woensdag 30 december 2015

The Best Photography Exhibitions 2015


Rianne van Dijck Fotografie

1 The Order of Things, werk van o.a. August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt, Thomas Ruff, Ai Weiwei in The Walther Collection, Duitsland. Met deze expositie van kunstenaars die catalogiseren, classificeren, archiveren en ordenen laat De Duitse verzamelaar Arthur Walther zien dat hij een van de interessantste fotoverzamelaars is.

The Walther Collection presents The Order of Things: Photography from The Walther Collection, a survey exhibition exploring how the organization of photographs into systematic sequences or typologies has affected modern visual culture. The Order of Things investigates the production and uses of serial portraiture, conceptual structures, vernacular imagery, and time-based performance in photography from the 1880s to the present, bringing together works by artists from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. The exhibition, curated by Brian Wallis, former Chief Curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, will be on view at The Walther Collection in Neu-Ulm, Germany, beginning May 17, 2015, and will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Steidl/The Walther Collection.


2 Mijn Vlakke Land. FoMu, Antwerpen. Lofzang op de schoonheid en de meditatieve kracht van de natuur.

MIJN VLAKKE LAND: On photography and landscape
This summer, FOMU takes you on a visual journey through unspoiled nature and poses the question: Is it possible to recreate the sensation of hiking within the walls of a museum? When we go for a walk, we experience a succession of impressions that melt almost imperceptibly into each other. The exhibition Mijn Vlakke Land (My Flat Land) is a photographic montage that features works from 1856 to 2015 by over 50 artists from Belgium and abroad.

The ambivalence of landscape is at the heart of the exhibition, from safe haven to an experience of the sublime. Rather than a presentation of contemporary or historic points of view, the exhibition is conceived as an associative tour through nature. The only human presence is that of the photographer, who attempts to capture a personal vision of the natural scenery. Can an artist hold their own in such a poetic encounter with the elements?

Music lovers will recognise the reference to Jacques Brel in the title of this exhibition. Alongside the tribute to Brel’s lush ode to the Low Countries, flat also refers to an inevitable physical characteristic of photography. A photograph is a two-dimensional object on to which we project desires and expectations. The summer exhibition is thus more of a hymn to the romantic landscapes of our hearts and imaginations than to the actual Flemish countryside.


3 Ken Schles: Invisible City / Night Walk, Noorderlicht Fotogalerie Groningen.

Ken Schles - Invisible City/Night Walk 1983 - 1989
This spring the Noorderlicht Photogallery digs deep into a mythic time in New York’s Lower East Side. Ken Schles’ images from the 1980s are a gritty, penetrating portrayal of a city racked with violence, when crime rates were high and drug addicts and artists ruled his downtown world. An explosive but creative cocktail yielding an intoxicating brew of light, darkness and desire.

The exhibition of 100 black and white photographs coincides with the publication of a new Steidl monograph, Night Walk (2014), a companion to Schles’s underground cult classic Invisible City (1988). Recently reprinted by Steidl, Invisible City is considered alongside Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit and Ed van der Elksen’s Love On The Left Bank to be one of the great depictions of the nocturnal bohemian experience of the 20th century.


4 Annette Behrens | Looking for Carl. Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam

ANNETTE BEHRENS | LOOKING FOR KARL
The discovery of the so-called Höcker Album in September 2007 made headlines all over the world. From the start, visual artist Annette Behrens was intrigued by the unique photo album: it is the first album ever to show the living conditions and leisure activities of Nazis who were posted to Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Owner of the album was SS officer Karl-Friedrich Höcker (1911 – 2000), who worked in Auschwitz as the commandant’s aide-de-camp in 1944. The album contains 116 photos from this period showing, among other things, outings by Höcker together with fellow camp personnel and top-ranking officers of the Nazi regime.

From May 30th until August 23, the Nederlands Fotomuseum presents Behrens’ intensive search for more information surrounding Höcker’s identity. In the exhibition Behrens gives the historical visual material with regard to this man a prominent place. Also, the confrontation with her own German background comes to the surface during her research.

Annette Behrens: (in matters of) Karl from Marcin Grabowiecki on Vimeo.

5Dana Lixenberg, Imperial Courts. Huis Marseille Amsterdam

Imperial Courts, 1993–2015

The Huis Marseille exhibition Imperial Courts, 1993–2015 displays for the first time the entirety of the work of photographer Dana Lixenberg made in the neighbourhood of Los Angeles from which it takes its name over the last twenty-two years. Through her photography, video, and audio works, Lixenberg offers us an intimate glimpse into the everyday life of this troubled area and its residents.

In 1944, as part of a large-scale public housing project, 498 single-family houses were built in Watts, a district of Los Angeles. During the 1950s, most of the people housed there were African-Americans from the Southern States. Imperial Courts, together with the surrounding districts, soon became a black ghetto. In 1965, rising anger at social injustice resulted in the notorious Watts rebellion and race rioting. In 1992, riots again broke out after four LAPD police officers were acquitted of the brutal beating of Rodney King, a black taxi driver. The same streets were also the battleground of a bloody conflict between two gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, until they agreed on a truce in 1993.

‘You want to put some niggas on display? Hahaha,’ was Tony Bogard’s reaction, leader of the PJ Watts Crips gang when Dana Lixenberg first met him in 1993, at the height of racial tensions in Los Angeles. Apart from the media, no one ever visited South Central Los Angeles, let alone the ‘projects’. Lixenberg was at first regarded with suspicion. The community was fed up with media attention and the negative stereotypes that came with it. But Lixenberg was persistent, and was eventually granted the approval of Tony Bogard, who would later play a crucial role in negotiating a truce between the Crips and the Bloods. During the month that followed, Lixenberg gradually won the trust of the residents of Imperial Courts.

Using a large-format camera mounted on a tripod, she portrayed them in black and white with only natural light. She intentionally photographed her subjects against neutral backgrounds, rather than locations loaded with meaning, such as graffiti-filled walls, and she kept references to gang culture out of her images. In so doing, according to the former director of photography at Vibe magazine, in which her work was first published in 1993, she created ‘a moving yet shrewdly quiet range of pictures that afforded her subjects the pleasure of being themselves as compelling individuals […] despite their monolithic, emotionally reserved surfaces, her casts of subjects surge throughout this dazzling series with a collective cool and an unfussy sense of elegance that imbues these men, women and children with quiet fire and vivid sense of style and self.’ (George Pitts, Hotshoe magazine, 2013) Tony Bogard was the last person Lixenberg photographed in this first period in 1993. He was shot dead in 1994.

Lixenberg remained in contact with the community and continued her work in Imperial Courts between 2008 and 2015. She has now added group portraits and landscapes to her individual portraits, and also made audio and video recordings; a new development in her artistic practice. These filmed scenes are observational and tranquil, capturing the people, their surroundings, and the daily rhythm of the neighbourhood. The very ordinariness of these scenes gives them a somewhat surreal and alienating quality, but the viewer is always subtly aware of the tension that hovers just below the surface in a neighbourhood such as this one.

