Strategy: Get Arts: 35 Artists Who Broke the Rules

Based on close archival research, Christian Weikop, a renowned specialist on modern and contemporary German art, uncovers unknown and exciting narratives, as well as artist networks, concerning this provocative 1970 exhibition, held at Edinburgh College of Art. Strategy: Get Arts included work from Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Klaus Rinke, Stefan Wewerka, Günther Uecker and many more. The author has previously considered the British press reception of SGA in an article for Tate Papers, but this Edinburgh University Press book publication goes far beyond that article and any other scholarship on the exhibition by taking into account the contributions of all 35 artists based in Düsseldorf, and incorporating testimony of individuals who were involved in this landmark exhibition, or who were later engaged in archive exhibitions or recreation projects. Weikop explores the formation of the exhibition in the context of a late 1960s culture of protests and occupations, and demonstrates that SGA was a pivotal ‘Shock of the New’ moment that would leave its mark on art education. The book, primarily authored by Weikop, incorporates numerous arresting ‘event photographs’ of the exhibition, taken by George Oliver, Monika Baumgartl, and Richard Demarco, many never seen before and published here for the first time, as well as short edited guest contributions.