The Arts
September 2021
Strategy: Get Arts 35 Artists Who Broke the Rules
35 Artists Who Broke the Rules
by Edited by Christian Weikop
Edited by Dr Christian Weikop, a Professor in Art History at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), this is the first print publication to consider the remarkable formation of the ground-breaking and oft-cited exhibition Strategy: Get Arts, staged at ECA in the late summer of 1970. At the cutting edge of contemporary art, this was unlike anything seen in the United Kingdom to that date, certainly challenging a Scottish art world still struggling to come to terms with the legacy of the Scottish Colourists. It was an exhibition that received international press attention and had a considerable impact on the public, critics, and other curators who saw it, shaking up the conservativism of the British art scene. Strategy: Get Arts (SGA) brought many figures of post-war art, who were based in the exciting cultural city of Düsseldorf, to the United Kingdom for the first time. These artists, who took over ECA, transforming the college into a ‘total work of art’ through their extraordinary actions and installations, were unknown to a British public in 1970. The roll call of talented participants included the likes of Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Daniel Spoerri, Stefan Wewerka, Dieter Roth, Sigmar Polke, Günther Uecker, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and many others who subsequently achieved international fame. In addition to first-hand accounts of the exhibition by Douglas Hall (the first Keeper of the Gallery of Modern Art, National Galleries of Scotland), Jennifer Gough-Cooper (SGA co-ordinator), and Alexander Hamilton (co-editor of Studies in Photography and SGA gallery assistant in 1970), the publication also includes new essays by the editor, Christian Weikop, on Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts; Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans; and Strategy Get Arts and Broadcast Media. It also features short essays on the photography of SGA by Karen Barber (a specialist in the history of photography), the controversy concerning the Palermo Restore project by Andrew Patrizio (Professor of Scottish Visual Culture at ECA), the creation of a 2016 archive exhibition on SGA by National Galleries of Scotland archivist Kirstie Meehan, as well as two fascinating Forewords by Keith Hartley (Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Modern and Contemporary Art), and Professor Juan Cruz (Principal of ECA). Many unknown and rare photographs of the artists and artworks at the art college, especially by the German performance artist and photographer, Monika Baumgartl, as well as eye-catching photographs by George Oliver and Richard Demarco, are presented here for the first time. The publication is a triumph of archival detective work, effectively reconstructing the exhibition, profiling all 35 artists who took part, and fully revealing the challenges and dramatic events that unfolded before and during the course of this unique event.
