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 Strategy: Get Arts
35 Artists
Who Broke the Rules
Christian Weikop
Visitors to
Strategy: Get Arts
walking along the south
corridor of the first floor,
ECA Main Building
SGA (1970).
Photo © George Oliver,
Courtesy of
Jennifer Gough-Cooper.
 Strategy: Get Arts
35 Artists
Who Broke the Rules
 Strategy: Get Arts
35 Artists
Who Broke the Rules
Christian Weikop
Acknowledgements
Previous pages:
André Thomkins
Close up of
palindrome signs.
SGA (1970).
Photo © George Oliver,
Courtesy of
Jennifer Gough-Cooper.
Front cover of
Strategy: Get Arts
exhibition catalogue, 1970.
Demarco Digital Archive.
Opposite:
Cordelia Oliver behind
triplex glass container by
Erich Reusch (1970).
Photo © George Oliver,
Courtesy of
Jennifer Gough-Cooper.
© DACS 2021.
Christian Weikop’s work for this special Image Credits and Permissions
Strategy: Get Arts (SGA50) book edition of Studies George Oliver Archive and Richard Demarco
in Photography is under the aegis of the Research Archive (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art,
Forum for German Visual Culture (ECA). Weikop National Galleries of Scotland), Richard Demarco,
(author and guest editor) and Alexander Hamilton Demarco European Art Foundation,
(series editor) would like to thank the following Demarco Digital Archive (University of Dundee),
individuals, institutions, and contributors, who Gerhard Richter Archive (Dresden),
have supported this publication and the wider Jennifer Gough-Cooper, David Oliver,
SGA50 project in different ways: Monika Baumgartl, Jon Schueler Estate,
The Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS).
The Leverhulme Trust,
Edinburgh College of Art (RKEI Research Grant), Image Research and Image Captions
Professor Richard Demarco CBE, Christian Weikop
Terry Ann Newman,
Every effort has been made to trace copyright
Demarco European Art Foundation,
holders and to obtain their permission for the use
Creative Scotland, Jennifer Gough-Cooper,
of copyright material. The publisher apologises
David Oliver, Karen Barber, Ted Fisher,
for any errors or omissions and would be grateful
Monika Baumgartl, Kirstie Meehan (Archive and
if notified of any corrections that should be
Special Collections, Scottish National Gallery of
incorporated in future reprints or editions of
Modern Art), Tate Research,
this book.
Adam Lockhart (Demarco Digital Archive
at the University of Dundee),
Stuart Bennett (ECA), Juan Cruz (Principal, ECA),
Andrew Patrizio (ECA), Keith Hartley (Chief Curator
and Deputy Director of Modern and
Contemporary Art at NGS),
Frank Lesniak at Grieger International Fine Art,
Roland Lang, Andrew Symons (ECA),
and Magda Salvesen (Jon Schueler Estate).
Throughout this publication GMA numbers refer
to the Richard Demarco Archive at SNGMA.
Published in partnership with Edinburgh University Press.
www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

Studies in Photography is the trading name of

The Scottish Society for the History of Photography
A Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation
Registered in Scotland with the Office of the Scottish Charities Registrar
SC033988
www.studiesinphotography.com

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-8383822-0-9 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-8383822-1-6 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978-1-8383822-2-3 (epub)

© 2021 The copyright of the work published in this book

rests with the authors.

Series Editor
Alexander Hamilton

Author and Guest Editor

Christian Weikop

Image Research and Image Captions

Christian Weikop

Design
Ian McIIroy

Proofreading and copy editing

Robin Connelly

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence

or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites
referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content
on such websites, is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Printed and Bound

Bell & Bain Limited, Glasgow
J Thomson Colour Printers, Glasgow
Opposite:
The paper used in this publication Stefan Wewerka's
is recyclable. It is made from low chlorine pulps bentwood chairs
installation on the
produced in a low energy, low emission manner
main staircase of
from renewable forests. ECA Main Building (1970).
Edinburgh Photo © George Oliver,
Courtesy of
Jennifer Gough-Cooper.
© DACS 2021.
 22

30

13 56

93

101 202

206

210
204
Contents

13 Foreword Keith Hartley

16 Foreword Juan Cruz
21 Preface Alexander Hamilton
22 Introduction Christian Weikop
30 Richard Demarco and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts Christian Weikop
40 Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance of the Germans Christian Weikop
Appendix A. Jürgen Harten on Strategy: Get Arts
56 SGA’s ‘Shock of the New’:
Art Education, Joseph Beuys, and Jon Schueler Christian Weikop
80 Strategy: Get Arts and Broadcast Media Christian Weikop
84 Photography at and in Strategy: Get Arts Karen Barber
88 A Turning Point Jennifer Gough-Cooper
93 Gallery Assistants – SGA Alexander Hamilton

101 The Artists Christian Weikop

H.P. Alvermann, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Claus Böhmler,
George Brecht, Peter Brüning, Henning Christiansen, Friedhelm Döhl,
Robert Filliou, Karl Gerstner, Gotthard Graubner, Erwin Heerich,
Dorothy Iannone, Mauricio Kagel, Konrad Klapheck, Imi Knoebel,
Christof Kohlhöfer, Ferdinand Kriwet, Adolf Luther, Heinz Mack,
Lutz Mommartz, Tony Morgan, Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke,
Erich Reusch, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dieter Roth, Reiner Ruthenbeck,
Daniel Spoerri, André Thomkins, Günther Uecker, Franz Erhard Walther,
Günter Weseler, Stefan Wewerka

