1970-12-00

[Håndskrevet:] this is part of an article written by the celebrated Liverpool poet Adrian Henri on ”Strategy-Get Arts”. You could read the whole article and support this splendid NEW Scottish Quarterly Review by ordering a copy of NUMBER 12 from The Scottish International office at 23 George Street

Adrian Henri

STRATEGY:

Adrian Henri and furry food (left)
Beuys at work (right)
Photos by Richard Demarco

GET ARTS

A dreadful headache from the Scottish beer the night before. Desperately trying to keep out of the pub as long as possible. Lst day of the Festival. Must go and see the Dusseldorf thing. Lady at the door knows who I am, lets me in free. Back in Liverpool a month later, people arguing about Duchamp in the pub at lunctime. What was more important, him or his work? Think about Beuys, the Lone Artist, riding off into the sunset….
Everyone I talked to in Edinburgh who’d met him had a funny look in their eyes. Sort of fra-away. “And he said…” “Ah yes, but he said…” “And did you notice he…” Ricky Demarco, voluble, excited, talking nineteen to the dozen, rushing up to me in the nearly-empty echoing halls on the last day. “So great you made it.” Showing me round his treasures like a child with new Christmas-presents.
It was like the day before the circus left town. If I was going to write about it I should have gone to the Spoeri banquet. Angela Flowers told me about it – the food all the wrong colours and everything. Rinke’s water-cannon switched off, lying coiled in the hall, as if Laocoon ahd finally won and left in triumph. The place nearly empty, odd people wandering abouit wondering what to think. The Beuys/Christiansen room closed. Like the day after Woodstock, or the Sermon on the Mount, or the 15th of July. But a strong sense of not seeing all of it not being important, remembering Ted telling me about the water-sculpture at the door as I see it lying there. Thinking of the empty room full of photographs and documents about Beuys as Ricky nad the girls describe his performance-pieces.
The tiny gobbets of plasma patiently added to the walls, as patiently subtracted. The sudden convulsive movement as he splattered the re-collected plasma all over him. His hour of immobility. The piano-tuner tuning the piano that was never used, so that no one ever realized it was the real beginning of the piece. His face a clownmask of fat, tenderly cradling a dead hare in his arms. The photos are smeared, yellowed. They focus funny. You find yourself peering, wondering if that is just a caked paintbrush with a needle-and-thread coiled round it. Why? What for? Beuys’ piece: Arlo Guthrie’s red VW microbus painted Germanic field-grey, a steady procession of little creatures coming from it. Remind me oddly of Grey Walter’s brain-cell “tortoises”. But they don’t move, even though their formation implies procession. A wooden sled, a roll of felt carefully strapped to it. A lump of fat on top. Repeated exactly to the end of the corridor. The Art School seems just right, the paintmarks on the doors and floor, the neoclassic columns, the general dinginess. Exactly the right degree of nonentity, non-presentation. Walk along Kriwet’s WALK/TALK floor, blackandwhite letters repeating under my feet. Uecker’s door piece – one of the most beautiful and mysterious images I’ve seen. A big studio door down an empty corridor, banging constantly, echoing through the building. Glimpsed darkness inside, tantalizing as a miniskirt. A room full of word-games by Brecht, Filion, Diter Rot. Signs by André Thomkins enameled blue-and-white like continental streetsigns, multilingual palindromes. “Strategy: get arts”, the slogan of the exhibition, one of them.

43.

[I margen:]

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Number 12 November-December 1970

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