At the palazzo that houses the Prada Foundation in Venice, curator Germano Celant has created something rather unique. Specifically, he has asked artist Thomas Demand and architect Rem Koolhaas to meticulously recreate Harald Szeemann’s legendary “When Attitudes Become Form” show, originally organized in 1969 at the Bern Kunsthalle. The scholarly endeavor has been curated from Szeemann’s archives, which are today gathered at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
This original exhibition showcased the works of a number of artists who became essential in the history of art, including Carl Andre, Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse, Giovanni Anselmo, Hanne Darboven, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Marinus Boezem, Richard Tuttle, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Keith Sonnier, and Lawrence Weiner. (Some of their original works, however, couldn’t be moved or recreated in the foundation.) Critics and art historians often see the 1969 exhibition as an event that changed the history of art, because Szeemann chose to spotlight artists who had broken the “typical categories of painting and sculptural tradition” based “on the strength of the imagination” (as Celant explained).
At the outset, a paradox haunts this new show. The principle of “attitudes becoming form” appears in Prada Foundation as something that happened in the past. With its inherent fetishism, the idea of recreation puts into brackets the vitality of these works — not to mention Szeemann’s original curatorial intentions of breaking free of tradition. Considering the reenactment as a “readymade” (in Celant’s framing), the exhibition from 1969 takes on a different color, one that is difficult to interpret.
Would the Prada Foundation exhibition have been more successful if it had been shown with the palazzo in its original state, without special arrangements from Koolhaus et al, instead of attempting to juxtapose the spaces as if the 1969 art works had been archaeologically unearthed and restored? The whole thing feels forced, as if it were trying to bend the magnificent architecture of this Venetian palazzo to yield up some anachronistic meaning. Yet the architectural display allows the curator to leave aside the issue of how once ground-breaking art has become fodder for celebration in museums.
Finally, what do the spaces of the Prada Foundation bring to the 1969 exhibition? Lots of questions. Can we really consider the entire system of an exhibition as a “readymade”? To try and recreate whole the space of such a show basically turns the whole thing into an architectural problem. But isn’t it also possible that the art works themselves might interpret the space where they are displayed?