B Books

One of the elements that unites all these publications and magazines is the fact that they are precisely produced by artists, who, in a conscious and organized manner, become authors, designers, and editors. They go far beyond the mere production of works of art or images for reproduction. As the volume The Artist as Curator: Collaborative Initiatives in the International ZERO Movement 1957–1967 argues, the artists concerned actively extended their fields of action to specialized areas, among which we find the publication of magazines and books, and this offers an essential differentiation.[i] For the artist, the book or magazine is a space of creativity that is equivalent to the space of the studio as well as an extension of the gallery space. It is a space of reproduction and dissemination. It concerns the occupation of a space proper to modern identity (in the Habermasian sense of the term) that is equated with the space of the institutions that define the culture of an open society. The space of art is no longer the chambers of the prince, nor is it managed by the government (as was and is the case with totalitarian governments). Nor is its presence reduced to museums, open for a very short time to contemporary art, or to fairs or salons where aesthetic innovations can be appreciated. Art occupies, with a certain normality, with a certain exceptionality, a new public space whose origin lies in the dissemination of information and opinions. The extensive monograph Artists’ Magazines[ii] offers a dense analysis through a selection of mainly North American publications, among which the German Interfunktionen (1968–75) stands out. The publication is, therefore, a space of communication, like that of the gallery or the exhibition space. For the institution, for the museum, the book is an extension of the institutional space of representation. For the art critic, curator, or author, the publication is (or was) the natural space in which to convey ideas and arguments. This is why the interests of multiple actors in the system converge in the pages of books and magazines. The printed page, the book, the periodical, or the pamphlet, is a hybrid space of great power and significance. “Exhibitions go, books stay,” Harald Szeemann told me many years ago. Today, we understand exhibitions as a category of historiographical importance, mainly thanks to what remains of them—catalogues and magazines—which make them “stay” beyond their ephemeral nature. In this sense, it is interesting to consider that the history of exhibitions has emerged only very recently as a subcategory in the historicization of contemporary art.

[i] Tiziana Caianiello and Mattijs Visser, eds., The Artist as Curator: Collaborative Initiatives in the International ZERO Movement 1957–1967 (Ghent, 2015).

[ii] Gwen Allen, Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2011). Beyond the specificity of the magazines as “alternative” spaces for art, I also recommend Brian O’Doherty, Studio and Cube: On the Relationship between Where Art Is Made and Where Art Is Displayed (New York, 2007).

The publishing activities of the second half of the twentieth century have a clear counterpart in those before World War II. The so-called historical avant-gardes were equally prolific in their literary and critical activities and were involved in numerous publishing projects. Let us recall, among others, publications central to the development of art movements and groups at the time, such as De Stijl (1917–20 and 1921–32), Mecano(1922–23), Ma (1916–25), 391 (1917–24), L’Esprit Nouveau (1920–25), Bauhaus (1926–32), Der Sturm(1910–32), Die Aktion (1911–32), Die Freie Strasse (1915–18), Dada (1919–20), Merz (1923–32), LEF (1923–25), and so on, many of which were published in Germany. From a comparison of both groups of publications, a first consideration emerges: the graphic creativity of most interwar publications is enormous; those published after World War II offer a great visual and graphic sobriety that contrasts with the earlier ones. In the interwar period, visual experimentation was expressed in new territories such as typography, with great compositional freedom. The written word became a very powerful image, in a radically different way than it had been in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. Experimental and phonetic poetry contributed to placing writing and image at equal levels. The combination of visual innovations linked to experimental and phonetic poetry, typographic revolutions, and the breakthrough of graphic possibilities brought by photography was a perfect intersection that consolidated the modern aesthetic that would later be transformed into advertising.

How can we explain the graphic sobriety of the postwar artists’ publications? I don’t have a definitive answer, but I imagine that their authors were clearly aware that these periodicals were fundamental instruments for obtaining a primary objective: to gain the public visibility, impact, and relevance that would allow them to gain respect and recognition. I am not talking about this in terms of what we would now call “marketing”: this generation of artists had to rebuild their own public sphere. It was not a question of occupying a preexisting scene, nor of reconstructing a scene that had been cracked. The enthusiasm breathed by their texts and proclamations has more to do with the will to invent something that did not yet exist than to change something that existed before. In contrast, the artists around Futurism or Dada had devoted as much energy to destroying the prevailing bourgeois culture of the past as to generating a new aesthetic program; that is why Dada was identified for a long time (and wrongly, in my opinion) as anti-art. Besides its apparent nihilism, ZERO was about a new start, the building of a new condition, a rebirth.

