Troubling Peripheries: Pierre Restany and Superlund

Abstract

Summary This article chronicles the French critic Pierre Restany and his 1967 exhibition Superlund at Lunds Konsthall in Sweden. Throughout his life and work Restany travelled the globe and engaged in local art scenes, often described as peripheries. But when did Lund, a town in southern Sweden, become the periphery, and with reference to which centre? When Restany engaged with the so-called peripheries in order to escape the art scene in Paris, he also brought with him Paris as a symbolic centre. This article explores how the critic and his exhibition conflate the dichotomy in art historiography between centre and periphery in the intersection between place, people and art.