Imperial Courts is the core project of Lixenberg’s oeuvre and life. ‘After twenty-two years, I have reached a point where I just can’t imagine not being here, not having Imperial Courts in my life, not knowing the people I’ve met here over the years,’ she writes in the afterword to the accompanying book.

Huis Marseille exhibition
The exhibition Imperial Courts, 1993–2015 displays the impressive results of this life’s work. A selection of 50 portraits and landscapes, on baryta paper – some of them in monumental format – is on display. A triple-screen video installation immerses the viewer in the community for 70 minutes, and an audio installation reveals the reactions of Imperial Courts residents to Lixenberg’s work.

For more information visit the Huis Marseille website: link

Book
The exhibition is accompanied by a new book, Imperial Courts, 1993-2015, designed by Roger Willems and published by Roma Publications. The book has been shortlisted for the Photobook of the Year Award by Paris Photo and the Aperture Foundation. Language: English, 296 pp., black and white, 24×31 cm, paperback. ISBN 9789491843426.




Thomas Struth, Paradise 09 , Xi Shuang Banna, Prov. Yunnan, China, 1999







The Best Photography Exhibitions 2015


Rianne van Dijck Fotografie

1 The Order of Things, werk van o.a. August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt, Thomas Ruff, Ai Weiwei in The Walther Collection, Duitsland. Met deze expositie van kunstenaars die catalogiseren, classificeren, archiveren en ordenen laat De Duitse verzamelaar Arthur Walther zien dat hij een van de interessantste fotoverzamelaars is.

The Walther Collection presents The Order of Things: Photography from The Walther Collection, a survey exhibition exploring how the organization of photographs into systematic sequences or typologies has affected modern visual culture. The Order of Things investigates the production and uses of serial portraiture, conceptual structures, vernacular imagery, and time-based performance in photography from the 1880s to the present, bringing together works by artists from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. The exhibition, curated by Brian Wallis, former Chief Curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, will be on view at The Walther Collection in Neu-Ulm, Germany, beginning May 17, 2015, and will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Steidl/The Walther Collection.


2 Mijn Vlakke Land. FoMu, Antwerpen. Lofzang op de schoonheid en de meditatieve kracht van de natuur.

MIJN VLAKKE LAND: On photography and landscape
This summer, FOMU takes you on a visual journey through unspoiled nature and poses the question: Is it possible to recreate the sensation of hiking within the walls of a museum? When we go for a walk, we experience a succession of impressions that melt almost imperceptibly into each other. The exhibition Mijn Vlakke Land (My Flat Land) is a photographic montage that features works from 1856 to 2015 by over 50 artists from Belgium and abroad.

The ambivalence of landscape is at the heart of the exhibition, from safe haven to an experience of the sublime. Rather than a presentation of contemporary or historic points of view, the exhibition is conceived as an associative tour through nature. The only human presence is that of the photographer, who attempts to capture a personal vision of the natural scenery. Can an artist hold their own in such a poetic encounter with the elements?

Music lovers will recognise the reference to Jacques Brel in the title of this exhibition. Alongside the tribute to Brel’s lush ode to the Low Countries, flat also refers to an inevitable physical characteristic of photography. A photograph is a two-dimensional object on to which we project desires and expectations. The summer exhibition is thus more of a hymn to the romantic landscapes of our hearts and imaginations than to the actual Flemish countryside.


3 Ken Schles: Invisible City / Night Walk, Noorderlicht Fotogalerie Groningen.

Ken Schles - Invisible City/Night Walk 1983 - 1989
This spring the Noorderlicht Photogallery digs deep into a mythic time in New York’s Lower East Side. Ken Schles’ images from the 1980s are a gritty, penetrating portrayal of a city racked with violence, when crime rates were high and drug addicts and artists ruled his downtown world. An explosive but creative cocktail yielding an intoxicating brew of light, darkness and desire.

The exhibition of 100 black and white photographs coincides with the publication of a new Steidl monograph, Night Walk (2014), a companion to Schles’s underground cult classic Invisible City (1988). Recently reprinted by Steidl, Invisible City is considered alongside Brassaï’s Paris de Nuit and Ed van der Elksen’s Love On The Left Bank to be one of the great depictions of the nocturnal bohemian experience of the 20th century.


4 Annette Behrens | Looking for Carl. Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam

ANNETTE BEHRENS | LOOKING FOR KARL
The discovery of the so-called Höcker Album in September 2007 made headlines all over the world. From the start, visual artist Annette Behrens was intrigued by the unique photo album: it is the first album ever to show the living conditions and leisure activities of Nazis who were posted to Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Owner of the album was SS officer Karl-Friedrich Höcker (1911 – 2000), who worked in Auschwitz as the commandant’s aide-de-camp in 1944. The album contains 116 photos from this period showing, among other things, outings by Höcker together with fellow camp personnel and top-ranking officers of the Nazi regime.

From May 30th until August 23, the Nederlands Fotomuseum presents Behrens’ intensive search for more information surrounding Höcker’s identity. In the exhibition Behrens gives the historical visual material with regard to this man a prominent place. Also, the confrontation with her own German background comes to the surface during her research.

Annette Behrens: (in matters of) Karl from Marcin Grabowiecki on Vimeo.

5Dana Lixenberg, Imperial Courts. Huis Marseille Amsterdam

Imperial Courts, 1993–2015

The Huis Marseille exhibition Imperial Courts, 1993–2015 displays for the first time the entirety of the work of photographer Dana Lixenberg made in the neighbourhood of Los Angeles from which it takes its name over the last twenty-two years. Through her photography, video, and audio works, Lixenberg offers us an intimate glimpse into the everyday life of this troubled area and its residents.

In 1944, as part of a large-scale public housing project, 498 single-family houses were built in Watts, a district of Los Angeles. During the 1950s, most of the people housed there were African-Americans from the Southern States. Imperial Courts, together with the surrounding districts, soon became a black ghetto. In 1965, rising anger at social injustice resulted in the notorious Watts rebellion and race rioting. In 1992, riots again broke out after four LAPD police officers were acquitted of the brutal beating of Rodney King, a black taxi driver. The same streets were also the battleground of a bloody conflict between two gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, until they agreed on a truce in 1993.

‘You want to put some niggas on display? Hahaha,’ was Tony Bogard’s reaction, leader of the PJ Watts Crips gang when Dana Lixenberg first met him in 1993, at the height of racial tensions in Los Angeles. Apart from the media, no one ever visited South Central Los Angeles, let alone the ‘projects’. Lixenberg was at first regarded with suspicion. The community was fed up with media attention and the negative stereotypes that came with it. But Lixenberg was persistent, and was eventually granted the approval of Tony Bogard, who would later play a crucial role in negotiating a truce between the Crips and the Bloods. During the month that followed, Lixenberg gradually won the trust of the residents of Imperial Courts.