The books and publications in the milieu of ZERO and adjacent groups seem to contrast with the atmosphere of fun, bustle, constant movement, and the unpredictable and surprising character of the performances in public spaces, at certain openings, the appearances of Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) on television at the time, or the meetings of the artists. The periodicals are “serious”; they “say” that what these artists do should be taken seriously; they deserve the viewer’s attention; they are not to be considered lightly.

The publications we refer to today had relatively small print runs, and the best known, ZERO and Azimuth,also had a short history. The first two issues of ZERO, which appeared in 1958, were published in 400 and 350 copies, respectively. Number three, apotheosis and conclusion at the same time, had 1,225 copies in 1961: its promoters were sure that its reception had increased exponentially. Azimuth, authentic lightning, flare, and brilliance of a very specific moment, had only two issues, which were published in about 500 copies each.

At the end of World War II and for many years following, the center of Europe, including the island of West Berlin, was economically in the hands of Marshall Plan finances. The undisputed military and economic leadership of the United States of America would soon find a translation in what Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer called the “culture industry,” as well as in the “prestige crafts” such as the art system. Not only did New York steal from Paris the status of capital of the art world, but the center of gravity shifted across the Atlantic, especially with the power of the academy, and the critical, editorial, and publishing apparatus that would give it credibility and authority. ZERO and its adjacent groups represent the swan song of a Europe that became, after the war, the scene of a play in which industry, commerce, the military apparatus, and science displaced the centrality of culture and heritage, rendering them subsidiary to the fight for global primacy between the two ideological leaders, the United States and the Soviet Union. The intellectual and aesthetic dramaturgy to which I refer occurs at the same time as memorable episodes of the Cold War, and the shift from the beatnik generation to the hippies preceding the revolts of 1968. Is it not strange in this sense that, well into the twenty-first century, we know so little about and are not showing much interest in the “Nove Tendencje” exhibitions held in Zagreb in 1961, 1963, and 1965? The debates that took place in that context are a historio graphical frontier that we should explore without delay.

Two issues of the Dutch magazine Nul=0 appeared. The first, in 1961, featured texts by artists in German, French, and English, along with reproductions of their works. Issue two, which appeared in 1963, was dedicated to the recently deceased artists and real media agitators Yves Klein (1928–1962) and Manzoni.Both editions have a great graphic sobriety that draws attention to the fonts used, which are reminiscent of old typewriters.

Two issues of Azimuth magazine were also published, the first in September 1959 and the second in January 1960. Both follow the same logic: texts by artists and reproductions of works, with the exception that issue number two reproduces the texts in Italian, German, French, and English, demonstrating the international and cosmopolitan ambition of the project.

Published in German, the first two issues of ZERO follow a similar logic, although ZERO is the pioneer magazine that encourages and brings together the largest number of enthusiastic European artists. Issue one was dedicated to the color red and accompanied an Abendausstellung (Evening Exhibition) on the same theme. The volume was preceded by a quotation from Hegel, to which well-known artists and thinkers responded, including Arnold Gehlen (1904–1976), Max Burchartz (1887–1961), Georg Muche (1895–1987), and Klein. Accompanying the 8th Evening Exhibition, issue two would rotate thematically around the idea of vibration in painting—an idea that the young Italian artists of Gruppo T and Gruppo N (enne) would take at face value a year later by investigating the real possibilities of the vibration of objects and surfaces in three-dimensional and animated works.

Only issue three of ZERO, published in 1961 as the last iteration of that editorial project, offers a number of thoughtful pages that go beyond the traditional image-text relationship, composing a conceptually organized visual narrative. Referring on multiple occasions to Dynamo, the exhibition held at Galerie Renate Boukes in Wiesbaden in 1959, ZERO 3 contains several “visual essays” that create a particular iconographic atmosphere, reminiscent, on some pages, of the details of Pop Art or mass media imagery. Not only are works by artists illustrated—with ample representations of Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), Klein, Jean Tinguely (1925–1991), Otto Piene (1928–2014), and Heinz Mack (b. 1931)—but a dense grid of images blurs on the paper, and powerful female lips invite us to read the pronunciation of an inaudible word. A numerical countdown leads us to the liftoff of a rocket that propels ZERO toward the confines of the firmament (the space race would take a further eight years to bring man to the moon). To say goodbye to the volume, a very clear message: “We live. We are for everything.”[i] On the inside pages, a “brutal” intervention by Yves Klein interrupts his text, cutting the page with fire.

