Harald Szeemann and the Road Back to the Museum

Abstract

107 The Event Form Early indications of what the public could expect at documenta 5 were revealed on the cover of the May/June 1970 issue of Informationen (fig. 1), a seasonal brochure on local culture in and around the city of Kassel, Germany, where the famed quinquennial contemporary art exhibition was established in 1955. In a brief schematic outline, Harald Szeemann (fig. 2), the newly appointed general secretary of documenta 5, along with a few collaborators whom he had selected to help with the organization of the show, gave a brief explanation of the approach to the next Kassel mega-exhibition. Their documenta, as the brochure makes abundantly clear, would distinguish itself from its predecessors by embracing an “event structure” (Ereignisstruktur). More than the proposal itself, a graphic featured above the text illustrated this ambition. In a large black field, “documenta IV” appeared in big white letters, but the “IV” was struck through and a “V” was printed above it. Beneath this, “Museum der 100 Tage” (100-day museum), the traditional length of the exhibition and its de facto tagline, was printed, but only “100 Tage” remained; “Museum der” was struck through and “Ereignis” (event) was added next to and slightly above the previous motto. From “Museum der 100 Tage,” the “100 Tage Ereignis” (100-day event) was born. By depicting the first conceptual proposal for the exhibition in this way, Szeemann and his coorganizers signaled that documenta 5 would constitute an assertive departure from the format and structure of the past exhibitions. Specifically, Szeemann wished to break down the traditional media distinctions and the privileging of painting and sculpture that the previous documentas had maintained. This intention also stemmed from a desire to move away from abstract painting, metonymy for modern art itself in much of the capitalist West (especially West Germany). Documenta had been a primary conduit through which abstraction had achieved broad cultural supremacy. At the first several documentas, the art historian and coorganizer of the shows Werner Haftmann had popularized the idea of abstraction as a “world language” (Weltsprache), a concept that the exhibition’s founder, the local Kassel artist and curator Arnold Bode, had also embraced.1 At the same time, as aggressive as the striking through of the motto of the past documentas appeared, Szeemann did not outright discard it; rather, he reformatted it into a new Harald Szeemann and the Road Back to the Museum