unique Partnership 14, 23, 210, 211, 213 Richard Demarco Archive, SNGMA 26, 57, 102, 130, 154, 160, 210ff, 211, 213 Richter, Gerhard 14-15, 27, 28, 31-3, 44, 47, 50, 54, 64, 71, 97, 102, 138, 152, 157, 160, 162, 166-72, 184, 190, 195-6 Korsika Feuer 170, 173 Abendstimmung 171, 174 Alpen 171, 175 Landschaft mit Baumgruppe 171, 176 Kanarische Landschaft 171, 177 Abendlandschaft mit Figur 171, 178 Feldmühle 171, 179 Rinke, Klaus 20, 28, 33, 55, 63, 68, 72-74, 84-5, 87, 94, 152, 154, 180-1, 198, 216 Roth, Dieter 27, 32, 33, 126, 134, 137, 182-3, 186, 188 Ruhrberg, Dr Karl 34, 40-1, 43-47, 52, 54-5, 119, 134, 146, 149 Ruthenbeck, Reiner 33, 80, 84, 184-5 Salvesen, Magda 65-66, 70-1, 74, 76 Scheier, Dr Dieter 206 Schueler, Jon 63-8, 70, 72-6, 77 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 13, 23, 26, 56, 76, 210, 214 Seven Exhibitions (Tate Gallery) 58 Sharp Corridor 85, 188-91, 191, 192-3, 216 Sound in Space 202, 203 Spoerri, Daniel 27, 33, 44, 45, 50, 126, 134, 186-7, 188, 196 Strategy: Get Arts 13ff, 16ff, 18, 19, 20, 21, 30, 39, 54 contributing artists 101ff development of 22ff financial concerns 46-7 naming of 44, 88 critical reception 80-3, 107 influence of 56ff, 88ff, 93ff The Avant-Garde in Europe 1955-70 76 The Banana Trap Dinner 27, 186-7 The Bigger Picture (BBC) 82 The Edinburgh School 1946-1971 59, 60-1 The Scotsman 63, 71, 190 The Sound of Sleat 65, 73-5 Thomkins, André 33, 44, 116, 134, 160, 188-9 Tisdall, Caroline 52, 80, 111, Traverse Theatre 14, 67, 81, 93 Tremlett, David 58, 149, 204, 205 Trockel , Rosemarie 22, 26 Twentieth-Century German Art 22, 59 Uecker, Günther 23, 28, 30-36, 44, 47, 50, 55, 56, 73, 85, 94, 97, 124-5, 130, 149, 150, 166, 184, 190-91, 192-3, 215, 216 University of Edinburgh 15, 21, 22, 45, 56, 59, 62, 76, 214 Walther, Franz Erhard 27, 194-5 Werner, Michael 32-3 Weseler, Günther 44, 196-7, 210 Wewerka, Stefan 19, 27, 36, 37, 47, 50, 63, 94, 95, 97, 137, 152, 154, 156, 157, 184, 198, 199-201 White, Richard 93, 99 Wright, Prof Stanley 38, 187, 202

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Reiner Ruthenbeck’s ‘highland’ installation being assembled by Ruthenbeck and students, including Alexander Hamilton. Photos © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

Don Fitzpatrick painting a bed designed by Stefan Wewerka in an ECA studio at Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper. © DACS 2021.

Monika Baumgartl, Klaus Rinke, and City of Edinburgh Fire Brigade officers, inspecting Rinke's water jet installation at the main entrance to ECA for Strategy: Get Arts, 1970. Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive.

Our thanks to all the following supporting Institutions and Foundations

DEMARCO EUROPEAN ART FOUNDATION

1 Summerhall Edinburgh EH9 1PL www.demarcoarchive.com Photo © Jennifer Gough-Cooper. 2019

Daniel Spoerri reading from his menu for The Banana Trap Dinner in the boardroom of ECA (23 August 1970). Photo © George Oliver, Demarco Digital Archive. © DACS 2021.

Alexander Hamilton and fellow students examining the work of Dorothy Iannone and André Thomkins in an ECA studio at Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

Alexander Hamilton waving goodbye at Strategy: Get Arts (1970). Photo © George Oliver, Courtesy of Jennifer Gough-Cooper.