Using a large-format camera mounted on a tripod, she portrayed them in black and white with only natural light. She intentionally photographed her subjects against neutral backgrounds, rather than locations loaded with meaning, such as graffiti-filled walls, and she kept references to gang culture out of her images. In so doing, according to the former director of photography at Vibe magazine, in which her work was first published in 1993, she created ‘a moving yet shrewdly quiet range of pictures that afforded her subjects the pleasure of being themselves as compelling individuals […] despite their monolithic, emotionally reserved surfaces, her casts of subjects surge throughout this dazzling series with a collective cool and an unfussy sense of elegance that imbues these men, women and children with quiet fire and vivid sense of style and self.’ (George Pitts, Hotshoe magazine, 2013) Tony Bogard was the last person Lixenberg photographed in this first period in 1993. He was shot dead in 1994.

Lixenberg remained in contact with the community and continued her work in Imperial Courts between 2008 and 2015. She has now added group portraits and landscapes to her individual portraits, and also made audio and video recordings; a new development in her artistic practice. These filmed scenes are observational and tranquil, capturing the people, their surroundings, and the daily rhythm of the neighbourhood. The very ordinariness of these scenes gives them a somewhat surreal and alienating quality, but the viewer is always subtly aware of the tension that hovers just below the surface in a neighbourhood such as this one.

Imperial Courts is the core project of Lixenberg’s oeuvre and life. ‘After twenty-two years, I have reached a point where I just can’t imagine not being here, not having Imperial Courts in my life, not knowing the people I’ve met here over the years,’ she writes in the afterword to the accompanying book.

Huis Marseille exhibition
The exhibition Imperial Courts, 1993–2015 displays the impressive results of this life’s work. A selection of 50 portraits and landscapes, on baryta paper – some of them in monumental format – is on display. A triple-screen video installation immerses the viewer in the community for 70 minutes, and an audio installation reveals the reactions of Imperial Courts residents to Lixenberg’s work.

For more information visit the Huis Marseille website: link

Book
The exhibition is accompanied by a new book, Imperial Courts, 1993-2015, designed by Roger Willems and published by Roma Publications. The book has been shortlisted for the Photobook of the Year Award by Paris Photo and the Aperture Foundation. Language: English, 296 pp., black and white, 24×31 cm, paperback. ISBN 9789491843426.




Thomas Struth, Paradise 09 , Xi Shuang Banna, Prov. Yunnan, China, 1999







dinsdag 22 december 2015

Views & Reviews Englishmen take sure that You really enjoy Groupies From Sex Symbols to Style Icons Baron Wolman Photography


Groupies, From Sex Symbols to Style Icons
When Pamela Des Barres and other backstage women came to prominence in 1969, the news media focused on their brazen sexuality. Now the focus is on their fashion.

By JIM FARBER NOV. 11, 2015

Cultural photographers try to capture images others miss. But even when they do, some people don’t see what is really there.

Case in point: Baron Wolman’s pictures of the original groupies in 1969. Billed on the cover of “A Special Super-Duper Neat Issue” of Rolling Stone (then a fledgling magazine), they inspired outrage in readers unfamiliar with the sexual innovations of the counterculture. In addition, the sometimes salacious articles that accompanied the photos irked some of the women portrayed. But Mr. Wolman said his portraits had a different intent.

“The thing I noticed immediately about these women was that they had spent a lot of time putting themselves together in ways that were so creative, you couldn’t believe it,” he said. “They mixed together outfits of the day with things from antique clothing stores to create a real vision. They weren’t appearing half-naked to get the men’s attention. They were dressing up to put on a show.”

Mr. Wolman’s view of the women as style icons comes into sharp focus thanks to a new coffee-table book, “Groupies and Other Electric Ladies.” It collects his published portraits along with outtakes, contact sheets, the original articles from the issue and new essays that put the subjects into a modern context. The thick paper stock and oversize format emphasizes Mr. Wolman’s view of the groupies as pioneers in hippie
frippery.

“It was all feathers and boas and frills,” the fashion stylist Phillip Bloch said. “It was whimsy and color. They’d put a Victorian blouse with boots. Or velvet pants and masculine shoes. They created a highly eclectic mishmash that together announced, ‘We break the rules.’”

The revival of these images comes at a propitious time. The Twitterverse has amplified the movement to condemn judgments against women’s expressions of their sexuality, no matter how flip or free.

“Sex positivity has permeated mainstream dialogue, particularly among people who have the benefit of growing up with social media,” said Andi Zeisler, the editorial/creative director of the feminist media company Bitch. “That brought things like slut shaming into the cultural lexicon.”

But in order for that to come about, decades had to pass, during which the news-media image of groupies adopted any number of guises. When the Feb. 15, 1969, issue of Rolling Stone appeared, with the cover line “The Groupies and Other Girls,” it created a media pile-on. There were catch-up articles in magazines like Time and Life, along with harrumphing commentary in newspapers.


Before the issue reached newsstands, the term “groupie” was not common, having turned up sporadically in places like The Village Voice. After the issue was published, the word became codified, aided by drooling pulp novels like “Groupie” or the voyeuristic 1970 documentary “Groupies.”

Mr. Wolman, 78, began his career in photojournalism after serving in the military in Berlin in the early 1960s. His first published photo essay captured life behind the just-erected wall in Communist-controlled East Berlin. After moving to San Francisco, Mr. Wolman met Jann Wenner, who asked him to become chief photographer for a publication he was starting, to be called Rolling Stone. Mr. Wolman held that position for three years, before Annie Leibovitz took over.

Baron Wolman CreditAnna Webber/WireImage

During his time with the magazine, he earned the trust of the musicians and the women in their circle. Mr. Wolman brought the idea for an article focused on the women to Mr. Wenner, who immediately recognized it as media gold. He felt so sure, he spent $7,000 for a fullpage ad on a back page of The New York Times to herald the special issue.

“We seized the opportunity to use this as a steppingstone to build awareness of the magazine in New York advertising circles,” Mr. Wenner said. “It stimulated a lot of attention on Madison Avenue and even more in the press and with the public.”

The ad’s tag line was, “If we tell you what a groupie is, will you really understand?”

“The whole idea was to say, ‘There’s something going on here, and you don’t know what it is, Mr. Jones,’ ” said Mr. Wolman, paraphrasing a famous Bob Dylan lyric. “But if you read Rolling Stone, you’ll get it.”

While many of the women who posed for Mr. Wolman loved the portraits, they were not pleased with the text surrounding them. “I never hated a word in the English language as much as I hated ‘groupie,’ ” said Sally Romano (then Sally Mann), who is now a lawyer in Huntsville, Tex. “The term is just stupid. And in the article I sounded like a complete moron.”

