Harald Szeemann (11 June 1933 – 18 February 2005) was a Swiss curator, artist, and art historian. Having curated more than 200 exhibitions, many of which have been characterized as groundbreaking, Szeemann is said to have helped redefine the role of an art curator. It is believed that Szeemann elevated curating to a legitimate art form itself.Birnbaum, Daniel. WHEN ATTITUDE BECOMES FORM. 43 Vol. New York: Artforum Inc, 2005.
Personal life
Szeemann was born in Bern, Switzerland on June 11, 1933.Müller, Hans-Joachim. Harald Szeemann: Exhibition Maker. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2006. 10-11 He studied art history, archaeology and journalism in Bern and at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1953–60, and in 1956 to 1958 he began working as an actor, stage designer and painter, and produced many one-man shows. In 1958 he was married to Francoise Bonnefoy and in 1959 their son Jerome Patrice was born. In 1964 his daughter Valerie Claude was born. He was twice married, the second time to artist Ingeborg Lüscher. Their daughter is Una Szeemann.
Szeemann was hospitalized for pleural cancer in Locarno,Vetrocq, Marcia E. Harald Szeemann, 1933-2005. 93 Vol. New York: Brant Publications, Inc, 2005 Switzerland and died in 2005 at the age of 71 in the Ticino region.
Curatorial career Szeemann began organizing exhibitions in Switzerland in 1957, and in 1961 he was appointed as director of the Kunsthalle Bern at the age of 28.Interview mit Harald Szeemann by Felicia Herrschaft. (In German.) Despite being a somewhat "provincial institution" at the time Szeemann managed to open a new exhibition every month, often with young and promising artists.
There he organized an exhibition of works by the "mentally ill" from the collection of the art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn in 1963, and in 1968 gave Christo and Jeanne-Claude their first opportunity to wrap an entire building: the Kunsthalle itself.Wrapped Kunsthalle From the website of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The Kunsthalle Bern is also where Szeemann mounted his "radical" landmark 1969 exhibition "Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form" that included works by artists including Eva Hesse and Gary Kuehn, which caused such a reaction that it prompted his resignation as Kunsthalle director.
For decades Szeemann worked out of a studio, which he referred to as "Fabbrica Rosa" or "Pink Factory", in the Swiss village Maggia, where he conceived international exhibitions and experimented with traditional museological practices. After leaving the Kunsthalle he founded the "Museum of Obsessions" and the Agentur für Geistige Gastarbeit ("Agency for Spiritual Migrant Work"). In 1972 he was the youngest artistic director at documenta 5 in Kassel. He revolutionised the concept: conceived as a hundred-day event, he invited the artists to present not only paintings and sculptures, but also performances and "happenings" as well as photography. The show had various sections named "Artist's Museum" or "Individual Mythologies". In an interview in June 2001, he explained: "All the former Documentas followed the old-hat, thesis/antithesis dialectic: Constructivism/Surrealism, Pop/Minimalism, Realism/Concept. That's why I invented the term, 'individual mythologies'—not a style, but a human right. An artist could be a geometric painter or a gestural artist; each can live his or her own mythology. Style is no longer the important issue." Artists of individual mythology are among others Armand Schulthess, Jürgen Brodwolf, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, the musician La Monte Young, Etienne Martin, Panamarenko, Paul Thek, Marian Zazeela, Horst Gläsker or Heather Sheehan.
For the 1980 Venice Biennale, he and Achille Bonito Oliva co-created the "Aperto", a new section in the Biennale for young artists. He was later selected as the Biennale director for both 1999 and 2001. This marked him as the first to curate both documenta and the Biennale. Until 2014, he was the only curator who had this distinction, which since the 2015 Venice Biennale is now shared with Okwui Enwezor.
From 1981 to 1991, Szeemann was a "permanent freelance curator" at the Kunsthaus Zürich. During this time, he also curated for other institutions including the Deichtorhallen Hamburg for its inaugural exhibition "Einleuchten: Will, Vorstel Und Simul In HH." In 1982 he commissioned a three-dimensional reconstruction of Kurt Schwitters's Hannover Merzbau (as photographed in 1933) for the exhibition "Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk" in Zürich the following year. It was built by the Swiss stage designer Peter Bissegger and is now on permanent display in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover.
