Lawrence Weiner
Catalogue
FROM A HIGHLY PERSONAL VANTAGE POINT
This is one of those small winter mornings that one often experiences when living in Denmark.
It’s a cloudy moonlight, a glowing sunrise that gradually fades and becomes weaker between the two large door mirrors in the twilight.
The frost on the window is like the sky in pink, blue-gray, and orange.
On the wall behind me in the small kitchen hangs a light pink piece of paper; I worked on it for Lawrence Weiner, who actually should have done it himself, painted in capital letters the dust trails over the dining table, but never reached further than the wall that now holds the drawing, and the pink color is becoming paler and paler. As soft as it is to me, it all seems to recede into the years that have passed.
February 83, Aalborg. A snowy and cold winter. Once again, I am preparing an exhibition at Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum. I find myself once again in the impossible role that sometimes makes one a dog in a game of bowling pins, but mostly unavoidable. I have once again been given a “big” task, I have to gather all the stones with courage and painting. Lawrence wanted to stay home, and it probably made sense—I gave it my best. The painter who managed to bring out the bluish shimmer from the stones' form and structure. It was with a red pen I had to write the word HAVETS SALTBÆLT MED JORDENS SALT (THE SEA’S SALT BELT WITH EARTH’S SALT) across the long beautiful stretch, filled with energy and beauty, and then connect it with poems about the island’s totality and openness to the ocean. At the same time, I had to fill a small summer space at Glænø beach, which for me will forever remain that warm sand, drowsy embrace of the bird's song and the sea’s lapping.
In the museum’s exhibition hall high above the floor are the supporting constructions in cobalt blue writing: RØD SÅVEL SOM BLÅ SÅVEL SOM GUL SÅVEL SOM (RED AS WELL AS BLUE AS WELL AS YELLOW AS WELL AS) down onto the floor, Albert’s glowing word for fighters, a mixture of painting on the floor, a sculpture of a bridge structure, cinemabread, and ultramarine.
On the exhibition walls, signals, squares, circles, cards, in red and blue spread across the large room like collective battle paintings and joyful games for children, where the color's glow in these spaces gets its own very personal significance, and not least sound.
It’s an exhibition—a “show” as they’re called in America, and is meant to be experienced through personal reflections, are given time and space for contemplation. The exhibition was reviewed on TV news in the opening week, and in a feature by Børge Rønnov in Information—as well as critical or misunderstood commentary in the otherwise sharp press, and Copenhagen’s art critics either entirely ignored it or neglected it. And that was that.
But the exhibition at Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum was among the last ones where Lawrence Weiner pointed to Albert Mertz in a series of exhibitions that also took place in Paris, Amsterdam, and Munich.
But the whole beginning actually started in 1973, the very first time Lawrence Weiner visited his then mother-in-law, and sat on a bench in the family’s garden.
I had just started as the leader of Tranegården’s Art Center in Gentofte Municipality and by chance met in everyday life with an artist who at that time suddenly played a significant role in the international art discourse, was a cultural shock, which came to influence my work and opinions in the following years.
My uncertainty was legendary—with part of the blame placed on it being that Lawrence the following summer gave such a well-aimed push, that it actually meant I had to revise all my thoughts about art and culture radically. His strict moral demands for art and artistic work, his sense of responsibility toward culture; his exhibition contributions were in many ways the beginning of the disillusionment, a near-traumatic insight into many of the difficulties, the almost unbearable difficulties I, in meetings with public opinion and the rigidity of a conservative municipality, had to endure in self-willed Denmark.
My first meeting with Albert Mertz happened through the association of film, “A first degree” in connection with Lawrence Weiner’s exhibition at Tranegården that summer. We met in the exhibition venue before the show opened as usual, Lawrence had overslept, I waited with him at the bar in Copenhagen’s art house, where he had had too much to drink the night before—and we formed a bond for life and our present times.
From the summer of 1980, Lawrence Weiner and Albert Mertz met again—as usual in family settings. It was a particularly successful meeting. For me, it was not a sensational experience, as I had stood by their developments for 6–7 years—more of a confirmation than a new discovery. For Albert, however, it was with one of those artists whose work had made it easier to navigate and survive the Parisian years.
It was strongly felt that Lawrence Weiner liked Albert Mertz, not least liked all his viewpoints on color combinations—but not necessarily the monarchy, nor the conditions of artists in conservative Denmark. And I must admit that in 1982 I attended a seminar at the Art Academy in Copenhagen. There was a series of lectures presented by a number of guests in a poetic and optimistic atmosphere. Personally, I strongly disagreed with Lawrence on a number of question, but absolutely no doubt that if you are an artist, it is necessary to make it clear what you have to do, and under what conditions this activity unfolds. This entails, as he often said: “remember the little step aside.” His “stepdance” caught people’s final appeal, a use of humor and fantasy toward the most dangerous elements of society—if they did something else, and not what was expected, the academic typically ended up in a kind of enthusiastic optimism.
