Harald Szeemann's 'When Attitudes Become Form' Revisited

In March 1969, Harald Szeemann curated the landmark exhibition 'When Attitudes Become Form' at the Kunsthalle Bern, featuring artists like Joseph Beuys, Michael Heizer, Lawrence Weiner, Richard Artschwager, Alain Jacquet, and Walter De Maria. The show provoked public outrage and media frenzy, with newspapers calling it 'apocalypse or Copernican revolution.' Critics like Jean-Luc Daval complained that the era sought to make art with reality itself, while André Kuenzi mockingly asked about Beuys's margarine plasters. The exhibition sparked debates on the function of art and challenged traditional aesthetics. Two young Swiss men burned their military kits, citizens dumped manure to fill Heizer's holes, and Rafael Ferrer's outdoor work 'Chain Link' was trampled. The Russian embassy saw it as bourgeois decadence, attributing mercantile motives to sponsor Philip Morris. Szeemann, who refused to be a 'guardian of a cemetery,' aimed to bring hippie and beatnik culture into art through land art and conceptual art, prioritizing the gesture over the object. In June 1969, he resigned after his planned Beuys exhibition was rejected by the Kunsthalle's executive committee, which included artists. A DVD included with the art press issue features a report on the exhibition and an interview with Szeemann. In 2009, the Centre Pompidou commemorated the anniversary with the exhibition 'Vides,' where artist Maria Eichhorn proposed 'Money at the Kunsthalle Bern' to fund building restoration.