Exhibiting the New Art

More about the book

Edited by Afterall Books in association with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Essay by Christian Rattemeyer. Texts from 1969 by Wim Beeren, Charles Harrison, Harald Szeemann and Tommaso Trini, new texts by Claudia Di Lecce and Steven ten Thije, introduction by Teresa Gleadowe. Interviews with Marinus Boezem, Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Piero Gilardi and Richard Serra. The ‘new art’ of the late 1960s was shown in two landmark exhibitions in 1969: ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ and ‘When Attitudes Become Form’. This book reveals how each brought together Arte Povera, Anti-Form, Conceptual and Land art, whilst challenging such categories and introducing innovative curatorial approaches. Christian Rattemeyer offers a rich comparative analysis of the two exhibitions, exploring the related but differing approaches of the two curators – Wim Beeren and Harald Szeemann – in two distinct institutional settings – the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Kunsthalle Bern. Numerous installation photographs enable a virtual ‘walk through’ of each exhibition, while meticulous chronologies detail the negotiations that shaped them. Crucial texts from the time are complemented by new research and fascinating recent interviews with participating artists.