Amsterdam, the Magic Center
Art and counterculture 1967-1970
News — Apr 30, 2018
For many, the late sixties are synonymous with the anti-Vietnam War hippy protests and the massive student unrest in Paris. In the major summer exhibition Amsterdam, the Magic Center, the Stedelijk looks beyond these widely-known facts, positioning Amsterdam as a nexus of revolutionary ideas and activities. Imagination becomes a force to be reckoned with. But what was the impact of imagination on art – what did that look like? And what was the city’s role in these imaginative experiments?
The “Magical Centre Amsterdam”, to use the words of artist Robert Jasper Grootveld, a member of the Provo movement, reaches its zenith between 1967 and 1970. By which time, Amsterdam has won itself a reputation as a city where anything goes. The Dutch capital flourishes as a progressive and artistic haven, a place that attracts hordes of young people from all over the world. It’s also a time when art is in the throes of change. Artists rebel against the establishment and seek alternative, new platforms: on the streets, in magazines or on TV. Idea begins to take precedence over (the traditional) form – art can be a happening, an intervention in the city, or a television programme. Humour and irony are popular strategies for thumbing the nose at ‘serious’ art.
The Stedelijk in the 1960s
Featuring works from the museum collection, the show sheds new light on the radical innovations and artistic and social experiments of the era. Counterculture, experimentation and the spirit of the underground emerge from the shadows and define the city’s cultural life from 1967 onwards. The Stedelijk Museum, that had become a home for the avant-garde after the war, plays a dual role: on the one hand, in the guise of modern champion, it advocates the new (with exhibitions such as Op losse schroeven in 1969), yet the critical contingent labels it a conservative bastion of elitist art.
50 Years later, the Stedelijk looks back at a series of historic happenings, events and conceptual artworks that took place or were presented in Amsterdam, often with the city as décor. The posters by Daniel Buren were a street art intervention, and the Leidseplein became the setting of Wim T. Schippers’ absurd Christmas tree, ablaze in mid-summer. Public participation was vital to many of these activities – such as the inflatable objects of the Eventstructure Research Group that appeared on Museum Square and the surrounding streets, in which people of all ages played or strolled. Louis van Gasteren and Fred Wessels built the Sunny Implo, a sphere with points of light, sound and imperceptible motion; the idea was to put your head inside, and experience a soothing, psychotherapeutic effect. The makers insisted their sphere should be an essential part of the urban landscape, installed on every street corner. Their plan didn’t come to fruition – the Sunny Implo gets no further than a debut appearance in the Stedelijk entrance in 1970.
Artists also critique society, such as the ironic work of Pieter Engels and Jeroen Henneman, that parodies middle class life. Others take it a step further: Gerrit Dekker and Ben d’Armagnac create structures demonstrating that art is also capable of proposing an entirely new way of (autarchic) life.
In an epoch when men still dominate the art world, women artists manage to break through. Ferdi creates colourful, soft sculpture with biomorphic forms steeped in a heady eroticism. One of her works, Purple People Eater, acquired by the Stedelijk after her solo in 1968, has been restored especially for this exhibition. The work of contemporaries such as Maria van Elk and Louwrien Wijers also reveals a highly evolved artistic vision.
Aside the named above, the exhibit also features work or documentation by artists including Douwe Jan Bakker, Pieter Boersma, Marinus Boezem, stanley brouwn, Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Adri Hazevoet, Immo Jalass, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Willem de Ridder, Seemon and Marijke, Tjebbe van Tijen, and Lawrence Weiner.
The city as backdrop to social transformation
The city is also the platform for civil actions indicative of a distinct hands-on mindset. The show tracks the development of the squatter’s movement in 1968, with photos by Pieter Boersma and a ‘how to’ manual for aspiring squatters. One gallery is devoted to the sexual revolution, with magazines like ‘Gandalf’ and footage of the feminist demonstrations of the women’s liberation group Dolle Mina.
The dawning of psychedelic youth culture and the liberalisation of drugs is reflected in magazines like Hitweek (later Aloha), the opening of the now-iconic music venue Paradiso, the love-ins in the Vondelpark and the event Hai in de Rai. Also featured is original material from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-in for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton in 1969.
World events and international influences are visible in a gallery hung with posters of the student riots in Paris in 1968, which were displayed in Amsterdam’s Museum Fodor at the time, together with blow ups and original film material from the era. Posters from Communist Cuba, a society held up by many as an example, are on view in the adjacent gallery space. New research into the rebellion in Curaçao of May 1969 and the emergence of Surinamese, Marxist-orientated student bodies in the Netherlands are also mapped.
Collections of the Stedelijk Museum and Rijksmuseum combined
Amsterdam, the Magic Center is part of STEDELIJK TURNS, a research-driven programme that focuses on the museum collection and offers fresh insights and interpretations. The exhibition is curated by the Stedelijk, in partnership with the Rijksmuseum. Both museums take an interest in the counterculture of the sixties and are able to combine their research and collections in this project. Where the Stedelijk acquired and exhibited many works during the counterculture era; the Rijksmuseum will present a number of unusual recent acquisitions.
Designed by Bart Guldemond, the exhibition encompasses over 250 works and objects and around 100 reproductions from the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum, the International Institute for Social History, Sound and Vision (the Dutch institute for sound and image), and other museums and private collections.
Online publication
A publication in the form of an online platform will accompany the exhibition. It examines issues explored in the exhibition, including films dating from the era.
Public Program around Amsterdam, the Magic Center
- Sunday Seminar, Sunday 9 December 2018
Programme with lectures and debates with, among others: Geert Buelens, poet and professor of Modern Dutch Literature, Utrecht University, and guest professor of Dutch literature at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. As author of the recently published De jaren zestig: een cultuurgeschiedenis he will talk about the counterculture of the 1960s. Buelens debunks myths of the era, focusing on artistic and cultural trends in Africa, Latin America and Asia that shed a refreshing new light on the decade. He also discusses how major geopolitical and cultural shifts were interlinked and spurred a reversal of values.
- Gallery Talks, Wednesday afternoons, autumn 2018
Based on their individual areas of expertise, each exhibition curator will examine a different facet of the exhibition, illustrated by their personal selection of works.
November 7: Leontine Coelewij, curator of contemporary art, Stedelijk Museum
November 14: Suzanna Héman, assistant curator, Stedelijk Museum
November 28: Harm Stevens, curator history 20th century, Rijksmuseum
The exhibition Amsterdam, the Magic Center is realised in collaboration with our partners: the Rijksmuseum and the International Institute for Social History.
With thanks to The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
Other Amsterdam venues on the theme of 1968
1968 will also be a program highlight of other cultural institutes in the city, including EYE (the Dutch national museum for film), CBK Zuidoost, Paradiso, Amsterdam Museum and Gemeente Amsterdam/50jaar Bijlmer.
For further details, see #amsterdam1968.
The exhibition Amsterdam, the Magic Center is realised in collaboration with our partners the Rijksmuseum and the International Institute for Social History.
Thanks to The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
Amsterdam, the Magic Center is generously supported in part by the International Collector Circle and Curator Circle of the Stedelijk Museum Fund.
Note to editors:
The reseach and compose of the exhibitions was lead by Leontine Coelewij (curator modern art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and Harm Stevens (curator History 20th century, Rijksmuseum).
For more information and images, please contact the Press Office of the Stedelijk Museum, +31 (0)20 573 26 660 / 656 or pressoffice@stedelijk.nl