Ms. Romano, who was living in the Jefferson Airplane house at the time (and was involved with the band’s drummer, Spencer Dryden), said the band “never let me live it down.”

Trixie Merkin, a Radcliffe graduate, enjoyed being included in the issue but wasn’t thrilled about being lumped in with groupies.

Though the magazine pointed out that she wasn’t one (she was one of the “other girls” alluded to in the cover line), her connection to them seemed implicit. At the time, she was a bassist in the band Anonymous Artists of America, as well as a member of “the next commune down from Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters,” as she describes it.

It’s indicative of the sexism of the day, and the fact that there were few female musicians in the scene, that Ms. Merkin’s only way into the magazine was the groupie issue. She appeared topless among the otherwise largely chaste photos, and said the idea to do so was hers.

“I asked myself before the shoot, ‘What should I wear — or not wear?’ ” Ms. Merkin said with a laugh. “It was meant to be zany. I was a bit of a Dadaist.”

If the photographs and articles drew ire from certain guardians of opinion, they didn’t necessarily diminish the women’s status within the counterculture. “The groupies had very high prestige,” said Richard Goldstein, perhaps the first true rock critic. “They had been chosen, but they had chosen as well. The musicians had to be selected by them. It was a mutual conveyance of prestige through sex.”

They also had an influence on fashion. Their on-the-fly street style —stitched together from 1920s bohemia, bordello chic, Victorian lace and mod leftovers — created the vintage rock look. “You see it now in the
designs of Anna Sui, Catherine Malandrino and Mary-Kate and Ashley,” Mr. Bloch said of the Olsen twins. “Some of these groupies look like mothers to the Rodarte sisters.”

But the women weren’t idealized, even in their day. The flip side of their cool appearance found enduring expression in the 1969 ballad “Groupie (Superstar),” written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell. In that song, the groupie pines for a rock star who remains out of reach, always on the road with someone else.

The song’s message entered the mainstream when it became a No. 2 hit for the Carpenters in 1971, if with a chastened lyric. (The Carpenters whitewashed “I can hardly wait to sleep with you again” into “I can hardly wait to be with you again.”)

By the late ’80s, amid the panic of AIDS, different attitudes prevailed. When Pamela Des Barres of the groupies-turned-band the G.T.O.’s published her blockbuster memoir, “I’m With the Band: Confessions of a
Groupie,” in 1987, she drew criticism. Mainly, she said, it came from other women.


“I had to fight my way out of a lot of difficult situations,” Ms. Des Barres said. “I was on a TV show, and Gloria Steinem didn’t even want to be on the stage with me. I was seen as a submissive slut. But I was a
woman doing what I wanted to do. Isn’t that feminist?”

Ms. Des Barres said she had to come up with snappy comebacks in order to make her way through the talk-show circuit. “Some lady said to me, ‘How could you shame yourself this way?’” she said. “I said, ‘I’m so sorry that you didn’t get to sleep with Mick Jagger and I did.’ That shut her up.”

Attitudes began to alter again in the aughts. Cameron Crowe’s 2000 movie, “Almost Famous,” portrayed the main groupie character, Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson), as a haloed muse.


The 2002 comedy “The Banger Sisters” went further. In it, Susan Sarandon played a former groupie whose move away from the scene represents a denial of her true desires and a descent into ruinous repression. To cure this, she requires the brassy presence of her former partner in groupie-dom, played by Goldie Hawn (the real-life mother to Ms. Hudson).

Groupies still exist, and always will, but they seem not to have the prominence of their foremothers. Perhaps their most common current media depiction would be the women used decoratively in certain hip-hop videos.

Pamela Des Barres with Alice Cooper in Los Angeles, circa 1974.CreditRichard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images


If the profile and prestige of groupies has sunk, their lingering, historic image has become more complicated. On the one hand, Ms. Zeisler said, many third-wave feminists admire the fact that the ’60s groupies “transgressed the boundaries of what was considered proper female sexual behavior.”

On the other, “they contributed to a culture in which women have had to struggle very hard to be seen as human and professional. They made it harder for women in music to be seen as anything other than groupies.”

Many of the original women on the scene say they have no interest in such reactions. A measure of the women’s ownership of their legacies can be seen in the title of Ms. Romano’s forthcoming autobiography. It inverts Ms. Des Barres’s title into “The Band’s With Me.”

Still, the women’s enduring confidence may find its purest expression in Mr. Wolman’s photos. To focus on their power, he said he made the decision to shoot them “in as uncluttered a way as possible. I took them into the studio and treated them like celebrities, in the style of my two favorite photographers, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.”

“I wanted to isolate them so people would really look at the women,” Mr. Wolman said. “I wanted to say to the viewer: ‘See who is really in the image. See who these women really are.’ ”

Correction: November 11, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated where Sally Romano practices law. She is in Huntsville, Tex., not Santa Fe, N.M.
A version of this article appears in print on November 12, 2015, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Dressing Their Way Backstage.
© 2015 The New York Times Company


‘Engelsen zorgen dat je echt geniet’
De eerste groupies Groupies hoorden vanaf eind jaren zestig onlosmakelijk bij het muziekleven. Hun meest begeerde muzikant, Jimi Hendrix, zei alsof hij een zeeman was: „I only remember a city by its chicks.”

Hester Carvalho  21 december 2015

Pamela Des Barres, de groupie op wie de film ‘Almost Famous’ is gebaseerd. Foto’s uit 1969 gemaakt voor het tijdschrift Rolling Stone.
Foto’s Baron Wolman, Iconic Images Limited

Jenni Dean Foto Baron Wolman

Het fenomeen ontstond eind jaren zestig. Zoals ooit soldaten in dorpen werden onthaald met lekkernijen en aandacht van jonge vrouwen, waren het nu verwaten rocksterren met lange krullen en fluwelen jasjes die in steden als Los Angeles en San Francisco werden opgewacht door jonge schoonheden met de drugs ‘du jour’ en een rijk menu aan seksuele attenties. Het was de tijd van de Summer of Love, patchouli, hippies, het succes van Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa en The Doors.

Lacy

Bekende groupies als Pamela Des Barres en Miss Sunshine hadden een assertieve benadering. Voor en na concerten drongen ze kleedkamers binnen, verzamelden telefoonnummers, kochten bewakers om, speurden naar de slaapplaats van hun prooi. In de popmuziek van die jaren waren de rollen omgedraaid: mannen hoefden niet achter vrouwen aan, de vrouwen jaagden op hen.

The Sanchez Twins

Het onlangs verschenen fotoboek Groupies and Other Electric Ladies van de Amerikaanse fotograaf Baron Wolfman (78) laat uitgebreid zien hoe de groupies zich presenteerden: met vele lagen fluweel en ruches, hoeden, boa’s, franje en bontjasjes. Sjiek van de vlooienmarkt.

Cat - hippe man.

Fave rave - favoriete bedpartner.