And the Dutch art historian Rudi Fuchs’ description of Lawrence Weiner, where he called the artist a Che Guevara of art, is a striking characterization in that situation.
During that occasion, Lawrence visited Glænø for the first time, and he became so interested in Albert’s work that it seemed completely natural to invite him to exhibit at Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum in 1983—not as a dual exhibition of two separate artists, but as a devoted collaborative effort. In reality, something entirely unique at the time.
In connection with that exhibition project, we all participated in Amsterdam in 1983 in City Thoughts, where artists were invited to a series of talks, and where Lawrence Weiner appeared on videotape as did the Danish artist Albert Mertz: “Albert deals with something very profound within reality that, for me, becomes a metaphor for society's handling of people. It’s the same for Daniel Buren, who also deals with the museum as a neutral situation, which for him is another metaphor.”
At that seminar, which was held in conjunction with the Art Academy in Copenhagen, it became evident that we were tackling the same problems, but from completely different angles. Where I had found a response to use art as a metaphor, I saw that Albert had found a response that dealt with the relationship to materials.
Albert is markedly different from me and comes from a culture that is truly concerned with human dignity, something I myself could not quite grasp. The reason lies, I believe, in a great deal of what our relationship is about: that Albert’s entire project is about overcoming death, and life is worth living, and not only that, it is also worth preserving—therefore, art is also life. No longer just a stretch toward something. Albert Mertz is one of the last artists whose work represents a kind of spirituality. This represents his relationship with both people and the art historian idea. What fascinates me most about his work is that he always chose at the same time as myself not to present himself instead of the work presented.
Incidentally, I once asked him why he never chose “violence and blue”!
Many of Lawrence Weiner’s viewpoints have had a strong impact on my own work with art, even though his materialistic standpoint has been crucial when it comes to the art object’s reality. This is where one must have visibility and presence if the work is to have validity as art.
I’ve often found it difficult to accept the self-dissolution in a movement where one constantly declares oneself a materialist. How can one declare oneself a materialist when the work is about the invisible, imaginary dimension, about the creative mind? That a work never becomes visible—the idea and fantasy are alien to the material object’s manifestation. Or simply put: the tree you think it is, is just the strong existence as the tree, and it is a doctrine e.g. known from Tibetan Buddhism. And it is precisely here that immense possibilities lie for a future artistic practice.
I remember quite clearly a conversation with Daniel Buren, a few years ago, where we agreed that there are still artists among us who no longer actually create anything new. He talked about how Lawrence Weiner is one of those artists who have contributed early in the 20th century. There are patterns in how one sets up things that no longer work. Patterns, ideas that are later replicated like a pattern, whose structure only becomes apparent after time has passed.
You can say that I met both Alice and Lawrence Weiner on several occasions. They both made a direct impact, not least from Albert Mertz, who I lived with in a small apartment until 1976, and I personally worked with art. But over the years it becomes increasingly difficult to understand and incredibly difficult to follow. In the 60s, Lawrence fell in love in New York with the delicate red-blonde Barbie-like woman, his Danish family, Søren's daughter from Tversted in Northern Jutland. My children are related to Alice, and my own family comes from the same part of Denmark as Søren—but not all did it nearly the same way back then.
In 1974, painter Albert Mertz visited Skagen, known for the same summers when we organized an exhibition at Tranegården. And in 1983, Albert and I again saw Lawrence at Skagen and walked the east coast until we met and visited bridges.
We’re going to Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum now to do a “show.”
Time passes. On the kitchen wall hangs the light pink piece of paper.
The never-executed work by Lawrence Weiner:
Ever widening circles
formed on the crest
of the meeting of the
waters at Skagen
Glænø, Winter 1987
Lone Mark Mertz
Albert Mertz and Lawrence Weiner
Exhibition Stalke Project 1988, Copenhagen
Text by: Lone Mertz
CONCEPTART
Artist: Vincenzo Agnetti, William Anastasi, Marcel Broodthaers, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Les Levine, Yutaka Matsuzawa, Lawrence Weiner. Publish by Brigitte March, Stuttgart, Espace des Arts, Charlon s/saone and Stalke Galleri, Denmark, 1989 (exhibition Catalogue) Copyrights Brigitte March and Stalke Galleri. Essay Evelyn Weiss, Cologne, jan Force Antwerpen Interduction Yves Michael Bernard Text by Vincenzo Agnetti, Joseph Kosuth, William Anastasi, Broodthaers Catalogue Design Andreas Göltz, Stuttgart Printed In Denmark. The Show was curated by Brigitte March in coorporation with Stalke galleri.
pages: 72