202 Sound in Space Christian Weikop

204 David Tremlett 16 Industrial Scarecrows Christian Weikop
206 Palermo Restore Rewind Andrew Patrizio
210 Exhibiting an Exhibition: Strategy: Get Arts in the Richard Demarco Archive Kirstie Meehan
214 Douglas and Matilda Hall
Edited transcript of interview by Ted Fisher, Christian Weikop and Alexander Hamilton
218 Contributors
220 Further Reading
222 Index
Foreword
Keith Hartley
One of the first things I did after I started my job
as Douglas Hall’s assistant at the Scottish National
Gallery of Modern Art in the summer of 1979 was
to visit the Richard Demarco Gallery and meet
the man I had heard so much about. He lived
up to his reputation as a dynamic, enthusiastic
personality, particularly when he learnt that my
area of special interest was modern German art.
He immediately began talking about Joseph
Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts, the 1970 Edinburgh
Festival exhibition he had organised at Edinburgh
College of Art and which had introduced Beuys
for the first time in the UK.
Prior to working in Edinburgh I had undertaken
research on German Expressionism in Berlin,
but my eyes had been opened to contemporary
German art and to Beuys in particular, when
I visited documenta 6 at Kassel in 1977. Beuys
had been placed, quite literally, at the heart of
the mammoth exhibition. Not only was his
monumental sculpture Honey Pump at the
Workplace (Honigpumpe am Arbeitsplatz) 1977
situated in the stairwell and throughout the
Fridericianum (documenta’s main exhibition
building), but also in an adjacent room, Beuys
held his 100 day discussion forum (Free
International University), open to all and open
to all ideas. I could not have had a better
introduction to Beuys’s ‘expanded concept
of art’. And now Richard Demarco was telling
Opposite: me that Edinburgh had been introduced to these
Joseph Beuys
revolutionary ideas of Beuys in 1970 and, not
and
Jürgen Harten only that, but that his art and ideas had been
in an ECA studio presented in the wider context of a number of
(SGA 1970).
Photo © George Oliver,
artists who had also studied or who had taught
Demarco Digital Archive. at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art.
One of the reasons why I had been keen to work
at the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh was that
Douglas Hall, its founding Director (then called
Keeper), was very open to modern German art,
by no means a common phenomenon in 1960s
Britain. He had begun acquiring German
Expressionist art in the mid-1960s: Jawlensky’s
Head of a Woman c.1911 (bought in 1964),
Kirchner’s Japanese Theatre c.1909 (bought
in 1965), Nolde’s Head 1913 (bought in 1968),
Beuys’s Three Pots for the Poorhouse – Action
Object 1974 ( bought the same year) and
Dix’s Nude Girl on a Fur 1932 (bought in 1980).
Hall had also put on exhibitions of German art
from the earliest years since the Gallery’s opening
in 1961: Paul Klee (1962 and 1974), German
Expressionist Prints (1963), Lyonel Feininger (1964),
Emil Nolde (1968), Joseph Beuys. The Secret Block
for a Secret Person in Ireland (1974), Wassily
Kandinsky (1975) and Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1979).
When Richard Calvocoressi became Hall’s
assistant in the mid-1970s, he also brought a
strong interest in German art and helped acquire
Schwitters’s Untitled (Relief with Red Pyramid)
c.1923-25 and George Grosz’s drawing Toads of
Property 1920. In 1987 Calvocoressi returned to
Edinburgh as Hall’s successor. He went on to
make some major acquisitions, not only of
early twentieth-century German art, such as
Kokoschka’s drawing of Alma Mahler c.1913,
Barlach’s rare wooden sculpture, The Terrible
Year 1937, made in 1936, but also of significant
post-war works as well, such as Baselitz’s
painting Pillow 1987,his painted limewood
sculpture Untitled 1982-84 and Günter Brus’s
Untitled photographic collage of 1965. But by
13
Foreword
Keith Hartley
far and away the most important additions of
German art came just after Calvocoressi left the
Gallery (but crucially initiated by him), with the
joint acquisition in 2008 with Tate of the ARTIST
ROOMS Collection, through The d’Offay
Donation with assistance from the National
Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund.
This acquisition, a resource to benefit museums
and galleries throughout the UK, included an
internationally important group of works by
Beuys and major paintings by Richter, Baselitz
and Kiefer. This ground-breaking acquisition
was something that I was closely involved with,
as well, of course, were Sir John Leighton,
Director-General of the National Galleries and
Simon Groom, the new Director of the Gallery
of Modern Art.
Since Calvocoressi and I were keenly interested
in German art, it was natural that we also worked
together on a series of exhibitions of German
artists. These included Wols and German Informel
Drawings (both in 1990), Otto Dix: The Dresden
Collection of Works on Paper and Georg Baselitz:
A Retrospective Exhibition (both in 1992),
John Heartfield (1993), The Romantic Spirit in
German Art 1790-1990 (1994; an exhibition held at
the Royal Scottish Academy and The Fruitmarket
Gallery, which included works by Beuys,
Richter, Polke and Palermo), Correspondences:
Scotland/Berlin (a show of contemporary art
from Scotland and Berlin and held first at the
Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin and subsequently
at the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh
in 1997-98), Andreas Gursky: Photographs 1994-98
and Joseph Beuys Editions: The Schlegel Collection
(both in 1999), The Private Klee: Works from the
Bürgi Collection (2000) and Sigmar Polke: Music
14
of Unclear Origin (2001). Under Simon Groom’s
directorship, important exhibitions of German art
continued with Gerhard Richter (2008-09), August
Sander (in 2011), Joseph Beuys (in 2016) and Emil
Nolde (in 2018).
In 1995 the Gallery of Modern Art purchased part
of Richard Demarco’s archive, covering the period
from 1949 until 1995, including his involvement
with Jim Haynes’s Paperback Bookshop (and
Gallery) and the Traverse Theatre and the
founding of Demarco’s own gallery in 1966. The
acquisition did not include Demarco’s collection
of art works nor his photographs. These both
remained with Demarco, as did all the archival
material he produced since 1995. The Gallery was,
however, a partner institution in the digitisation
project of Demarco’s photographs that was based
in Dundee, instigated by Arthur Watson and Euan
McArthur at Dundee University and Duncan of
Jordanstone College of Art and Design. Included
in the archive now at the Gallery of Modern Art
is a substantial quantity of material on Strategy:
Get Arts, including photographs by George Oliver,
who was commissioned to document the
exhibition. Indeed the material is so rich that it
has been shown on several occasions in archival
displays and exhibitions at the Gallery, such as:
Demarco Focus One: Richard Demarco in the 1960s
(shown in 2003); Demarco Focus Two: Edinburgh
Arts 1972-80 (2004-05); Strategy: Get Arts Revisited;
Focus on Demarco (2008); Richard Demarco and
Joseph Beuys – A Unique Partnership and Strategy:
Get Arts (both in 2016, displays that were mounted
at the Gallery of Modern Art at the same time
as an exhibition of all the Beuys drawings in the
ARTIST ROOMS Collection, called ARTIST ROOMS.
Joseph Beuys: A Language of Drawing).
 Since the Gallery of Modern Art’s acquisition When Richard Demarco realised the revolutionary
of the ARTIST ROOMS Collection the staff and importance of the art being produced in
students of the History of Art Department at Düsseldorf and the Rhineland back in the late
Edinburgh University have been closely involved 1960s and, with dogged determination and
in elucidating the works of art in that collection, eloquent powers of persuasion, went on to curate
writing texts, organising symposia and seminars, the exhibition Strategy: Get Arts, few would have
lecturing and taking part in public conversations. believed that Edinburgh would one day become
German art, especially the work of Joseph Beuys the most important centre for seeing and studying
and other post-war artists, has been a particular modern German art in the UK. For that is what it
area of interest. This has been championed by has become.
Dr Christian Weikop and the Research Forum
Keith Hartley
for German Visual Culture which he founded.
Chief Curator and
There have been symposia on August Sander,
Deputy Director of Modern and Contemporary Art,
Modernist Magazines, Joseph Beuys, and
National Galleries of Scotland,
Degenerate Art, lectures and in-conversations
on Baselitz, Beuys, Richter, and Kiefer, and not
least, PhD students (one a formal, collaborative
arrangement with the Gallery) using the gallery’s
resources of German art in its collection, library
and archive.

Right:
Response of
ECA student collective
(Iacabaw Enterprises)
to Strategy: Get Arts (1970).
Photo © George Oliver,
Courtesy of
Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

15
Foreword
Juan Cruz

In 2012 and at the instigation of Antony Hudek the I also first met Richard Demarco in Liverpool
Exhibition Research Centre (ERC) was founded at when he accepted an invitation to hold a public
Liverpool School of Art and Design, of which I was talk with Catherine Marcangeli, the widow of
then Director. The aim of the centre was to be the Adrian Henri, about whom the ERC was planning
first academic centre devoted to the study of an exhibition and an associated publication to
exhibitions. Its mission was to support research in highlight Henri’s pioneering role as the creator of
this overlooked area of study by publishing books some of the first happenings in the UK during the
and organising exhibitions, lectures and other 1960s and 1970s. The project aimed to reconsider
public events. Henri’s legacy – he is mainly known as a poet,
painter and musician – through his embrace of
The inaugural keynote lecture at ERC considered
‘Total Art’ as a template for contemporary
the histories and contemporary relevance of the
interdisciplinary practice.
Kunsthalle – or non-collecting contemporary art
space, aiming to better understand the role that The parallels in the artistic spirit of Henri and
such spaces have played in hosting some of the Demarco are clear, and Richard spoke lucidly with
most radical curatorial interventions by directors, Catherine about the dynamic link, as he saw it,
curators and artists, becoming an essential between Edinburgh and Liverpool as centres of
reference point and source of inspiration for their own creative universes. I had been aware of
museums as they reassess their function as Richard’s work for many years, and Strategy: Get
keepers of objects and tradition. Arts (1970) was a frequent point of discussion at
the ERC as a unique and seminal exhibition that
Speakers in the series included Maria Lind,
exactly articulated the kind of radical curatorial
Alanna Heiss, Mihnea Mircan, Adelina von
interventions that Hudek was eager to surface.
Fürstenberg and, importantly in the context of
I hadn’t though been aware of Harten’s important
this special edition on the fiftieth anniversary of
role in supporting the staging of this exhibition
Strategy: Get Arts, Jürgen Harten, whose talk was
until I saw some of the photographic images that
titled “The Kunsthalle Legend: The Kunsthalle
form part of this publication and planned exhibition.
Düsseldorf and its exhibition policy with regard
to the quest for avantgardism and the promotion
of contemporary art in the second half of the
twentieth century.” I hadn’t previously come
across Jürgen Harten, and was extremely
impressed at the articulation of his motives for
pursuing the radical exhibition policies that he
did in Düsseldorf, including key exhibitions by
Joseph Beuys.

16
 Most memorable about Harten’s discussion of his
work in Düsseldorf was his foregrounding of the
political dimensions of the work of the artists with
whom he worked. Speaking from the perspective
of 2014, he forcefully asserted that the motivations
of the artists he chose to work with then were
predominantly political, and rather lamented the
celebration of the more stylistic elements of their
work. He also provocatively lamented the fact
that not more contemporary artists made work
about money, since he understood this now
categorically to be the prime driver of the
art world.
Right:
Jürgen Harten and
Jennifer Gough-Cooper
in an ECA studio
in preparation for
Strategy: Get Arts (1970).
Photo © George Oliver,
Courtesy of
Jennifer Gough-Cooper.
Strategy: Get Arts haunts the Main Building of
Edinburgh College of Art, and the ongoing
challenge for us here now is what to do with
those spectres of the not so near past. We take
pride of course in the significance that they give
our studios and other grand spaces, and we are
reassured that we have maintained so much of
the architectural features that grant the images
such a particular aesthetic. Perhaps though it’s
time now, half a century on from the event, to
acknowledge and act upon Harten’s critical
challenge not to be seduced by how all this
looked, but to engage with the urgency of the
politics that inspired him, Richard Demarco, and
many others to make this important exhibition.
Professor Juan Cruz
Principal of Edinburgh College of Art
University of Edinburgh
17
Above: Opposite:
Strategy: Get Arts Stefan Wewerka
banner being erected at walking alongside
ECA Main Building Strategy: Get Arts
entrance (August 1970). banner up to
Photo © George Oliver, ECA Main Building
Courtesy of entrance (August 1970).
Jennifer Gough-Cooper. Photo © George Oliver,
Courtesy of
Jennifer Gough-Cooper.