To ball - seks hebben met.

Groupie - vrouw die met muzikanten slaapt, drugs deelt, uitgaat.

Starfucker - vrouw die met zoveel mogelijk beroemde mannen naar bed gaat zonder oprecht in de muziek geïnteresseerd te zijn. Laag gewaardeerde status.

AlleenKaren

Wolfmans portretten zijn om verschillende redenen adembenemend. Om de onbevangenheid van de jonge vrouwen, trots over het verwerven van hun seksuele vrijheid. Om de onschuld die de jonge (vaak rond de twintig, maar soms nog maar veertien) meisjes uitstralen. En uiteindelijk ook om het fanatisme en de overgave waarmee ze zich in de rockscene stortten. Ze stopten met school en liepen weg van huis. Samen met gelijkgezinden achtervolgden ze de muzikanten tijdens hun tournees - vandaar de dubbele betekenis van ‘groupie’: in groepjes achter de groepen aan. De bands waren The Yardbirds, Steve Miller Band, Cream, Led Zeppelin of Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Judy and Karen

De foto’s in Groupies and Other Electric Ladies zijn een uitgebreide versie van de reportage die in 1969 gemaakt werd voor het toen pas opgerichte muziekblad Rolling Stone, aangevuld met artikelen uit dat blad. De geïnterviewden - groupies en muzikanten - zijn opvallend openhartig. Ze maakten zich duidelijk geen zorgen om hun publieke imago - of vonden hun ontboezemingen juist gunstig.

The Plaster Casters of Chicago

Het begon met liefde voor muziek, bij de groupies - blijkt uit de interviews. Eind jaren zestig was de periode van ‘teeny-boppers’ achter de rug: popzangers voor wie de meisjes stonden te gillen. Nu was het de tijd van de rockgod: ruige, harde, opzwepende klanken van mannen met wapperend haar en strakke broeken. Jonge vrouwen stonden niet zomaar te gillen. Ze bestudeerden de platenhoezen, lazen tijdschriften en verzamelden zoveel mogelijk informatie over de muzikant.

Drugs

Uitg. ACC Editions, prijs €54,99

Die liefde leidde tot veroveringsdrang. In de kleedkamers van ultieme helden als Eric Clapton, Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa of Steve Miller kwam het soms tot handgemeen tussen de groupies. Tot bloedens toe vochten twee vrouwen in een kleedkamer in New York om Jimmy Page, die op dat moment zelf niet aanwezig was.

VAN BABYSITTERS TOT VERZAMELAARS VAN AFGIETSELS

Pamela Des Barres

Pamela Des Barres werkte als babysitter bij Frank Zappa. Zou later slapen met veel bekende sterren, onder wie Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Gram Parsons, Woody Allen. Publiceerde haar memoires, I’m With The Band. Confessions of a Groupie, in 1987.

The Plaster Casters of Chicago

Cynthia studeerde beeldhouwen aan de universiteit en wilde graag iets bijzonders maken. Met mede- groupie Dianne, ook uit Chicago, begon ze gipsen afgietsels van het erecte lid van hun veroveringen te maken. Van onder anderen Jimi Hendrix en Eric Burdon.

Sally Mann

Sally Mann maakte deel uit van de scene rond Janis Joplin en woonde in huis bij de leden van Jefferson Airplane. Daar kookte ze, waste af en paste op de kinderen.

Catherine James

Catherine James was de meest gewilde groupie van Los Angeles, om haar stijl en uiterlijk: met lang blond haar en mysterieuze oogopslag. Publiceerde haar memoires in 2007, Dandelion: Memoir of a Free Spirit.

De muzikanten lieten zich de aandacht welgevallen. Al was Eric Clapton teleurgesteld toen hij ontdekte dat het de vrouwen niet ging om zijn uiterlijk of lichaam, maar om zijn naam. En de Amerikaanse gitarist Steve Miller ergerde zich weleens aan de meisjes die voor de show met grote ogen zwijgend in de kleedkamer op hem zaten de wachten. Maar de groupies werden zelden afgewezen. Of zoals Jimi Hendrix het samenvatte: „I only remember a city by its chicks.”

Naast muziek was er een gedeelde interesse in drugs. Voor de muzikanten was het riskant te reizen met drugs in de bagage. Zodra ze aankwamen in de rockclubs, arriveerden de meisjes met de joints en andere middelen. De drugs werden zo belangrijk dat een deel van de groupies uiteindelijk ook als dealer zou gaan werken.

Seks

De scene in Los Angeles was in alle opzichten het meest expliciet, daar draaide het de meisjes vooral om seks en drugs. In San Francisco ging het eerder om vriendschap tussen ster en groupie. In Los Angeles was de commune van Frank Zappa en zijn band, The Mothers of Invention, de spil van veel feestjes en uitspattingen. Zappa zag alleen maar voordelen in het groupie-fenomeen: „Die meisjes leren veel, op seksueel gebied. En dat is gunstig. Uiteindelijk zullen ze trouwen met gewone jongens, kantoorklerken en fabrieksarbeiders. De jongens zijn gebaat bij hun seksuele avontuurlijkheid. Ze zijn gelukkiger en doen hun werk beter, dat geeft het land een economische impuls. Iedereen blij.”

Bij de meisjes waren de Britten favoriet. Mick Jagger, Noel Redding (bassist van Hendrix), Eric Clapton, en later Jimmy Page, Robert Plant en andere leden van Led Zeppelin. In een tijd dat veel Amerikanen zich kleedden als cowboys, waren de Britten verrassend vrouwelijk, met golvende krullen, brokaten jasjes en fluwelen broeken. Daarbij waren ze attenter. „Amerikanen hebben altijd haast”, zegt een van de vrouwen in het boek. „Engelsen zorgen dat je werkelijk geniet.”

Sommige groupies trouwden met een Britse popster, en verhuisden - tijdelijk - naar Engeland. Anderen waren goed met kinderen en belandden als - onbezoldigde - huishoudster in het gezin van hun ster.

Fanatieke jonge vrouwen, trots op hun seksuele vrijheid

Groupies werden gewaardeerd en bezongen, onder meer in Zappa’s Groupie Bang Bang. Maar begin jaren zeventig was het gouden tijdperk voorbij. De Summer of Love was gedoofd, Hendrix, Morrison en Janis Joplin waren overleden. Volgens supergroupie Pamela Des Barres hing de verandering samen met het grote succes van Led Zeppelin. Plotseling draaide de rockscene om geld. En jonge(re) meisjes drongen zich naar voren, nu gekleed in lurex en glitter.

Pamela Des Barres zou in de jaren tachtig opnieuw bekend worden, met haar memoires over de jaren zestig, I’m With The Band, over ontbijten met Zappa en nachtenlang doorhalen met David Crosby - en vele anderen. Op haar verhaal is Penny Lane in de film Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000), gebaseerd.

