2. Out of the museum and into the world
With their actions, manifestations and revolutionary way of exhibiting, ZERO artists have shown a strong orientation to their audience from the very beginning. The 'old' academic artwork that arose and functioned in a lofty autonomy, cleared the field for 'projects' in which the audience played a central role - the somewhat rigid word 'work of art' is here explicitly avoided. Relevance is a key word here, the necessity of what Armando called a 'work of art'. And: the desire to remove the walls between the studio and the world. An early example of this is the manifestation Zero: Edition, Exposition, Demonstration of July 5, 1961, in and for a Düsseldorf gallery. The title of this 'proto-happening' also refers to what undoubtedly attracted the most attention, a true ZERO party in a street full of curious onlookers. Günther Uecker painted a big white zero on the pavement under the guidance of bubble-blowing youngsters, a hot-air balloon was released - in the presence of television teams, photographers and the audience, crowded in large numbers.
One ZERO event in particular illustrates how the boundaries of 'visual' art were sought, the Zero op Zee event, planned for the fall of 1965 on the Scheveningen pier. The fact that the event was canceled due to financial problems does not change the importance and significance of Zero op Zee, certainly in a contemporary perspective. The plans for this true Gesamtkunstwerk with sculpture and installation art, music, theater and even poetry with their open character breathed the spirit of ZERO. Sketches from the more than fifty participants from ten countries show how great was thought: the artwork would now actually go beyond the boundaries of the exhibition space, as a symbiosis of sound, movement, space and time. The open air manifestation on the pier would also make the borders between art and everyday life worse and art accessible to an explicitly new audience. The museum and the world in: Zero op Zee had to become the ultimate achievements of the desire to separate the artwork from a purely academic and museum environment.
Striking from the ZERO years in the Netherlands is the connection between literature and visual art, as it took shape in (artist) magazines. Especially the pocket magazine De nieuwe stijl grew in its short existence - in the year 1965 two editions appeared - as a stage for artists, thinkers about art and writers. The De nieuwe stijl (the new style) came from the Flemish magazine Gard Sivic, and both writers and visual artists formed the editors: Armando, Henk Peeters, Hans Sleutelaar, Bastiaan Vaandrager and Hans Verhagen. Nothing less than 'a new step in art history' and an 'international first', Armando in 1964 characterized current developments in Dutch art. The first, according to Armando, was 'the new poetry' as it was propagated by De nieuwe stijl. 'An important change in Dutch literature has taken place', says Armando to group member Jan Henderikse, 'on the basis of a different and new experience of reality (...). Survey data, facts, case-stories, you can sign everything or not, but do not suck anything out of your thumb! "The journal focused on the linguistic readymade, the commentless takeover of 'found' texts and the currents in the visual arts considered as related Zero, the international ZERO and the French Nouveau Réalisme. Anti-academism and multidisciplinarity, the connection between visual art and writing, also boasted a tradition dating back to the early twentieth-century avant-gardes with which the Dutch Zero artists and kindred spirits felt a strong kinship. Even for contemporary artists, such crossovers have not lost their significance - even if it were the Dutch Zero artists and their kindred spirits who created this organic connection for the first time.
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One ZERO event in particular illustrates how the boundaries of 'visual' art were sought, the Zero op Zee event, planned for the fall of 1965 on the Scheveningen pier. The fact that the event was canceled due to financial problems does not change the importance and significance of Zero op Zee, certainly in a contemporary perspective. The plans for this true Gesamtkunstwerk with sculpture and installation art, music, theater and even poetry with their open character breathed the spirit of ZERO. Sketches from the more than fifty participants from ten countries show how great was thought: the artwork would now actually go beyond the boundaries of the exhibition space, as a symbiosis of sound, movement, space and time. The open air manifestation on the pier would also make the borders between art and everyday life worse and art accessible to an explicitly new audience. The museum and the world in: Zero op Zee had to become the ultimate achievements of the desire to separate the artwork from a purely academic and museum environment.
Striking from the ZERO years in the Netherlands is the connection between literature and visual art, as it took shape in (artist) magazines. Especially the pocket magazine De nieuwe stijl grew in its short existence - in the year 1965 two editions appeared - as a stage for artists, thinkers about art and writers. The De nieuwe stijl (the new style) came from the Flemish magazine Gard Sivic, and both writers and visual artists formed the editors: Armando, Henk Peeters, Hans Sleutelaar, Bastiaan Vaandrager and Hans Verhagen. Nothing less than 'a new step in art history' and an 'international first', Armando in 1964 characterized current developments in Dutch art. The first, according to Armando, was 'the new poetry' as it was propagated by De nieuwe stijl. 'An important change in Dutch literature has taken place', says Armando to group member Jan Henderikse, 'on the basis of a different and new experience of reality (...). Survey data, facts, case-stories, you can sign everything or not, but do not suck anything out of your thumb! "The journal focused on the linguistic readymade, the commentless takeover of 'found' texts and the currents in the visual arts considered as related Zero, the international ZERO and the French Nouveau Réalisme. Anti-academism and multidisciplinarity, the connection between visual art and writing, also boasted a tradition dating back to the early twentieth-century avant-gardes with which the Dutch Zero artists and kindred spirits felt a strong kinship. Even for contemporary artists, such crossovers have not lost their significance - even if it were the Dutch Zero artists and their kindred spirits who created this organic connection for the first time.
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