18
Preface
Alexander Hamilton
This special book edition of Studies in Photography
marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Edinburgh
International Festival exhibition – Strategy: Get Arts
(SGA) held at Edinburgh College of Art in 1970.
The driving force behind this publication is
Dr Christian Weikop, Senior Lecturer in Modern
and Contemporary German Art at the University
of Edinburgh. As a specialist on leading twentieth-
century German artists, he has contributed
various illuminating essays on SGA, and has
written new profiles of all thirty-five artists from
Düsseldorf that took part in this pioneering
exhibition. The SGA50 project was first prompted
by an important conference, An Expanded
Concept of Art. New Perspectives on Joseph Beuys,
which Dr Weikop organised at ECA in 2016. Just
as this publication, conceived in 2020, marks
fifty years since SGA, so it looks forward to the
centenary of the birth of Beuys in 2021.
Studies in Photography has been offering insights
into photographic history since our inception
in 1987. Publication of Strategy: Get Arts. 35 Artists
Who Broke the Rules offers us the opportunity
to fully reassess the significance of this event,
documented in 1970 through the photography of
George Oliver, Monika Baumgartl, Ute Klophaus,
and Richard Demarco. Just six years later in 1976,
Colin Thompson, Keeper at The National Gallery
of Scotland, commented on SGA as a breath of
fresh air in the highly conservative Scottish art
world. He gave a perfectly-pitched response to
the exhibition:
Opposite:
Looking back, it was not so much the fur
Gotthard Graubner breathing on the dinner plates, the empty
outside ECA Main Building
room, the broken chairs littering the staircase
with debris of the
‘Mist Room’, with Klaus like sad remnants of some fruitless and
Rinke’s water jet spouting incomprehensible assault, or the series
from main entrance (1970).
Photo
of half-apologetic, bromide stained
© Monika Baumgartl. photographs of haunting ambiguity.
Nor was it all together the mounting sense
of expectancy- sometimes of disappointment
(it was a very uneven affair) - as one went
from one room to the next. The real triumph
was in bringing this exhibition to Edinburgh -
incoherent, outrageous counterblast to the
comfortable, glossy commercialisation of
Princes Street- and getting it into the official
festival programme.1
As chair of the publishing organisation, I am
delighted to be able to present this special
edition, which presents fifty new texts representing
the fiftieth anniversary, as well as many stunning
photographs of the event. As one of the student
helpers at SGA, the exhibition was particularly
significant for me. It changed many people’s lives,
including my own; and most notably, that of
Richard Demarco, who has described how the
exhibition prompted him to close his Melville
Crescent gallery, as the experience of SGA had
convinced him of that space’s inadequacy for the
presentation of artists involved in performance
and environmental art.2
I would like to thank the University of Edinburgh,
Creative Scotland and the National Galleries of
Scotland for their ongoing commitment to the
study and advancement of photography in
Scotland; and also to the writers whose articles
have made this publication possible. A particular
acknowledgement should be made of the
photographers who documented the exhibition
and to Kirstie Meehan, who maintains the important
NGS archive of material on SGA upon which this
publication is based.
Alexander Hamilton
Series Editor, Studies in Photography
1. The Richard Demarco Gallery, 1966-1976,
10th anniversary exhibition catalogue,
RDG , Edinburgh, 1976.
2. Ibid.
21
Introduction:
Christian Weikop
In February 2011, six months after arriving at
Edinburgh University from Berlin, I decided to set
up the Research Forum for German Visual Culture
(RFGVC), launching it at the University’s Talbot
Rice Gallery on the invitation of then director,
Pat Fisher, during their run of an exhibition on
Düsseldorf-based artist, Rosemarie Trockel.
As part of my opening talk, I discussed the
importance of Herbert Read, Watson Gordon
Professor of Fine Art at Edinburgh University
between 1931 and 1933. During his short tenure,
Read published Art Now (1933), dedicated to
his friend Max Sauerlandt, the Director of the
Hamburg Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, who
had been dismissed from his post in April 1933
by the National Socialists for his advocacy of
Expressionism and avant-garde art more
generally. Read was one of the organisers of
Twentieth-Century German Art (1938) at the New
Burlington Galleries, London, an exhibition that
travelled in a smaller iteration to the McLellan
Galleries in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, in 1939.
This London-Glasgow exhibition celebrated
the Expressionist art that the Nazis defined as
‘degenerate’, drawing the ire of Adolf Hitler
precisely because it was seen as being in
opposition to the touring Entartete Kunst
(Degenerate Art) exhibition (1937-41), which
sought to defame and expunge Expressionism.
It was the Twentieth-Century German Art exhibition
that Peter Diamand, Director of the Edinburgh
International Festival, was referring to in the
Strategy: Get Arts (1970) exhibition catalogue,
when he stated: ‘I am pleased that the 1970
Edinburgh Festival has been able to include,
22
as part of its official programme, a major exhibition
of Contemporary German art, the first to be
shown in Britain since 1938.’1 The Düsseldorf-
based artists who took over ECA in the late
summer of 1970 were, however, closer in spirit
to Dada than Expressionism, inheritors of the
provocative performance tradition of Cabaret
Voltaire in Zurich (1916) and the radical display
strategies of the First International Dada Fair in
Berlin (1920). The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf had
staged an important retrospective of Dada
in 1958 in the old bomb-damaged, patched-up
Kunsthalle building, an exhibition which had some
impact on the young artists connected with the
emergence of a Düsseldorf art scene, artists later
associated with the new ‘Brutalist’ Kunsthalle,
which opened in 1967. Intriguingly, the German
art critic Georg Jappe, writing in the SGA
catalogue, described the diverse Düsseldorf
avant-garde after 1945 as having a common
denominator in being ‘anti-Expressionist’.2 This
did not mean that these artists were in line with
National Socialist thinking, the opposite was true,
but this publication considers the SGA artists’
individual contributions, leaving it for the reader
to decide why Jappe might have made this point.
Sitting in the audience for the RFGVC launch
in 2011 was Prof Andrew Patrizio. I was already
aware of the reputation of Prof Richard Demarco
CBE as a great promoter of the visual and
performing arts in Scotland, not least through
the Edinburgh Festival, but it was Patrizio who first
told me about Strategy: Get Arts. He had been
involved with ECA’s controversial Palermo This international symposium led to another,
Restore (2005), a project to reinstate the artist’s ‘Joseph Beuys and Europe: Crossing Borders,
Blau/Gelb/Weiss/Rot (1970), a colourful Bridging Histories’, that I co-organised in
architrave intervention in the ECA Main Building collaboration with the Henry Moore Institute at
stairwell, which was whitewashed by the Leeds Art Gallery in January 2018, with Demarco
college shortly after SGA ended in 1970. Patrizio as the keynote speaker. Both conferences
succinctly reflects on the debate concerning resulted in a special issue on Beuys for Tate
the ‘recreation’ versus ‘uncovering’ of Papers (no.31, Spring 2019), which I guest-edited.3
Blinky Palermo’s work in this publication. My own contributions to this issue comprised an
essay entitled ‘”More Impact than the Venice
Two exhibitions on Joseph Beuys were held
Biennale”: Demarco, Beuys and Strategy: Get Arts’,
simultaneously at the Scottish National Gallery
focusing on the British critical reception of the
of Modern Art in autumn 2016. Upstairs in the
exhibition, and ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging
Modern Two building was an ARTIST ROOMS
Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation with
exhibition on Beuys’s drawings, and downstairs
Richard Demarco’, in which Demarco reflected
Richard Demarco & Joseph Beuys – A Unique
on SGA and his close relationship with Beuys,
Partnership. Connected to the Demarco exhibition
Günther Uecker, and other artists, as well as on
was a fascinating archive display on SGA, which
the impact that the ‘Celtic world’ had on Beuys’s
was put together in the Keiller Library by the
creativity. In 2019, scholarship on SGA was
archivist Kirstie Meehan, also a contributor
certainly picking up in anticipation of the fiftieth
to this publication. And as part of the official
anniversary. Karen Barber had her article
programme for these National Galleries of
‘Documents and Archives: Photography Of, At
Scotland (NGS) exhibitions, I organised
and In the 1970 Strategy: Get Arts Exhibition’,
‘An Expanded Concept of Art: New Perspectives
published in the Summer 2019 issue of Studies
on Joseph Beuys’, an international symposium
in Photography, and Barber’s piece in this book
held at ECA in the Main Lecture Theatre and
publication is a brief distillation of that much more
Sculpture Court, spaces that had been used for
extensive article, focusing here specifically on the
SGA back in 1970. Richard Demarco was guest of
photographers of SGA.
honour at this October 2016 conference and
also on the panel at a related event, the Playfair
Library roundtable, ‘Artists’ Recollections of
Joseph Beuys in Edinburgh’, organised by one
of my research students, Andrew Symons, who
has been working on Beuys for his collaborative
PhD with NGS.