Het is de vraag of de groupies nog bestaan. De omstandigheden zijn anders dan in de jaren zestig. De beveiliging is toegenomen, bij concertzalen kun je niet meer zeggen ‘Ik ben bevriend met de band’ en doorlopen. Volgens Kors Eijkelboom, productieleider van Paradiso, Amsterdam, staan er geen meisjes meer te wachten bij de kleedkamer. „De enige keer dat ik me zoiets herinner was zo’n tien jaar geleden, toevallig ook bij Robert Plant. Het leek alsof het dezelfde vrouwen waren als in zijn gloriejaren. Wat ouder, maar nog altijd trouw.”


maandag 21 december 2015

The Xerox Book The Treasury of Seth Siegelaub


End of 2015 the Stedelijk will present the first exhibition about Seth Siegelaub, one of the key players of early conceptual art. Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, shows an overview of the life and work of the art pioneer, collector and publisher. 

He was a gallerist, independent curator, publisher, researcher, archivist, collector, and bibliographer. Often billed the “father of Conceptual Art,” Seth Siegelaub was—and remains—a seminal influence on curators, artists, and cultural thinkers, internationally and in Amsterdam, where he settled in the 1990s. And now the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is organizing the exhibition Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, devoted to the life and work of this fascinating yet still elusive figure.

Seth Siegelaub (New York, 1941–Basel, 2013) is best known for his decisive role in the emergence and establishment of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s. With revolutionary projects such as January 5–31, 1969, the Xerox Book, and July, August, September 1969, he set the blueprint for the presentation and dissemination of conceptual practices. In the process, he redefined the exhibition space, which could now be a book, a poster, an announcement—or reality at large, in keeping with his statement that “my gallery is the world now.” Siegelaub’s radical reassessment of the conditions of art resonated deeply with the iconoclastic views of his contemporaries Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, and others, with whom he developed close working relationships.

But just as these artists were gaining wider recognition, Siegelaub turned his back on the art scene and settled in Paris, where he cultivated an interest in mass media from a leftwing perspective. In line with the political mood of the times, he eventually redirected his publishing activities to scholarly research and critical essays on communication, including the bestseller How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic (1976) by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart.

At the same time he pursued a lesser-known occupation as a collector of hand-woven textiles and bibliographer of books on the social history of textiles. This strand of his activity was eventually consolidated in the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles (CSROT), founded in 1986, and culminated in his authoritative Bibliographica Textilia Historiæ: Towards a General Bibliography on the History of Textiles Based on the Library and Archives of the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles (1997). During the last decade of his life, he regrouped all his projects and collections under the banner of his Stichting Egress Foundation, but simultaneously threw himself headfirst into a new bibliographical endeavor on time and causality in physics.

Acknowledging the unusual scope and essentially unclassifiable nature of Seth Siegelaub’s manifold interests and activities, the exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum will reveal to what extent his projects and collections are underpinned by a deeper concern with printed matter and lists as a way of disseminating ideas. By doing so, it will allow the wider public to reassess his role as one of the distinctive characters in twentieth-century exhibition-making while recognizing his atypical, inquisitive, and free-spirited genius.

OTHERS ABOUT SIEGELAUB
To this day Seth Siegelaub’s revolutionary views on art and exhibitions continue to shape the practices of different generations of artists and curators. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-director of Serpentine Gallery in London, calls him an “inspiration and toolbox,” and someone who demystified the role of curators. Ann Demeester, former Director of de Appel arts centre in Amsterdam, now Director of Frans Hals Museum/De Hallen, Haarlem, remembers the candidness with which he spoke to younger generations of curators about his historic involvement. And Charles Esche, Director of Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, suggests that “he was perhaps the first person in the art market to really understand that objects had become mere material commodities and that immaterial concepts were where the future lay—and that already in the 1960s.”

EXHIBITION
The exhibition will occupy the lower floor of the museum’s new wing and will unfold as several chapters exploring the various facets of, and connections in, Siegelaub’s work, from his groundbreaking projects with conceptual artists and his research and publications on mass media and communication theories to his interest in hand-woven textiles and non-Western fabrics. It will also highlight his collecting activity, which culminates in a unique ensemble of books on the social history of textiles and a textile collection comprising over 750 items from all parts of the world.

The Museum of Modern Art New York, which holds the bulk of Siegelaub’s collection of conceptual artworks and documentation of his New York years, has generously agreed to loan a substantial number of items to the exhibition. The world-renowned International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam, the repository of Siegelaub’s library of 3,000 titles on media, is another major lender.

While looking back at the past, the survey will also reflect on current practices through contributions by contemporary artists, both in the exhibition and in the Public Program. Mario Garcia Torres and writer Alan Page will co-create a new work for the exhibition inspired by Siegelaub’s bibliographic project on time and causality.

In the 1990s the German conceptual artist Maria Eichhorn devised a thoroughly researched project around The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, a template contract drafted by Siegelaub in collaboration with the lawyer Robert Projansky in 1971. An updated version of Eichhorn’s work will be on view in the exhibition, together with a new Dutch translation of the original contract. The museum’s Public Program will explore the issues raised by these interventions in the context of today’s art world and legal world.


Seth Siegelaub, organisator van de tentoonstelling January 5-31, 1969. Gelatinezilverdruk (20,3 x 25,4 cm) uit het archief van het Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Seth Siegelaub, Pioneering Dealer and Curator of Conceptual Art, Dies at 71
By Andrew Russeth • 06/17/13 12:45pm

Siegelaub outside 44 East 52nd Street, a temporary space where he housed the exhibition 'January 5–31, 1969.' (Photo by Robert Barry/MoMA)

Seth Siegelaub, the venturesome dealer and curator of conceptual art in New York in the 1960s and 1970s who helped lead efforts for artists’ rights and devoted his life to studying textiles, died on Saturday in Basel, Switzerland, according to a friend, confirming a report by Metropolis M. He was 71.

After closing a gallery he ran on 56th Street in Manhattan from 1964 to 1966, where he showed contemporary art and Oriental rugs, Mr. Siegelaub, still in his 20s, presented the work of artists who would become some of the core members of what would be termed conceptual art, like Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner. He showed them in experimental curatorial formats that often eschewed gallery shows in favor of publications. In a busy period between 1968 and 1971, he organized 21 projects, according to MoMA, which holds a collection of his papers that it presented in an exhibition earlier this year. When Mr. Siegelaub donated his art-related archive to MoMA in 2011, the museum also acquired a number of works from his art collection, which included a number of important early conceptual works.

What is arguably Mr. Siegelaub’s most famous exhibition took the form of a publication, Xerox Book (1968). For that show, seven artists—Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Huebler, Mr. Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris and Mr. Weiner—each contributed a 25-page work. Its title was a bit misleading: though inspired by photocopying, it was made using the more traditional offset printing because of the high cost of Xeroxing at the time.

