Pier + Ocean
September 25th - September 25th 1982
Pier and Ocean
Catalogue Cover
Exhibition Information
In May 1980 the exhibition ‘Pier + Ocean. Construction in the Art of the Seventies’ opened in the Hayward Gallery in London, and continued later that year in the Kröller-Müller Museum at Otterlo, in a different version.
It started out with a large committee under the auspices of the Arts Council of Great Britain; the intention was to make an exhibition on developments, historical and contemporary, within the constructivist tradition.
“This resulted in two years of unproductive discussions. They were at a loss, none of them knew how to relate contemporary artists to the famous pioneers among the constructivists without presenting them as [some] kind of grandsons.” Especially the fact that the pioneers of constructivism dreamt a wonderful utopian dream of changing the construction of social reality, and the subsequent loss of this collective dream and its fragmentation into the art of the 70’s, constituted a great problem. Dilworth, himself one of the small group of heirs to constructivism in Britain, had been monitoring the discussions from a distance; at one point he handed in his thoughts on the matter, which resulted in the committee falling apart into, on one hand, people in favour of historical developments and, on the other hand, people who realized that the evolution of constructivism had not been as linear as some liked to think. On several occasions Dilworth had discussed this subject with Gerhard Von Graevenitz – they had met within the context of Galerie Swart in Amsterdam.
When Dilworth was asked to join the exhibition committee, he did so requesting that Gerhard von Graevenitz be invited also. Together they became the organisers of the exhibition, and Von Graevenitz’s solution to the problems of the committee became the leading theme of the whole event. He “suggested considering the work of art itself as a construction. We could then look at what a construction in the visual art of the seventies still signified.”
Constructivism still played an important role in the 70’s, not as a stylistic or ideological dogma, but in a far more positive way, as a background for new developments. Von Graevenitz saw that many artists had developed a broader and more open understanding of the concept of construction; he discerned three main themes, three levels on which this open concept of construction was functioning artistically: “1- Spatially: space is part of the work. The work is realised in space, and in such a way that, in doing so, space is redefined: ‘Concepts of Space’. 2. – Structurally: the structure of the work also is defined in a different way, and this definition is due to the interaction with space: ‘Chance System Endlessness’. 3 – Physically: a physical aspect of the work of art that by its place in space exerts its effect: weight. The artist no longer restricts himself to the visible qualities of the work (the texture), but rather deals with the invisible forces that are hidden in it: ‘Gravity’”.
The title ‘Pier + Ocean’ referring to Mondrian’s series of paintings of 1914/15, was introduced by Dilworth and immediately applauded. It perfectly summarized the link to historical constructivism as well as Von Graevenitz’s interpretation of the construction principle: “The pier is a construction that is entirely attuned to the ocean; it functions as a sign of human composition within the unformed surroundings. A work of art, too, is a construction within an inarticulate environment, within space, within our concept of infinity, and so on."
With a choice of artists ranging from Baljeu and Dekkers to Ader and On Kawara, from Morellet to Gudmundsson, from Shapiro to Weiner, from Andrew to Serra, this exhibition caught up with developments in land art and conceptualism. This indeed made this exhibition an important one, not only as an overview of the developments in the 70s, but also as a statement in its own right. Organised by artists, it eventually became a kind of art work itself and because of that, ‘Pier + Ocean’ even has great importance within 20th century art history.
Edited excerpt from 'Norman Dilworth, In the Nature of Things', Ed. Norman Dilworth, Cees de Boer, 2001.