23
Introduction
Christian Weikop

Besides Demarco, another participant at these and liaising with key Kunsthalle Düsseldorf staff.
Beuys events was Alexander Hamilton, Chair In my essays, I write on Demarco’s extraordinary
of the Scottish Society for the History of drive in the early formation of Strategy: Get Arts,
Photography (SSHoP) and my collaborator on as well as the importance of the German
this SGA50 project. Hamilton had been a student organisers, Karl Ruhrberg, Jürgen Harten, and
helper at SGA, where he had a unique opportunity Georg Jappe, but Gough-Cooper gives her own
to support the work of visiting Düsseldorf artists, first-hand account, discussing the break offered
a career-changing experience as he explains to her by Demarco, and the impact working on
in his essay for this publication. During the 2016 SGA had on her career, not least her involvement
conference, he showed delegates around the with the documenta.
ECA spaces utilised by the artists back in 1970.
It was important for this publication to bring
This led to the idea of filming an interview with
different perspectives into the existing narratives
him, intercut with George Oliver photographs of
on the exhibition and its legacy. It was also
the exhibition. This RFGVC film was screened at
important to profile all the artists who contributed
ECA in 2018 and 2019, and has inspired another
to the exhibition, including those who are perhaps
more professional production, currently in
not so well known to anglophone audiences.
development, by American film director
Previous considerations of the exhibition have
Ted Fisher, who specialises in arts and culture
understandably focused on Beuys, a hugely
documentaries. One of many interviews Fisher
influential artist and charismatic figure, who
conducted in preparation for this film was with
continued to collaborate with Demarco throughout
Douglas Hall OBE (1926-2019), the first Keeper
the 1970s and early 1980s, but this publication
of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art,
attends closely to other participants too. The
and his wife Matilda Hall, both of whom had
lack of female artist representation at SGA is
attended SGA in 1970. With Hamilton, Fisher,
immediately noticeable. There were only two
and myself putting questions to them, this proved
female artists involved, Dorothy Iannone and
to be the last ever interview with Douglas Hall.
Hilla Becher, but this was the reality of those
Some short excerpts from that interview are
times. As Andrew Symons has discovered,
included in this publication. Another interviewee
‘Of over two hundred artists who exhibited in the
Opposite: was Jennifer Gough-Cooper, who joined the
Stefan Wewerka paintings and sculpture section at documenta III
Richard Demarco Gallery as an administrator
posing on the (1964), just six were women. Of sixty artists
main staircase of in 1969, but by the spring of 1970 found herself in
participating in Festum Fluxorum Fluxus (1963),
ECA Main Building the role of Scottish co-ordinator of SGA. Rising to
(SGA 1970). only two were women.’4 The gender balance
the challenge, she was essential to the success
Photo would slowly improve with the next generation of
© Monika Baumgartl. of the exhibition, working closely with Demarco

24
25
Introduction
Christian Weikop
artists, not least with the rise of Rosemarie Trockel
(b.1952), who called into question the patriarchy
of the West German art scene of the 1960s and
1970s, but it was not until 1998 that Trockel
was made a professor at the Kunstakademie
Düsseldorf.
Of critical importance to this publication has been
the Demarco Digital Archive (DDA), an invaluable
resource maintained by the University of Dundee,
who have generously supplied a number of
photographs by Richard Demarco and George
Oliver. Oliver was the partner of Cordelia Oliver,
the Guardian’s arts correspondent in Scotland
for more than three decades, who provided
enthusiastic critical coverage for SGA, while
her husband provided extensive photo-
documentation. These photographs have been
supplemented by another personal set of Oliver
photographs in the collection of Gough-Cooper,
with permission to use George Oliver photographs
kindly granted by his nephew, David Oliver.
Another key archive is the Richard Demarco
Archive at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern
Art (SNGMA; Modern Two), covering all aspects
of Demarco’s career from the 1960s to the 1990s,
with folders on Strategy: Get Arts (1970) containing
many documents relating to the exhibition. The
SNGMA have supported us with images, some
published here for the very first time, critical for
filling in gaps in the visual record. This archive is
a tremendous resource because it allows the
possibility of effectively reconstructing the
exhibition and events leading up to and beyond
the exhibition, but it is also a challenge because
26
of the sheer amount of documentation and the
need to identify the most salient correspondence.
My work for various essays and all the texts on
the participating SGA artists in this publication has
been absolutely grounded in the documents of
this NGS archive. These documents reveal the
highs and lows of the exhibition-making process.
There were some tense moments and times
when it seemed as if the whole initiative might
collapse. The essays and texts in this SGA50
edition reveal several dramas, but this is partly
what makes this international exhibition,
unconventionally staged in a city art college,
so endlessly fascinating. It was a ‘sensation’
exhibition in different respects, but unlike the
Royal Academy Sensation exhibition of 1997,
which further ‘branded’ Charles Saatchi’s YBAs
(in many ways indebted to their Düsseldorf
predecessors), SGA was not looking to the art
market. The artists and Demarco dissented from
any ‘art-as-commodity’ attitudes. Rather, it was
an interdisciplinary effort among activist artists
to promote European art and ideas.
Cross-referencing between the SNGMA Richard
Demarco Archive and the Demarco Digital
Archive (DDA) has been important to address
lacunae in our knowledge of what was actually
exhibited. There is no definitive ‘list of works’
shown at SGA in the SNGMA archive or DDA.
There are provisional lists and transport lists,
and these have been used in this reconstruction
process, but last minute revisions in the SGA
display in 1970 complicate the detective work.
Photographic evidence is also only helpful to a
point. Currently unavailable on the DDA are clear
photographs of SGA artist contributions in situ
by George Brecht, Peter Brüning, Karl Gerstner,
Mauricio Kagel, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhöfer,
Lutz Mommartz, Tony Morgan, Sigmar Polke,
Gerhard Richter, Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri
(although the Banana Trap Dinner is captured),
and Franz Erhard Walther. Furthermore, one
work by Adolf Luther (a Focusing Room) has been
misidentified as being by Gotthard Graubner.
Kagel, Kolhöfer, and Mommartz contributed films
to SGA, and Walther was unable to attend, which
would account for their absence. Oliver and
Demarco photographs on the DDA of course
show work by other SGA contributors, but some-
times this work is obscured by art objects, as is
the case for the installation of photographs by
Bernd and Hilla Becher, seen on a studio wall,
through the semi-transparent containers of
Erich Reusch.
I discovered some photographic prints and
negatives in the NGS archive, as well as in
Gough-Cooper’s own personal set of Oliver
photographs, which do reveal some of the missing
artworks, but the absence on the DDA of now
very famous individuals, such as Roth, Polke, and
Richter is striking. There may be several reasons
for this situation. Artists who are now major
international stars were not necessarily well
known, certainly to a UK gallery-going public,
in 1970. Any sense of ‘priority’ might not have
been entirely clear to Oliver, who was
commissioned by the Richard Demarco Gallery,
and instructed by Gough-Cooper to cover
(at speed) the installation of the SGA exhibition
at ECA, for the agreed fee of 50 pounds.
In a letter to Oliver, Gough-Cooper writes:
the Exhibition will begin taking shape from
Monday 10th August […] John Martin says
that he needs some photographs for the
catalogue not later than the morning of
Thursday, the 13th.5
Oliver was charged with capturing the making of
a new kind of exhibition of art in process, adopting
a form of ‘event photography’, rather than taking
tightly focused static photographs of art objects.
Some of his photographs reveal a notable,
some might say refreshing, institutional lack of
concern for ‘health and safety’ issues, as with
the remarkable images of Palermo balancing
precariously up a very tall ladder, or the smashing
of chairs for Wewerka’s ‘action’ in front of Beuys’s
young son, Wenzel. Oliver’s photographs truly
capture the excitement of this 1970 moment, but
the pace at which he needed to work meant that
some contributions by now famous artists can
only be glimpsed in the photographs on the back
walls of ECA studios, or in the process of being
handled by student helpers. This is true of Polke,
Roth, and Richter, as well as others. In the case
of Polke, the four paintings are not installed, but
can be seen resting on a back wall. It took many
weeks of studying documentation in the SNGMA
archive before they were identified, helped
by the transport list, which provided sufficient
information for a positive identification. We know
that they arrived at ECA damaged, which might
account for the lack of clear photo capture.
27
Introduction
Christian Weikop
During the process of researching this project,
I discovered the comprehensive Gerhard Richter
website, a digital archive of all the artist’s work,
which shows the seven paintings exhibited at SGA
(https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/
exhibitions/edinburgh-international-festival-
strategy-get-arts-272).
The lack of photographic evidence for Richter’s
contribution in situ was initially frustrating, given
that it was clear what he contributed. However,
in analysing Oliver negatives on a lightbox in the
SNGMA archive shortly before lockdown due
to Covid-19 in March 2020, I came across the
evidence I was seeking. These vintage negatives
were enlarged by NGS and are published here for
the first time. They do not show Richter paintings
installed, but being handled by students after the
unpacking of work. This was an exciting discovery.
As well as publishing photographs by Oliver and
Demarco, we have been granted permission
by the important German photographer and
performance artist, Monika Baumgartl (b.1942),
to publish her SGA photographs from 1970. It has
been a pleasure to be in correspondence with
Baumgartl, who has been very supportive of
this publication, and I am delighted that we
Opposite:
can present a number of her truly remarkable
Stefan Wewerka
on the main staircase of
photographs of the ‘actions’ and installations
ECA Main Building of the artists – Palermo, Beuys, Christiansen,
with the broken
Wewerka, Uecker, and Graubner (specifically his
bentwood chairs
from his ‘action’ ‘Mist Room’, both before and after it burnt down).
(SGA 1970).
She and Klaus Rinke had not long returned from
Photo
© Monika Baumgartl.
participating in the 10th Tokyo Biennale (May 1970)
© DACS 2021. when they engaged with SGA. As discussed in my
28
essay ‘Düsseldorf in Edinburgh: The Importance
of the Germans’, she documented Strategy: Get
Arts for the German publication Kunst-Zeitung,
which devoted an entire issue to the ECA 1970
exhibition.
I want to thank Alex Hamilton for his friendship
and collaborative spirit in wanting to make this
publication happen. It will pave the way for an
installation of SGA photographs at ECA, and more
besides. Additionally, thanks go to our ECA
Principal, Professor Juan Cruz, for his belief in
this project, and for writing such an interesting
foreword, which reveals his connections to Jürgen
Harten and Richard Demarco in particular.
And finally, I want to thank my esteemed friend,
Chief Curator, Keith Hartley, for his opening
foreword, which says so much about the history
of displaying modern and contemporary
German art in Edinburgh. SGA50 coincides with a
number of other anniversaries. In this tough Covid
year of 2020, I turned fifty, Alex turned seventy,
and Richard Demarco turned ninety. We would
therefore like to dedicate this special SGA50
edition to Prof Richard Demarco’s extraordinary
achievements.
1. See Peter Diamand in Strategy: Get Arts,
exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p.
2. See Georg Jappe,
‘The Republic of Individualists’, ibid., n.p.
3. See https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/
tate-papers/31
4. I would like to thank Andrew Symons for allowing me
to cite this information from his unpublished PhD thesis
(in process).
5. GMA A37/1/0559. /46. 1 x ts. Letter to George Oliver
from Jennifer Gough-Cooper, 4/8/1970, 1p.
29
Richard Demarco
and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts
Christian Weikop

