curated by Barbara Engelbach

Exhibition: 24. June – 24. September 2017
Heinrich-Böll-Platz
50667 Cologne
https://www.museum-ludwig.de

In the 1960s, the Rhineland was an important center for a revolutionary occurrence in art: a new generation of artists with international networks rebelled against traditional art. They used everyday life as their source of inspiration and everyday objects as their material. They went out into their urban surroundings, challenging the limits of the art disciplines and collaborating with musicians, writers, filmmakers, and dancers. In touch with the latest trends of this exciting period, the Cologne painting restorer Wolfgang Hahn (1924–1987) began acquiring this new art and created a multifaceted collection of works of Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Happening, Pop Art, and Conceptual Art.

Wolfgang Hahn was head of the conservation department at Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and Museum Ludwig. This perspective influenced his view of contemporary art. He realized that the new art from around 1960 was quintessentially processual and performative, and from the very beginning he visited the events of new music, Fluxus actions, and Happenings. He initiated works such as Daniel Spoerri’s Hahns Abendmahl (Hahn’s Supper) of 1964, implemented Lawrence Weiner’s concept A SQUARE REMOVAL FROM A RUG IN USE of 1969 in his living room, and not only bought concepts and scores from artists, but also video works and 16mm films.

On the other hand, he encountered contemporary art with a keen sense of history. As a witness of “action” events and Happenings, he documented what he saw by conducting artist interviews to learn more about the creation of the works and their artistic position; he also purposefully collected works and documents from specific Happening contexts. This is how he came into the possession of a great number of objects from Nam June Paik’s legendary exhibition Exposition of Music: Electronic Television of 1963.

The Hahn Collection was acquired by the Republic of Austria in 1978 and completed with other acquisitions in 2003. It is part of mumok—Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in Vienna.

The exhibition at Museum Ludwig and mumok considers the Hahn Collection for the first time as a self-contained time capsule that offers a fresh look at the art of the 1960s and ’70s beyond art-historical or geographical categories.

Anouj, Arman, Ay-O, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Michael Buthe, John Cage, John Chamberlain, Christo, Bruce Conner, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Gérard Deschamps, Jim Dine, François Dufrêne, Öyvind Fahlström, Robert Filliou, Sam Gilliam, Ludwig Gosewitz, Nancy Graves, Raymond Hains, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow / Kasia Fudakowski, Alison Knowles, Arthur Køpcke, Gary Kuehn, Yayoi Kusama, Barry Le Va, Boris Lurie, Gordon Matta-Clark, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Lil Picard, Klaus Rinke, Mimmo Rotella, Dieter Roth, Niki de Saint Phalle, Günter Saree, George Segal, Daniel Spoerri, Paul Thek, Jean Tinguely, Ursula, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Watts, Lawrence Weiner, H. C. Westermann, Stefan Wewerka, Jacques de la Villeglé, Wolf Vostell, and Gil J. Wolman.

Kasia Fudakowski was invited to reinvent Push and Pull, 1963, by Allan Kaprow. She will present Push and Pull—Reinvented as a new work.

An exhibition of Museum Ludwig in cooperation with mumok—Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, curated by Barbara Engelbach (Museum Ludwig) and Susanne Neuburger (mumok). The exhibition at Museum Ludwig was curated by Barbara Engelbach.

The exhibition will be on view at mumok in Vienna starting November 10, 2017.

An exhibition catalogue will be published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. The essays are by Barbara Engelbach, Susanne Neuburger, and Susanne Rennert. In addition, there is a representative selection of works that are accompanied by texts. The authors are Ágnes Berecz, J. P. Binstock, Lisa Bosbach, Stephan Diederich, Diedrich Diederichsen, Marianne Dobner, Silvia Eiblmayr, Barbara Engelbach, Ines Gebetsroither, Barbara Herrmann, Dirk Hildebrandt, Matthias Koddenberg, Doris Krystof, Annette Lagler, Dirk Luckow, Simone Moser, Susanne Neubauer, Susanne Neuburger, Marlene Obermayer, Sandra Reimann, Dietmar Rübel, Feliticas Thun-Hohenstein, Ulrich Wilmes, Jörg Wolfert, and Michael Wonnerth-Magnusson.

The exhibition received generous support from the Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung, the Kunststiftung NRW, and the Landschaftsverband Rheinland.

George Brecht
The Book of the Tumbler on Fire, Volume I, Chapter VIII, Page 3, Footnote 19, 1969
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017
Photo: mumok, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Former Collection Hahn, Cologne