[i] Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, “Proclamation,” in Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, eds., ZERO, trans. Howard Beckman (Cambridge, MA, 1973), p. 329.

In 1956, Richard Hamilton and the artists involved in the Independent Group produced the well-known exhibition This Is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, with which the language of advertising, popular culture, and consumerism, and the ebullience of mass media all entered the sacrosanct territory of the fine arts. ZERO, Azimuth, Nul=0, and others would remain at the visual antipodes of the typographic experimentation of the first decades of the century and the overwhelming visual cascade that would soon be imposed in the everyday life of European citizens. I do not intend to compare dissonant aesthetics, but rather seek to understand the motivations and strategies of artists who practiced minimalist abstraction, tried to make painting vibrate, promoted the monochrome almost as a transcendental creed, and followed with fascination Lucio Fontana’s tireless search for a new kind of space, a space made from the void. We are well aware of the interest of artists emerging in the postwar period in popular subcultures linked to the entertainment industry, advertising, consumerism, and the media. European artists did not gloss over the visual and social transformations of their environment, but they did take positions that were highly critical or distant from it all. The almost ascetic sobriety of the work of some of them, as well as the intense conceptual charges of others, did not prevent them from being of “their” time. It was also about offering an aesthetic resistance through art, at the same time that behaviors in the public space embraced forms of collective enjoyment and interaction. They were fascinated by mass media, especially television. Some of them were excellent communicators or entertainers (or clowns, as they have come to be characterized). Their sense of humor and provocation went hand in hand with a great communicative effectiveness, and contrasted with the intense visual constriction of their publications.

The contents of ZERO, Azimuth, and Nul=0, the main publications of that time linked to the scenes of Düsseldorf, Milan, and the Rotterdam-Amsterdam axis, are organized around common principles: texts by artists referring to specific works or projects, texts by critics or museum curators in tune with these ideas, together with illustrations of works by the artists directly or indirectly involved. Books and periodicals created and maintained a sense of community. Modernity had stimulated artists to agglutinate, associate, and organize themselves in order to exist. Artists became authors, editors, and participants in exhibitions that were often linked to the release of the periodicals in question. Another element attracts my attention: in parallel to the celebrated publications, ZERO and the adjacent groups maintained a prolific production of diverse printed matter: posters, foldouts, announcements, invitations, and so on—informational material promoting activities that on certain occasions were accompanied by catalogs. Also, within this variegated category of printed matter we can observe a graphic diversity of great communicative impact. In the exhibition Far from the Void: ZERO and Postwar Art in Europe, presented by the IVAM Centre Julio González in Valencia in 2022, the central corridor of the show, which linked its different rooms and environments, was precisely occupied by a “backbone” of vitrines and display units dedicated to highlighting—as a unifying element of works, artists, and ideas—the books and different publications, films, and documentation produced by the different groups. Books, magazines, and printed material not only provided visual identity in the public space; they also served as conceptual “mortar.” The physical space of the city and the ethereal space created by the media kept them in communication with each other. Art historian and critic Claire Bishop has recently emphasized the problem of the superabundance of documentation in exhibition spaces traditionally reserved for artworks: the artistic heritage is a vast ensemble that is managed according to disparate criteria.[i]

[i] Claire Bishop, “Information Overload,” Artforum 61, no. 8 (April 2023), pp. 122–89.

How can we explain the evident graphic and visual sobriety of the publications analyzed? From all evidence, the artists we are concerned with were not unaware of either the power or the function of creative graphic design as a means of persuasion for their projects. The new aesthetic ideas sought to occupy a space of visibility, a public territory in fabulous transformation. The art publishing industry would begin to recompose itself fundamentally with these artist-led initiatives, both in Europe and in the United States. In the nineteen-sixties, the “big bang” in the arts spread through artist-led publications before the space of the printed page was occupied by publishing companies aimed at profit. Vocations preceded shareholders’ interests.