Richard Demarco (b.1930) was first invited to tour West German art institutions by Brigitte
Lohmeyer, the Cultural Attaché at the German Embassy in London. In January 1970,
Demarco had returned from a coast-to-coast cultural tour of the United States as a guest of
the American government, and was in discussions concerning staging an Edinburgh Festival
exhibition that would consolidate the idea that New York was the centre of the post-1945 art
world. Demarco’s decision to go to Düsseldorf and other German cities, however, proved to
be critical in changing his focus. His interest in this German city as a major European centre
of contemporary art had already been piqued as a result of meeting Düsseldorf-based
artist, Günther Uecker, at the first ROSC - an international exhibition of modern art, held
in Dublin in 1967. Demarco had also been overwhelmed by Beuys’s contribution to the
1968 documenta 4 in Kassel and was well aware that Beuys was the Professor of Sculpture
at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.1 He was therefore highly receptive to Lohmeyer’s
invitation to visit Düsseldorf and other key German art centres when it came.

Demarco’s first rendezvous in Düsseldorf on the evening of 27 January 1970 was with
Vivien Gough-Cooper at the Restaurant Spoerri. Gough-Cooper, a director of the Richard
Demarco Gallery, had championed Demarco’s artistic vision and would accompany him
on trips abroad to seek out new artists to bring to Scotland. Her daughter,
Jennifer Gough-Cooper, would join the gallery team as an administrator in 1969, and she
would become the Scottish co-ordinator of Strategy: Get Arts. Demarco’s diary records
that the first thing he did on the morning after arriving in Düsseldorf was phone Beuys.2
He arranged a time to see him the following day in his Oberkassel studio. Demarco famously
enticed Beuys to visit Scotland by showing him two dozen postcards of the Scottish
landscape, including Celtic and Pictish standing stones, thereby making a connection to
Beuys’s own birthplace, the Celtic enclave of Kleve in the Lower Rhine region of Germany.
The photograph Demarco took of Beuys looking out to Castle Stalker on 8 May 1970 (his
first visit to the ‘land of Macbeth’) is an image of the artist successfully transported from
Düsseldorf and projected into the absorbing physical and historical reality of this Scottish
‘picture postcard’ view, just as Demarco had hoped. Beuys’s experiences of the sublime
landscape of Scotland would have a profound impact on his practice for the rest of his career.3

30
Right:
Joseph Beuys
looking out to
Castle Stalker,
Loch Laich,
Argyll, Scotland.
8 May 1970.
Photo
© Richard Demarco,
Demarco Digital Archive.

Demarco’s reliable guide in Düsseldorf was Hete Hünermann, who would later become a
successful gallerist with an international reputation. In 1970, Hünermann represented Inter
Nationes, the German equivalent of the British Council. She can be seen with her arms
folded and in the company of Gerhard Richter and Uecker in a Demarco photograph of
Richter’s studio. Demarco’s gallery and studio tour itinerary (27 January – 7 February 1970)
was from the outset extraordinary in terms of the pace of visits. He started on the morning
of the 28th, accompanied by Hünermann, and visited the Galerie Alex Vömel, Galerie Niepel,
Galerie Ileana Popescu, the Kunsthalle and Kunstverein, Galerie Hella Nebelung, and
Uecker’s flat, all before lunch. He seemed particularly impressed by the Galerie Hella
Nebelung, and he noted in his diary: ‘Exquisite Gallery set in old classical pavilion bordering
a lake in City centre. Domestic atmosphere’. Hella Nebelung was at the forefront of the
vibrant Düsseldorf art scene after 1945; she was the first to show Yves Klein’s monochromes
in 1955, and the first to show kinetic art in 1963. Her gallery, a former guard house in Ratinger
Tor, was one of the city’s intellectual centres. After Nebelung’s death in 1985, and after the
intercession of Beuys, Hete Hünermann would take over the gallery in 1986.

Demarco also recorded in his diary a lunch meeting at the ‘Little Fox’ pub: ‘Put the idea
of Edinburgh as setting for German art show on lines of Canada 101 to Uecker. He was
enthusiastic. Agreed to meet later at the studio of Gerhard Richter.’ As it transpired, SGA was
to be a very different kind of exhibition to Canada 101, which Demarco had staged at ECA
for the Festival in 1968, and which was more conventional in the sense of being exclusively

31
Richard Demarco
and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts
Christian Weikop

focused on painting, albeit avant-garde painting. Clearly the success of that show
had implanted the idea of ECA, Demarco’s alma mater, as a potential large venue.
He understood early on in the genesis of the exhibition that an art college environment,
rather than a city gallery, was better suited for the experimental work he wanted to show,
Below:
Left - Right: as well as being a means of conveying the idea of ‘artist-teacher’ as personified by Beuys.
Günther Uecker,
Gerhard Richter and Later that day, Demarco visited the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and its director
Hete Hünermann,
Dr Werner Schmalenbach, as well as the Galerie Schmela (est. 1957), one of the most
in Richter’s studio,
28 Jan 1970. important contemporary art galleries in Germany in the postwar period. This progressive
Photo
gallery was one of a number in and around Düsseldorf, which benefited from the prosperity
© Richard Demarco,
Demarco Digital Archive. of the ‘Economic Miracle’, a new climate of wealth that encouraged art collecting, particularly
in the Ruhr area. The Galerie Schmela
represented a number of artists
who would participate in SGA.
In the evening, Demarco visited
the studio of Richter with Uecker
and Hünermann. Demarco’s first
impression of Richter is noted in
his diary as a ‘superb painter
(reminiscent of Jim Howie, but more
realistic) – using photography as
basis of paintings.’ On Uecker and
Richter he adds, ‘They both agreed
to gather the best young Düsseldorf
artists together to present our ideas
to them on Edinburgh show,
tomorrow evening.’

The next day Demarco continued with his studio/gallery tour with Hünermann, but he
travelled from Düsseldorf to Cologne to visit the Galerie Reckermann before moving on to
the ‘powerful’ Galerie Rudolf Zwirner. He then visited a number of other galleries, including
one belonging to Michael Werner, which had only just opened in 1969. Werner was showing
Georg Baselitz, Dieter Roth, Jörg Immendorff, A.R.Penck, Marcel Broodthaers and others.

32
 Considering the glamorous image and established reputation the Galerie Michael Werner
has today, with branches in London Mayfair and New York, in the historic East 77 Street
townhouse (where legendary dealer Leo Castelli once kept his gallery), it is intriguing that
Demarco noted in his diary: ‘Run on shoe string - very idealistic principles’, not a year after
Werner had established his Cologne premises.

Demarco then returned to Düsseldorf for a 3pm meeting in Richter’s studio, attended by
‘leading artists’, to discuss the Edinburgh exhibition idea. At this point, nineteen artists were
discussed as potential contributors, seventeen of whom would actually contribute, namely,
Uecker, Richter, Beuys, Daniel Spoerri, Konrad Klapheck, Gotthard Graubner, Erwin Heerich,
Blinky Palermo, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Klaus Rinke, Sigmar Polke, Heinz Mack, André Thomkins,
Dieter Roth, Karl Gerstner, Tony Morgan, and Imi Knoebel. By July 1970, the number of artists
involved in SGA had expanded to thirty-five.

Right: After visiting Richter’s studio,

Artists’ meeting in
Gerhard Richter’s studio
Demarco used the rest of
on 29 Jan 1970. the day to visit the studios
Günther Uecker (left),
Hete Hünermann (seated),
of Polke, Rinke, Morgan,
Richard Demarco standing Knoebel, and Rainer Giese
(centre, right).
Photographer unknown,
(known as Imi Giese). He
Demarco Digital Archive. then visited the apartment
of Konrad Fischer, whose
important gallery was
founded in 1967, and
who along with Uecker,
expressed an interest in
helping Demarco with the
exhibition. It was decided then, as noted in the diary, that it might be best if the artists
‘were presented as Düsseldorf artists and not German artists’. The roll-call of artists in SGA,
especially in its later expanded state, whilst predominantly German, was indeed international
in composition. And it was very much the internationalism of Düsseldorf as a major art centre
that those involved with SGA wanted to emphasise. After Fischer, Demarco viewed the art
collection of Gabriele Henkel, the sister of Hünermann and wife of the industrialist Konrad
Henkel, who like Hete was closely connected to the Düsseldorf art scene. Finally, Demarco

33
Richard Demarco
and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts
Christian Weikop

had dinner with Uecker and Mack, and would visit Mack’s studio in a ‘village area’ near
Mönchengladbach the following day. At the end of a busy evening, and after squeezing in
a late night visit to Gerstner’s studio, Demarco noted the following in his diary:

The influence of Professor Beuys and Group Zero is much felt. Contemporary artists
certainly are an integral part of society. There has been a tremendous boom in the last
three years in the art world in Germany. The Kunstmarkt at Köln and Dokumenta have
helped, and the fact that the art world is decentralised and the German economy is
booming. RDG must get its artists to be interested in and respectful of the German
scene. Exchange shows must take place to link Scotland with Germany.