In interviews, Mr. Siegelaub often emphasized the collaborative nature of the radical advances being made in art in the late 1960s, in which he played a leading part. “This was a very collective art,” he said on a panel at MoMA in 2007, adding, “It’s not like I had these great ideas that I came up with like magic, or whatever, all by myself.”

Though many of the artists he worked with have gone on to be among the most critically and financially successful artists of the postwar period, Mr. Siegelaub said he had generally not been successful selling their art on a large scale at the time he first showed them. “I was in the research and development department…and I was never in the marketing or sales department,” he said during that panel.

“Well, you tried,” Mr. Weiner cut in, good-naturedly.

“I tried, that’s for sure,” he said, “but I never saw myself as that, and I never even thought people should make money, or could make money…I never thought that was the purpose of it.”

Seth Siegelaub was born in 1941 in the Bronx, the first of four children, served in New York State Air National Guard from 1959 to 1960, and briefly attended Hunter College in New York, before leaving to work as a plumber and part-time gallery assistant at SculptureCenter. He credited artists, particularly Mr. Andre and Mr. Weiner, art dealer Richard Bellamy, who ran the Green Gallery, and art historian and curator Eugene C. Goossen, with helping develop his interest in the latest in contemporary art.

For another seminal show, “March 1969,” Mr. Siegelaub asked 31 artists to produce a work for one day of the month, publishing the text responses of those who replied—many took the form of ephemeral works—in a book. Mr. Barry said he would release two cubic feet of helium into the air. Mr. Weiner piece read: “An object tossed from one country to another.” Claes Oldenburg’s: “Things Colored Red.” For still another show, “July, August, September 1969,” 11 artists created works throughout the world, and the complete exhibition was presented only as a publication. (Primary Information has a nice selection of digital scans of these books on its website.)

In the late 1960s, Mr. Siegelaub was involved with the Art Workers’ Coalition, a group that lobbied for artists’ rights and opposed the Vietnam War. In 1971 he published The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, a contract he designed with lawyer Robert Projanksy that would pay artists a royalty fee when works were resold (assuming that a dealer and an artist both signed it). In an interview with Frieze earlier this year, the curator recalled that he began the project after hearing Mr. Barry complain about a collector reselling some of his works for a huge profit. His motivation, he said, was “to help level the playing field.”

Mr. Siegelaub left New York and the art world in 1972, moving to Paris to focus on leftist media studies and help build a library on the topic. “I was provoked into doing it by people saying that there was no theory about how the left or progressive movements use the media, despite the fact that there clearly was a history,” he told Frieze. In the 1980s, he devoted himself to assembling a library on the history of textiles. He moved to Amsterdam in 1990.

In a 2000 interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist (whose ongoing Do It project owes a debt to Mr. Siegelaub’s book exhibitions), Mr. Siegelaub explained, in part, why he stopped curating contemporary art. “If one is involved with the art world and you are not an artist but an organizer…it basically means finding young artists who you work with successfully, and then either continuing your successful project with them, or trying to do it again with another group of young artists based on your experiences and especially the contacts you made the first time,” he said. “Having done that once, for me, it didn’t seem interesting to do it again—either then in 1972, and certainly not today.”

Despite venturing beyond art in his 30s, art types remained interested in him, and he periodically appeared on panels or assisted art historians with various research projects. “From time to time I’m called back into the art world to do a service, another tour of duty or something like this, but basically I’ve had very little to do with the art world, and, well, that’s that,” he said at the MoMA panel, commenting that the art world had changed tremendously since he was involved with it—”the size, the amount of galleries, the amount of artists, the psychology of artists making art, the kind of models, sort of from the fashion world and things like this that have been imposed on the creation activity, how the territory of art making for individual artists has been very, very constrained.”

He was also vocal in interviews and writings about his frustration with the way art history is often written. “The determination of quality—who remains, who is forgotten—is very much, well, about power, in a way,” he said. “And I must say I’m quite cynical about that.”

Talking in Artforum last year, on the occasion of a show of his textiles collection at London’s Raven Row gallery, Mr. Siegelaub explained his interest in the subject: “I was intrigued by this specific relationship between beauty and commerce, but I was also struck by the fact that, unlike artmaking, the production of textiles is a social activity—it is always a collective endeavor.”

Though he had mulled trying to help develop an encyclopedic collection of textiles, he said that he quickly realized that would be impossible. “I’ve been under the illusion that somehow it would be possible to have a complete collection of books on the history of textiles, whereas a comprehensive archive of the objects themselves is definitely impossible,” he said in that same interview. “I am very far from accomplishing my goal, and perhaps I never will. It’s something that can be done, however. Most likely by someone who’s crazy and rich enough to really do it.”

He is survived by his longtime partner, Marja Bloem, and three children from previous relationships. (Raven Row has a comprehensive chronology of his career.)

In his Frieze interview from earlier this year, art writer Vivian Sky Rehberg asked, “Do you believe in art, Seth?” He replied:

I believe that art can increase our awareness of the world around us. When I was young and active in the art world, I thought the most interesting art was that which asked questions, which was on the very edge of what might even be considered art. For me, that was the definition of art; it wasn’t about having a painting hanging on the wall in your house.

(Image via MoMA’s website for its 2013 exhibition “‘This Is the Way Your Leverage Lies’: The Seth Siegelaub Papers as Institutional Critique”)

De schatkamer van Seth Siegelaub
Stedelijk Museum Seth Siegelaub was een van de aanjagers van de conceptuele kunst, maar hij bleef altijd op de achtergrond. Het Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam haalt hem met een tentoonstelling naar de voorgrond.

Janneke Wesseling  19 december 2015

Wie of wat was Seth Siegelaub? In een interview in 1969 omschreef hij zichzelf als „een punt waardoor veel informatie naar binnen en naar buiten gaat”. Hij was géén kunstenaar, geen tentoonstellingsmaker, geen uitgever. Toch heeft hij, altijd op de achtergrond, beslissende ontwikkelingen in gang gezet in de kunstwereld en in de geschiedenis van de kunst.

Wat Siegelaub (New York 1941-Bazel 2013) in ieder geval wél was: een verwoed verzamelaar en archivist. Van links georiënteerde en kritische geschriften over massacommunicatie en de media; van duizenden nieuwe en antiquarische boeken over de geschiedenis en de technieken van textiel; en van stukken textiel en hoofddeksels van over de hele wereld. Zijn textielverzameling omvat ruim 280 stukken Europese zijde uit de 15de tot de 18de eeuw en honderden weefsels uit Europa, Azië en Afrika.


Zijn allerliefste bezigheid was het maken van bibliografieën. Het magnum opus van Siegelaub is de Bibliographica Textilia Historiae, gepubliceerd in 1997, de eerste bibliografie die een poging is om alle facetten van de wereldgeschiedenis van textiel te documenteren. Hiertoe had hij in 1986 het Center for Social Research on Old Textiles opgericht. Siegelaub beschreef en categoriseerde nauwkeurig 5.100 boeken. Textieldeskundigen, sociale wetenschappers en economen spreken met bewondering over deze zelfopgeleide homo universalis, die in 1990 zijn bibliotheek van 3.000 titels over massamedia doneerde aan het Institute for Social History in Amsterdam.