I believe that the artists gathered around ZERO, Azimuth, and Nul=0, however short the life of each of these projects, did not seek in their publications an alternative space to the traditional exhibition spaces of galleries and museums. Heinz Mack and Otto Piene had invented a new category and a new format of exhibition space: the artist’s own studio, with the opening night providing the space-time coordinates in which the exhibition took place. On the other hand, the openings would continue to use some of the exhibition’s traditional ritual elements, such as the invitation card or the opening speech by a scientific or institutional authority. Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani created their own gallery in Milan, and the Dutch artists “squatted” the most dynamic museum, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, on two occasions. Their Belgian colleagues had access to a new exhibition venue that they organized by themselves in Antwerp, the Hessenhuis, where memorable exhibitions took place in 1959. A few years later, Aspen magazine in the United States would attempt to provide a new type of exhibition space in the form of an experimental magazine, as an alternative to the three-dimensional circuit of Euclidean space as experienced in commercial galleries, museums, or nonprofit spaces. While ZERO, Azimuth, and Nul=0 did not accompany traditional exhibitions, they nonetheless shared public repercussions with them, disseminated ideas contained in them, and distributed parallel intellectual motivations and arguments.

Exhibitions in commercial galleries and a few exhibitions in museums came relatively quickly. Participation and success in major events such as Documenta or La Biennale di Venezia largely failed to materialize – Mack, Piene and Uecker did, however, exhibit in Kassel in 1964.  When the aesthetic forms and ideas of the European ZERO artists arrived in the United States in 1964,[i] they did so under a category or denomination that was relatively alien to their origins, in an international context already completely dominated by the dazzling success of American Pop Art.

The books and publications are part of a wider network of actions and supports that contained the performances, or collective and theatrical actions, and the use of new media (television), at a time of multidisciplinary and anti-academic emergence—addicted to rupture but not disrespectful to existing institutions, innovative but aware of the new orders that were being created little by little. The new art permeated slowly and dissolved into the system, shadowed by the rapidly succeeding trends, groups, and labels established by galleries and art critics.

[i] The exhibition The Responsive Eye took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York between February 23 and April 25, 1965. The press release for this exhibition reads: “The Responsive Eye exhibition will bring together paintings and constructions that initiate a new, highly perceptual phase in the grammar of art.… Certain of these artists establish a totally new relationship between the observer and the work of art.” Museum of Modern Art (website), https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_326375.pdf (accessed November 6, 2023).

I imagine that—with all possible differences and distances—the atmosphere of the Evening Exhibitions organized by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene in their Düsseldorf studio might have resembled moods that we have all experienced in our youth. Every creative activity is vital for any artist. And part of the vitality I am trying to describe consisted, I imagine, in rationalizing powerful intuitions that would appear and disappear at any moment, but which needed to be materialized in the studio, where they became works of art. Rationalizing creativity, explaining with ideas and arguments why a work of art is how it is and not any different, is a task that artists after World War II adopted as part of their natural activity.

While it is the artists in the milieu of Futurism, Surrealism, and Dada who initiated the systematic practice of experimental and critical writing with activist or creative intent, and of publishing their own media, books, and magazines, it is the artists related to ZERO and its peer groups in Europe who consolidated the genre in the second half of the twentieth century. Publications that reached three issues or fewer, and that existed for one, two, or three years, combining great graphic simplicity with a high print quality, continue to fascinate us today. Exhibitions in museums and galleries, symposiums, articles, and books are dedicated to them with some regularity, and we find them in specialized public and private collections. In some cases, they are reprinted and reissued; in others they circulate freely in electronic formats. Many of the ideas put forward in their texts seem naïve or outdated to us today. But they undoubtedly refer us to facts, forms, and materials without which today’s art would not be what it is.

The attitude that produced all of this, a genuine form of “do it yourself,” teaches the artist and the intellectual of today that where there is no adequate channel to convey new ideas, it must be created. And it shows that new forms, without ideas to back them up, rarely acquire solidity or relevance. Although auctions and the different art markets do not allow us to speak of an art industry, on account of the economic volume they move, we find ourselves today at the intersection of a series of complex crafts that the digital world and the World Wide Web have altered forever. The printed page will always be different from the screens that surround us. But the latter owe to the former an ability to relate images, words, ideas, and sensations—our intellectual activity and our emotions.