On the 29 January, Demarco saw Dr Fliescher, ‘the man who is in charge of Culture for
the City of Düsseldorf’, who agreed that the idea of a show of Düsseldorf artists for the
Edinburgh Festival was a good one. In addition, he met the Assistant Director of the
Kunsthalle, Jürgen Harten, who would later prove to have such a key role in the exhibition
organisation. Harten advised Demarco that such an exhibition was only possible with the
support of his Director, Dr Karl Ruhrberg. Demarco then departed Düsseldorf for Frankfurt
and continued with his tour of Germany (including Wiesbaden, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and
Munich) where he met many other artists, gallerists, museum directors, dealers, and
collectors, but it seems that it was the first two or three days of his stay in Düsseldorf that
were really significant with respect to the early formation of SGA. Reflecting on what he
had seen, Demarco wrote to Jennifer Gough-Cooper on 31 January 1970:

Düsseldorf was unbelievable […] They believe in my hopes and plans, and will
support my idea of a show entitled “Düsseldorf in Edinburgh”. All the top artists live
in Düsseldorf.[…] All the artists I have seen are so good – as good as Paul Neagu.
The Düsseldorf scene is the most exciting and progressive in Europe. They are
representative of the best Germany has to offer. Your mother and I have been staggered
by the artist studios we have seen. UECKER organised all of this extra to the official tour
[…] This whole show would be a ‘happening’ – ten years ahead of anything in Britain
including the I.C.A.’s efforts. It has to happen during the Festival 1970.4

On the evening of Sunday 1 February at the Grandhotel Hessischer Hof in Frankfurt,

Demarco lost no time in dictating a letter about his ‘Düsseldorf in Edinburgh’ plans for the
attention of Dr Fliescher in Düsseldorf, with copies sent to Peter Diamand (the Berlin-born
and educated Director of the Edinburgh Festival) and Lohmeyer at the German Embassy.

34
 Demarco’s experiences in various other German cities only consolidated
his conception of the exhibition. In Karlsruhe, he met Dr Georg Bussmann,
Director of the Badischer Kunstverein, who informed him that the
Kunstmuseum Luzern had, the previous year, staged an exhibition called
the Düsseldorfer Szene (15 June – 13 July 1969), featuring seven of the
artists who would later be involved in SGA. Demarco noted in his diary
that this exhibition ‘could be a model for the Edinburgh show’. During this
meeting, Bussmann also discussed the pioneering exhibition Live In Your
Head: When Attitudes Become Form, held at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969
Above: and curated by Harald Szeemann, another ‘model’ for SGA. Interestingly, Gough-Cooper
Poster for the exhibition
would join Szeemann’s documenta 5 Kassel team in 1972.
Düsseldorfer Szene,
Kunstmuseum Luzern,
1969. Demarco spent much time considering new approaches to exhibition-making
Collection: with those he met in Germany, such as his ‘art collector and personal friend’,
ARTIST ROOMS
Tate and Ursula Rohloff, who showed him a catalogue for an innovative show of open studios at
National Galleries the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden called 14 mal 14. Eskalation (1969), organised
of Scotland.
AR00861. by now legendary curator, Klaus Gallwitz. Demarco noted in his diary that this exhibition
was ‘extraordinary’:

It involved the artists being given the use of the Gallery […] and the public were invited
to participate in their creation of the exhibition. From empty rooms, through happenings,
concerts, lectures, talk-outs, film shows […] A living thing. […] The artists lived in and
around the Gallery.

Demarco also visited Dr Ernst Hüdepohl, Director of Cultural Programmes at the Goethe-
Institut in Munich. Demarco credits him in the SGA catalogue as someone ‘who encouraged
me in my resolution to have as many artists as possible physically present in Edinburgh’.5
Such conversations were critical in the percolation of ideas about how an artists’ ‘take-over’
of ECA might be a possibility. In a detailed memorandum from 25 March 1970 to Peter
Diamand, Demarco stated that ‘the emphasis would not be on the usual installation of
paintings and sculptures within the usual accepted idea of an art gallery’, but rather ‘an
extension of the accepted role of the visual artist’.6 He also conveyed how Uecker, Mack, and
other artists wanted to create work in situ, and proposed the following: ‘I would like to create
environments which depend on these artists’ reaction to the spaces I would offer them at
the art college [...] Professor Beuys in fact would create an environment out of what would
be his first experiences of Scotland.’7

35
Richard Demarco
and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts
Christian Weikop

Right: Diamand was not unsupportive of Demarco’s exhibition idea, but as early as 5 February 1970,
Front cover of
New Directions
he had written to Demarco signalling his concern about the preparation time: ‘The idea
exhibition catalogue sounds very interesting, but unfortunately I am afraid it is too late for 1970. Why not wait until
showing
Richard Demarco Gallery,
1971 when everybody will have the time to prepare it thoroughly?’8 Asides from Diamand’s
Edinburgh. concern about the timeframe, Demarco faced difficulties in persuading the Visual Arts
Right – Left:
Richard Demarco,
Committee of the Festival Society of the suitability of the provisionally titled ‘Düsseldorf in
Cordelia Oliver, Edinburgh’ as an ‘official’ Festival exhibition, an issue that concerned the German organisers
Günther Uecker,
Lesley Benyon,
and Brigitte Lohmeyer too. Even when it was included in the official programme very late
Stefan Wewerka, on in May 1970, there was no financial support from the Society and only modest financial
George Oliver.
Demarco Digital Archive.
backing from the Scottish Arts Council. It was only due to Demarco’s total conviction that
the exhibition must happen, along with support from the city of Düsseldorf, Goethe-Institut
(Munich), and the German Embassy (London), as well as the founders and Friends of the
Richard Demarco Gallery, not to mention the Royal Bank of Scotland, that it was staged.
A lead-in time of six months from the genesis of a major exhibition to its realisation is
remarkable by any standard, especially one with so many moving parts, a new kind of
total ‘happening’.

As well as Strategy: Get Arts, which was presented by the Richard Demarco Gallery (RDG) in
association with Edinburgh College of Art and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Demarco staged
another exhibition in tandem with SGA at the Demarco Gallery at 8 Melville Crescent. This
was called New Directions (21 August – 12 September 1970) and featured three Romanian
artists - Ilie Pavel, Horia Bernea, and Paul Neagu, and four Scots - Michael Docherty,
Pat Douthwaite, Alistair Park, and Rory McEwen. McEwen had of course helped film Beuys
on the Rannoch Moor trip in August 1970. Photographs available on the Demarco Digital
Archive also show SGA artists Beuys and Henning Christiansen meeting artists at the
New Directions show. Intriguingly, artists that feature on the front cover of the New Directions
catalogue, namely Uecker and Stefan Wewerka, were associated with SGA at ECA rather
than the RDG exhibition, but the cover and contents point to the interrelationship of both
exhibitions. Demarco was particularly keen to initiate productive dialogues between West
and East European artists, across the ‘Iron Curtain’, as it were, at this time.

36
Richard Demarco
and the Formation of Strategy: Get Arts
Christian Weikop

There is no question that Demarco was brilliant at making connections, drumming up

support, financial, media, and otherwise, and generally galvanising interest in the exhibition,
as evidenced by the very large cache of typed and handwritten letters relating to SGA in
the Richard Demarco Archive at SNGMA. Many are from Demarco and Gough-Cooper to
the Festival committee, the Goethe-Institut, the Arts Council of Great Britain, BBC and STV,
various embassies, key parties in Düsseldorf and the rest of Germany, senior ECA staff -
especially the Principal Stanley Wright and Mr John Brown (College Secretary), and
Robin Philipson (Head of Painting), who took the greatest interest of all ECA faculty, helping
Demarco in repurposing studios into exhibition spaces. There are also official and personal
letters to all the artists involved, as well as invitations to many other individuals, including
the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Edward Heath.9 Demarco’s relentless energy to make this
experimental exhibition a reality was quite extraordinary. Some of that verve is captured
in a well-known George Oliver photograph of the official opening of Strategy: Get Arts
on 23 August 1970, which shows some of the curators, artists, patrons, senior college staff,
and other guests, including Herr Karl Guenther von Hase (the German Ambassador to Britain
who opened the exhibition), all standing together on the main stairway of ECA. In the middle
of it all, holding court, is of course Richard Demarco.