TENTOONSTELLING

Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art. In het Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

T/m 17 april 2016. Dagelijks 10-18 uur, di tot 22 uur. inl: www.stedelijk.nl

Lawrence Weiner, ‘Gloss white lacquer, sprayed for 2 minutes at 40lb pressure directly’ (1968).

In de kunstwereld staat Siegelaub bekend als organisator van de vroegste tentoonstellingen van conceptuele kunst. Siegelaub trok radicale consequenties uit de opvatting dat een kunstwerk in de eerste plaats een idee is.

Na enkele jaren als klusjesman voor een aannemer gewerkt te hebben, ontdekte hij zijn organisatietalent toen hij tentoonstellingen mocht maken voor de galerie van het Sculpture Center in New York, waar hij een blauwe maandag cursussen beeldhouwen volgde. In 1964 opende Siegelaub een eigen galerie. Hier richtte hij zich op het werk van Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth en Lawrence Weiner, kunstenaars die wereldberoemd zijn geworden met ‘immateriële’ en ‘procesgerichte’ kunst.

Bleekmiddel

Op de aan Siegelaub gewijde tentoonstelling in het Stedelijk Museum zijn deze eerste tentoonstellingen gereconstrueerd. Aanvankelijk exposeerde Weiner nog schilderijen, maar al snel ging hij over op kunstacties, zoals ‘Een hoeveelheid bleekmiddel gegoten op een tapijt’. Siegelaub besloot dat voor dit soort kunst geen specifieke ruimte nodig is, geen ‘white cube’ zoals de kunstgalerie, maar dat deze kunst overal kan plaatsvinden: op de campus van een universiteit, in de vorm van een presentatie op een conferentie, of in een boek. In 1966 sloot hij dan ook zijn galerie onder het motto: „Van nu af aan is mijn galerie de wereld.”

Voor Inert Gas Series (1969) liet Barry vijf verschillende soorten gas ontsnappen op verschillende plekken rondom Los Angeles. Het enige ‘bewijs’ dat dit werk had plaatsgevonden, was een poster die Siegelaub liet drukken, met een telefoonnummer dat de beller verbond met een bandopname van een beschrijving van de gebeurtenis. Zijn netwerk en adreslijst was zijn belangrijkste kapitaal, zei hij.

Armand Mattelart and Ariel Dorfman, ‘How to Read Donald Duck, Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic’

Jack Wendler speaks about the XEROX BOOK from Kadist Art Foundation on Vimeo.

Het Xerox Book (1968) geldt als een van de belangrijkste momenten in de geschiedenis van de conceptuele kunst. Siege-laub noemde dit boek, dat nu als facsimile is herdrukt, „zijn eerste grote groepstentoonstelling”. Het boek is een tentoonstellingsruimte die plaats biedt aan werk van zes kunstenaars, waarbij iedere exposant de beschikking kreeg over 25 pagina’s. Barry leverde het gefotokopieerde werk One Million Dots, als raster afgedrukt op 25 pagina’s. Carl Andre laat van 1 tot 25 gefotokopieerde vierkantjes over de pagina’s dwarrelen en Kosuth beschrijft in korte regels, precies midden op de pagina gedrukt, de verschillende aspecten van het Xerox Book, als een tentoonstelling in een tentoonstelling.


Het Xerox Book zelf had ook gefotokopieerd moeten worden, maar is uiteindelijk offset gedrukt, wat een goedkope methode is om een tentoonstelling met origineel werk van zes kunstenaars te produceren. Siegelaub stelde zich ten doel om het kunstwerk te bevrijden van zijn status van commercieel product. Hij was daarom voortdurend op zoek naar nieuwe distributiekanalen, voor kunstwerken die binnen ieders bereik zouden zijn.

Donald Duck

In 1970 had hij genoeg van de kunstwereld en verhuisde Siegelaub naar Parijs om zich te engageren met linkse denkers. Hij verdiepte zich in theorieën over arbeid, commercie en industrie en was directeur van de International Association for Mass Communication Research. Hij publiceerde onder meer de Engelstalige editie van het kritische boek van Ariel Dorfman en Armand Mattelart: How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic (1975).

Siegelaub was een gepassioneerd pleitbezorger van „de dematerialisering van het kunstobject”, zoals de titel luidt van het bekende boek van Lucy Lippard, de feministische kunsthistoricus met wie hij in New York enkele jaren het leven deelde. Als het kunstwerk idee geworden is, valt er dan wel iets te zien of te beleven op de tentoonstelling van Siegelaub? Ja, heel veel. Het is een misverstand te denken dat een conceptueel kunstwerk geen herkenbare beeldende vorm zou hebben of geen fysieke gedaante, hoe miniem die soms ook mag zijn. Juist het uitgeklede karakter van deze kunstwerken, hun precieze en minimale materialisering, doen een appèl op de verbeelding. Deze kunst schept ruimte in het hoofd en richt de blik op een nieuwe manier op de wereld.

De wereld is mijn galerie
Seth Siegelaub

Siegelaub was verzot op lijstjes, drukwerk, catalogi, op oude handboeken en encyclopedieën. Ze zijn de materiële uitdrukking van de arbeid van het systematisch ordenen, het in kaart brengen van de wereld – nee, van het universum. Het is een arbeid die een grote esthetische aantrekkingskracht heeft. Dit samengaan van esthetiek en arbeid, en de sociale betekenis daarvan, is ook precies wat Siegelaub fascineerde aan textiel, zowel wat betreft het productieproces als het gebruik. Mode interesseerde hem niet, en de restauratie van de kostbare stukjes brokaat en linnen evenmin. Juist de sporen van gebruik maken het fragment van een 5de-eeuwse wollen Egyptische tuniek met decoratieve geometrische band of een 16de- eeuws geborduurd Italiaans lakentje waardevol.

Niet alleen in zijn fascinaties, ook in zijn manier van leven demonstreerde hij deze mengeling van maatschappelijk engagement, slim ondernemerschap en visionair denken. Hij financierde zijn verzamelactiviteiten met de handel in wetenschappelijke en zeldzame boeken over textiel – een handel die hem ook gelegenheid bood om verkoopcatalogi te maken.

De zeer goed ingerichte tentoonstelling Beyond Conceptualism, alsook de bijbehorende catalogus die vormgegeven is door Irma Boom en die vermoedelijk nu al een collector’s item is, zijn een onuitputtelijke schatkamer. Een labyrint waar je als bezoeker helemaal in kunt verdwijnen en steeds weer nieuwe paden en nooit vermoede schatten zal ontdekken.