Early exhibitions 1957
03.08 – 20.10 Kunstmuseum St. Gallen Malende Dichter – Dichtende Maler 24.09 – 27.09 Kleintheater Kramgasse 6, Bern Hugo Ball (1886–1927): Manusckripte, Photographien, Bücher (Bern – Zürich: 4.11.1957) Club Bel Etage, Zürich
1961
08.07 -03.09 Kunsthalle, Bern Otto Tschumi (Bern – Glarus) Kunsthaus, Glarus 02.09 – 24. 09 Städtische Galerie, Biel Buri, Gürtler, Iseli, Luginbühl, Meister, Spescha, Schaffner 09.09 -15.10 Kunsthalle, Bern Hans Aeschbacher: Skulpturen und Zeichnungen 21.10 – 26.11 Kunsthalle, Bern Prähistorisch Felsbilder der Sahara: Expedition Henri Lhote im Gebiet Tassili-n-Ajjer
1962
17.02-11.03 Kunsthalle, Bern Puppen-Marionetten-Schattenspiel: Asiatica und Experimente 17.03-23.04 Kunsthalle, Bern Charles Lapicque (Bern-München-Grenoble-Le Havre) Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, München/ Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture, Grenoble/Maison de la Culture, Le Havre 28.04-27.05 Kunsthalle, Bern Lenz Klotz, Friedrich Kuhn, Bruno Müller, Matias Spescha 02.06-01.07 Kunsthalle, Bern Walter Kurt Wiemken (Bern – St Gallen) Kunstmuseum St Gallen 07.07-02.09 Kunsthalle, Bern Francis Picabia (1879–1953): Werke von 1909 bis 1924 (Marseille-Bern) 4 Amerikaner: Jasper Johns, Alfred Leslie, Robert Raushenberg, Richard Stankiewicz (Stockholm-Amsterdam-Bern) Moderna Museet, Stockholm/Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 13.10-25.11 Städtische Galerie, Biel Harry Kramer: Automobile Skulpturen-Marionetten-Filme 20.10-25.11 Kunsthalle, Bern Kunst aus Tibet
1963
16.02-24.03 Kunsthalle, Bern Auguste Herbin (1882–1960) (Bern-Amsterdam) Stedlijk Museum, Amsterdam 20.04-19.05 Städtische Galerie, Biel Englebert van Anderlecht, Bram Bogart (Bern-Bruxelles) Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles 04.05-03.06 Kunsthalle, Bern Alan Davie (Baden-Baden – Bern – Darmstadt – London – Amsterdam) Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden Piotr Kowalski 12.07-18.08 Kunsthalle, Bern William Scott (Bern-Belfast) Ulster Museum, Belfast Victor Pasmore 18.08-15.09 Städtische Galerie, Biel Heinz-Peter Kohler, Gregory Masurovsky 24.08-15.09 Kunsthalle, Bern Bildnerei der Geisteskranken-Art Brut- Insania pingens 21.09-27.10 Kunsthalle, Bern Louis Moillet 02.11-01.12 Kunsthalle, Bern Etienne-Martin (Bern-Amsterdam – Eindhoven) Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam/Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, EindhovenDerieux, Florence. Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology. Zurich: JRP Ringier Kunstverlag Ag, 2007. 198-201.
Major exhibitions Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969) Happening and Fluxus (1970) Documenta 5 (1972)Thea, Carolee. Here Time Becomes Space: A Conversation with Harald Szeemann. 20 Vol. Washington: International Sculpture Center, 2001. Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk (1983)
Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form
Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form was a landmark show for Post-Minimalist American artists in 1969 at the Kunsthalle Bern.Artnotes: News - HARALD SZEEMANN 1933-2005. London: Art Monthly, 2005.
Following the opening of the exhibition "12 Environments" in the summer of 1968, which featured the works of Andy Warhol, Martial Raysse, Soto, Jean Schnyder, Kowalski, and Christo, Harald Szeemann was asked to do a show of his own. Representatives of Philip Morris, American Tobacco Company, and Rudder and Finn, Public Relations Firm, visited Szemmann in Bern to recruit his expertise for a project.Obrist, Hans Ulrich., and Lionel Bovier. A Brief History of Curating. Zurich: JRP / Ringier, 2008. Print. 86-88 This project would entail substantial funding, with the additional benefit of collaborating with the Stedelijk (sponsored by the Holland American Line), and complete artistic freedom.
This was an entirely new opportunity for Szeemann therefore he accepted the sponsored proposal.Rosenthal, Norman. "Obituary: Harald Szeemann; Curator Who made the Exhibition into an Art Form: First Edition." The Independent: 32. 2005. The project was initially conceived whenever Szeemann, with the Director of the Stedelijk named de Wilde, traveled through Switzerland and Holland to select the works of younger artists for national shows. When visiting the studio of a Dutch painter, Reinier Lucassen, Szeemann was immediately impressed with the work of the painter's assistant Jan Dibbets. Jan greeted Szeemann from behind two tables; one of which had neon light coming out of the surface and the other one was covered in grass which he watered. Szeemann was thereafter inspired to focus the upcoming exhibition on behaviors and gestures.
Shortly after the conception the show developed quickly. A published diary of Attitudes details trips, studio visits, and installation. The show became a dialog of how works could either assume material form or remain immaterial, documenting an important revelatory concept in the history of art. This show was a moment of intensity and freedom in which a work could be produced or imagined, according to Lawrence Weiner. 69 Artists, Europeans and Americans controlled the Kunsthalle. For example, Robert Barry irradiated the roof; Richard Long did a walk in the mountains; Mario Merz made among his first igloos; Michael Heizer "opened" the sidewalk; Walter de Maria produced his telephone piece; Richard Serra showed lead sculptures, the belt piece, and splash piece; Weiner took a square meter out of the wall; Beuys made a grease sculpture. The Kunsthalle Bern became a laboratory of exhibiting "organized chaos".
Following When Attitudes Become Form and the following exhibition Friends and their Friends a scandal was provoked in Bern. Szeemann believed to be showing artwork contrary to the opinions of critics and the public. The city government and parliament eventually became involved in the issue. It was decided that Szeemann's directorship was "destructive to humankind".Smith, Roberta. "Harald Szeemann, 71, Curator of Groundbreaking shows: Obituary (Obit)." New York Times: A.21. 2005. As well the exhibition committee, largely composed of local artists, decided they would dictate the programming and rejected shows proposed by Szeemann they had previously agreed to, including the solo show of Beuys. Thereafter Szeemann, tired of this open war, decided to resign and become a freelance curator and operated under his newly founded Agency for Spiritual Guest Work.
1997 Lyon Biennial L'autre (the Other)