1. For more on this first encounter, see ‘Crossing Borders, Bridging Histories: Christian Weikop in conversation
with Richard Demarco’, Tate Papers, no.31, Spring 2019,
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-demarco-interview,
accessed 5 November 2020.
2. GMA A37/1/0566. /162. 1 x ts. 'DIARY REPORT: RICHARD DEMARCO'S TOUR OF WEST GERMAN ART CENTRES,
27/1/1970 - 7/2/1970, 11p. All further main text references to Demarco’s diary relate to this report and will not be
footnoted. GMA codes relate to the Richard Demarco Archive at Modern Two, SNGMA.
3. See for example, Sean Rainbird, Joseph Beuys and the Celtic World, London 2005; and
Victoria Walters, Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: A Language of Healing, Münster 2012.
4. GMA A37/1/0563. /119. 1 x ts. Letter to Jennifer Gough-Cooper from Richard Demarco, 31/1/1970, 1p
5. ‘Richard Demarco’, Strategy: Get Arts, exh. cat., Edinburgh, 1970, n.p.
6. GMA A37/1/0567. /33. 1 x ts. Letter from Richard Demarco to Peter Diamand re: ‘Memorandum on proposed
exhibition “Dusseldorf in Edinburgh”’, 25/3/1970.
7. Ibid.
8. GMA A37/1/0567. /34. 1 x ts. Letter from Peter Diamand to Richard Demarco, 5/2/1970.
9. GMA A37/1/0558. /120. 1 x ts. letter to Rt. Hon. Edward Heath from Richard Demarco, 25/7/1970, 1p.

38
Above:
Official opening of
Strategy: Get Arts,
ECA, 23 August 1970.
Photo © George Oliver,
Demarco Digital Archive.

39
Düsseldorf in Edinburgh:
The Importance of the Germans
Christian Weikop

The Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf had an instrumental role in the organisation of

Strategy: Get Arts, specifically involving the founding director, Karl Ruhrberg, and the deputy
director, Jürgen Harten, as well as the important art critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(FAZ), Georg Jappe, who was closely connected to the institution. Richard Demarco had met
Harten on his trip to Düsseldorf in late January 1970, and he was still touring other German
cities when Harten wrote to him at the Demarco Gallery on 5 February to confirm the interest
of the Kunsthalle in the proposed exhibition:

Mr Fliescher [Cultural Officer of the City of Düsseldorf] himself will inform you about
the decision of the city. It is in Mr. Ruhrberg’s name, too, that I can confirm to you that
we will support happily your idea of an exhibition with different works of artists who live
in Düsseldorf. We are prepared to help you with the organisation of this exhibition and
would appreciate it if you could very soon send us a list of names of those artists that
you think should participate. I personally would not divide the exhibition strictly into
three parts, especially because it has been the meaning of happenings and
underground movies to abolish the boundaries of “art-types”, for that reason one
should not again develop new generic notions, but one should stress the artistic
communication no matter what medium is being used.1

As the SGA ‘Scottish coordinator’ Jennifer Gough-Cooper observes in her essay for this
publication, the proposed exhibition was sanctioned on 6 March when the Festival Director,
Peter Diamand, and Demarco met with cultural attaché, Brigitte Lohmeyer, at the German
Embassy in London. Demarco returned to Düsseldorf in mid-March 1970 in order to firm up
support. And between 6-8 May, Ruhrberg, Jappe, and Joseph Beuys travelled to Edinburgh
to finalise arrangements for the exhibition. Demarco took these key figures of the Düsseldorf
art scene 2 on a whistle-stop tour of his gallery, Calton Hill, Salisbury Crags, and Arthur’s Seat
(particularly enjoyed by Beuys). Beuys was also shown the spaces of Edinburgh College of
Art, including the Sculpture Court. At 4pm on 7 May, Demarco, Jappe, and Ruhrberg, met
with Professor Stanley Wright (Principal of ECA), to discuss the idea and arrangements for
the exhibition, a meeting recorded by Gough-Cooper.3

40
Above:
Left - Right:
Georg Jappe,
Karl Ruhrberg,
Richard Demarco,
Joseph Beuys,
Sally Holman,
outside the
Richard Demarco Gallery,
Edinburgh. 7 May 1970.
Photographer unknown,
Demarco Digital Archive.

41
Düsseldorf in Edinburgh:
The Importance of the Germans
Christian Weikop

42
Opposite: On 8 May, Beuys, Demarco, and his assistant Sally Holman, went much further afield,
Joseph Beuys
at Loch Awe, a road trip to Argyllshire (‘The Road to the Isles’), to Inveraray, Loch Awe, Rannoch Moor,
Scotland. 8 May 1970. Glencoe, and Castle Stalker (Loch Laich). Beuys’s first visit to Scotland proved to be essential
Photo
© Richard Demarco, preparation for his famous Celtic (Kinloch Rannoch) Scottish Symphony because he would
Demarco Digital Archive. return to Rannoch Moor in August before SGA opened to make a film that was used as part
of this ‘action’ at ECA. On 9 May, Demarco would travel to London with Beuys and Jappe
to have a meeting with Diamand and Lohmeyer at the German Embassy to discuss the
organisation and financing of the exhibition, as well as the catalogue to be produced by
Forth Studios. On this London trip, Beuys, Jappe and Demarco also met Peter Townsend
(Editor of Studio International) in a Bloomsbury café to discuss a feature on Beuys. Indeed
Jappe’s article with the authoritative title ‘A Joseph Beuys Primer’ was published in Studio
International (vol.182, no.937) in September 1971. It reasserted the wartime survival story
of Beuys being saved by nomadic Tartar tribesmen, who wrapped him in insulating layers of
felt and fat to keep him from freezing to death after his Stuka bomber was shot down,
a narrative famously called into question by the art critic Benjamin Buchloh in an Artforum
article, nine years later.4 Jappe was an important interpreter not only of Beuys, but of all
the SGA artists. His essay in the SGA catalogue, ‘The Republic of Individualists’, provided
a brilliant summary of a panoply of new artistic tendencies.

On the afternoon of the 9 May 1970, Beuys, Jappe, and Demarco visited the home of pop
artist Richard Hamilton, a friend of Beuys. Hamilton phoned Michael Compton, the newly
appointed Keeper of Exhibitions and Education at the Tate, who, according to Demarco,
said that ‘the British Arts Council and the Tate would be most interested to have the German
Exhibition after the Festival’.5 And much later, on the 5 September 1970, during the run
of SGA, Demarco informed Ruhrberg that the exhibition might even travel to the ‘Young
Vic Theatre in London’, as Frank Dunlop, Director of the National Theatre ‘had been so
impressed by the ECA show’.6 These plans to restage SGA in an art museum or even theatre
setting in England’s capital did not directly amount to anything, although arguably the ICA
exhibition Art into Society – Society into Art: Seven German Artists, staged four years later
in 1974, owed much to the 1970 Edinburgh exhibition.

43
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
kun vain haistaa, että pastori on seurustellut konjakin kanssa.
Häntäkin pitää pastorin pelätä ja vapista… sillä se on kissa, joka
sylkee, kun niikseen tulee. Ennenkuin hän rohkenee mennä
kaapilleenkaan, täytyy hänen tarkkaan kuulostaa, missä päin
emännöitsijän askeleet kulkevat.

Näissä huoneissa on tyhjyyden valtakunta. Ei ääntä, ei liikettä,

puhumattakaan lapsen helakasta naurusta tai rouvan kirkkaasta
laulusta ompelunsa ääressä.

Sitä tavaraa ei pastorilla ole koskaan ollut, ei muuta kuin povi

täynnä tyhjyyttä ja kaihoa, aivot tyytymättömyyttä ja suonet konjakin
katkua… toisinaan.

Mitä on elämä? Ja mitä on kuolema? Sitä filosofeeraa pastori ja

ryypiskelee. Elämä on muotojen vaihtumista… kuolema niiden
särkymistä… Hän on vain särkyvä eikä koskaan luova… ei
koskaan… ei koskaan.

Ja kuitenkin hän pelkää sydämensä pohjasta virkansa

menettämistä, tämän viran, jonka hän tuntee itselleen olevan liian
korkean.

Tuossa on isän perintöä kirjoituspöytä, missä on kulunut viheriä

verka. Sen ääressä hän ei jaksa ajatella, sillä silloin nousee hänen
silmiinsä isä keppi kourassa ja julman uhkaavana niinkuin ennen
ylioppilasaikana, kun tiesi hänen ryypiskelleen. Tässä on vanha
täytetty sohva, jonka päälliskangas on rikki ja tyynyn koreaksi
ommeltu päällinen hien tahrima. Sillä sohvalla on äiti hänen tähtensä
monet itkut itkenyt, monet surut sulattanut, kunnes lopulta murheesta
taittui.
 — Oo… mitä on elää? Sitäkö että edelleen syntiä tekisi?

Tässä on pieni piironki. Sen yksi laatikko on täynnä sisaren

haukkumakirjeitä, sisaren, joka on kaupungissa ylpeä tohtorin rouva.

Tuolla kirjahyllyn takana on pieni lukollinen laatikko. Siinä on

revolveri, jonka hänen veljensä kruununvouti lähetti hänelle pari
vuotta takaperin joululahjaksi pyynnöllä, että hän ymmärtäisi sen
arvon ja lakkaisi olemasta sukulaistensa mätämuna.

— Voi…voi…

Jos hän otti askeleen minne tahansa tässä autiossa… hirvittävän

yksinäisessä asunnossaan, niin aina ikävät muistot nousivat joka
loukosta kuin sadat mustat kädet häntä kuristamaan.

Entä tuolla ulkona? Siellä oli ilma täynnä hänen häpäisemistään,

siellä nauru saatanallisena räjähteli ihmisten suusta häntä
pilkatakseen, siellä sanat pirullisina sinkoilivat, siellä valkoiset
hampaat kääntyivät häntä kohti irvistääkseen hänelle.

— Voi… voi…

Pastori ei kestänyt enää. Hän menee taas kaapilleen hyvin hiljaan

ja kaataa suuhunsa pikarillisen sitä katkeraa juomaa, johon on pantu
muutamia hiukeita helvetin tulikiveä.

Siinä samassa hän näkee Pietun tulevan. Pastori melkein ilostuu.

Sillä tämä mies on yhtä merkitty, yhtä syljetty kuin hänkin.

Hän tuntee kuin osanottavaisuutta Pietuun. Ja jos Pietussa ei olisi

niin läjittäin noita inhottavia syöpäläisiä, niin ottaisi hän hänet
käsikoukkuun, istuttaisi pöytään, kantaisi konjakkipullon siihen ja joisi
vaikka emännöitsijän silmäin alla yhteiskunnan kurjien maljan.

Mutta nyt. Ei sovi sekään. Jo kylliksi nauravat silläkin, että Pietu

hänen luonaan käy.

Kas vain! Eikös kurkisteta nytkin opettajan ikkunaverhon takaa

Pietua. Ja tietysti nauretaan hänelle ja Pietulle. Aamulla kuuluu
opettajan rouva tiedustaneen pastorin vointia. Ja sitten hymyilleen.

— Niin… niin… sekin sivistys on hienoa, sillä tämä rouva uskoo

olevansa hienouden huippu.

Mutta samassa kopistelee jo Pietu sisälle. Hän tulee

herraspuolelta, sillä kyökissä on ovi aina häneltä suljettu.

Pastori kokee laitella itseään ryhdikkäämmäksi, sukii tukkaansa ja

nostaa takkinsa kaulusta.

Kun Pietu astuu sisälle, kumartaa hän hyvin syvään ja niistää

sitten nenänsä housuihinsa.

— Noo… mitäs Pietulle kuuluu? kysyy pastori aluksi hiukan

arkana.

— Eipä erityistä.

Pietu haistaa huoneen ilmaa, kääntyy poispäin ja naurahtaa.

— Tulinpa otolliseen aikaan, nyt on pastori antavalla luonnolla,

miettii Pietu.

— Joko Pietun käsi paranee?

 — Paranee se sen tuota.

— Ja aikomus on jutella Juhmakan kanssa?

— Se on varma kuin tämä päivä.

Pietu laittaupi käskemättä tuolin syrjälle istumaan ja pudottaa

lakkinsa jalkoihinsa.

— Miten se pastori nyt jaksaa? kysyy Pietu ja haistaa uudelleen

huoneen ilmaa, mutta salaa pastorilta.

— Mikä se on minulla jaksamisessa! Syön ja makaan.

— Ja juon… lisää Pietu ajatuksissaan.

— Eihän sitä herroilla ole vaivaa, lisää pastori.

— Muun kuin oman itsensä kanssa… miettii Pietu.

— Minä puhuin jo Juhmakalle Pietusta, ehättää pastori.

— Mitäs tuo sanoi?

— Ei lupaa maksaa.

— Ei tietysti.

— Mutta älä heitä! Joka särkee, se maksaa, on vanha laki.

— Pakostakinhan minun on kiinni pitäminen hovilaisesta.

Nähkääs, hyvä pastori, minulla on suuri joukko, en pysty työhön
nähkääs, kuolen nälkään minä ja joukkoni… jollen Juhmakalta saa
eläkettä.
 Pastorin silmien edessä on kuin veripunaista savua, joka löi häntä
vasten suuta. Hän näkee Pietun kuin etempää… kuulee hänen
äänensä kuin verhon takaa. Aivoissa polttaa helvetin tulikivi veriä.
Siitä se nousi tämä savu.

— Pidä vain kiinni ja pidä lujasti! Mutta elä sano, että minä olen
käskenyt. Sitten ne hyppäävät minun niskaani.

— Ja vievät viran, jatkoi Pietu ajatusjuoksua itsekseen.

— Elä sano… kuulethan?

— En toki. Kyllä mä tunnen, mitä ne pastorista puhuvat.

— Mitä ne puhuvat? uteli pastori kohta kiivaana.

— Sanovat, että pastori… mutta mitäpä minä niistä haastan… on

kai pastori itsekin kuullut.

— On… on.

— Mahtuu maailmaan ääntä. Mutta niin auttavaista, niin

kristillismielistä pappia kuin pastori ei meillä koskaan ole ollut. Tulet
nälissäsi pastorin luo… tuossa on leipää… he… sanoo… tulet
pyytämään rahaa lainaksi… paljonko tarvitseisit… kysyy.
Semmoinen sitä pitää papin olla. Kantaa aina Kristusta käsissään.
Mutta tämä rovasti…

— Pietu ei viitsi parjata.

— Viimeisellä tuomiolla minä oikein sormellani osoitan sille

ylituomarille pastoria ja sanon: tuossa on mies, joka puki alastoman,
joka syötti nälkäisen, joka juotti…
 — Ja joi itsekin… sanotko senkin?

— Voinee sen tietää minun sanomattanikin.

— Olet tietysti taas anomassa? Mitä tahdot? Mennään suoraan

asiaan.

Pastorista tuntui kuin hänellä jalat kohoaisivat maasta ja sohva,

jolla hän istui, lentäisi ilmaan. Sillä monesko ryyppy se lienee jo
ollut…?

— Niin se puhuu vain meidän pastori. Oi, herra pastori, säälikää

Pietu raukkaa, jota koko maailma jaloillaan polkee, jolla ei ole
missään turvaa, jota haukutaan ja hakataan… En ole kahteen
vuorokauteen syönyt.

Pastorilla nousivat kyyneleet silmiin. Mutta Pietu lisäili ilmaa

palkeihin.

— Nyt olen karkotettu saunaan asumaankin… siellä on viiltävän

kylmä… hampaat aina suussa lotisevat…

Pietu jo itki.

— Kenen saunassa värjötät?

— Tynkkäsen.

— Vai karkottivat tuvasta pois?

— Karkottivat.

He molemmat itkivät. Pastori viinan kyyneleitä, mutta Pietu viisaan

kyyneleitä.
 — Kyllä se maailma sinua hylkii, Pietu raukka.

— Hylkii… hylkii.

— Mitä aioit minulta pyytää?

— Lainaksi 10 markkaa. Tiina leipoo vehnäistä, minä myön ja siten

elämme, kunnes Juhmakalta saamme. Niinhän pastorikin luulee, että
saan eläkkeen.

— Ajat asiasi taitavasti, niin saat. Mutta tuo laina… no niin… ei

saa tappaa ihmisiä nälkään. Tässä on raha. Osta vehnäistä, syö ja
anna… anna akallesikin. Menet nyt!

Pietu lähti. Mutta pastori avasi liivinsä, sillä hän oli tukehtua.
Rasva siellä rinnassa painoi taas niin hirvittävästi sydäntä.

— Milloin tulee loppu tästäkin vaivasta? huokaa hän ja painautuu

pitkäkseen.

Yksi hänen katkerimpia vanhanpojan päiviänsä on taas päälle

painamassa.

Mutta sen paraimmillaan pastoria kiusatessa Pietu vetää kelkalla

nisujauhosäkkiä Tynkkäsen saunaan ja on koko maailmalle
näyttänyt, mikä riivatun tarmo hänessä sittenkin on.
X LUKU.

Tiina on leiponut Pietun tuoman vehnäjauhosäkin ja nyt on

asianomainen niitä kauppaamassa. Pietu uskotteli, että talonpojan
suussa veteenkin leivottu vehnäinen maistaa. Ja niinhän sen luulisi,
sillä tuossa suussa pitäisi vielä olla petunkin makua, joka oli Ylä-
Karjalan entisten eläjäin jokapäiväinen höyste. Mutta uusi aika on
tuonut uuden maun. Kanavat ja höyrylaivat, rautatiet ja meijerit ovat
tännekin takalistoille kuljettaneet mukanaan länsieuroppalaista
hienostusta. Vehnäisen pitää olla maitoon leivottu, se on ajan
vaatimus sielläkin. Ja sitten toisakseen: kuka nyt Lois-Pietulta
vehnäistä ostaisi!

Huonosti kävi Pietun saksana olo. Missä oli nurkkatanssit, siellä

vähän ostettiin. Mutta ei muuten. Naurettiin vain vasten silmiä ja
viskottiin kompasanoja, hyvinkin karvaita.

Mutta lopulta löysi Pietu ostajansa eli paremmin sanoen

vaihtajansa. Ja tämä kiitettävä kauppatuttavapiiri oli kirkonkylän
kansakoululapset.

Sopi sitä katsoa, kun Pietu niiden kanssa kauppaa kävi. Hänen
selkänsä takana oli laaja lauma huutamassa hänen lisänimeään ja
näykkimässä sortuukin helmasta. Mutta nenän edessä vaihdettiin,
huikattiin, nakattiin eli miksi sitä nyt sanoisi. Siinä kävi suuri tora,
rähinä, huudonväki. Mutta Pietu ylinnä ärjyi: "sen tuhannen vekarat!"

Hän antoi aivan vähän vehnäistä ja sai siitä aina mahtavan

ruisleivän, lasten eväsleivän. Ja hymyili voitolleen.

Mutta kun opettaja huomasi kaupan, täytyi Pietun ottaa jalat

alleen. Se mies riivattu tuli tukka pystössä, karttakeppi kourassa,
käsi nyrkissä Pietua kohti.

Pastori nauroi ikkunassaan. Koko ympäristö nauroi. Sillä opettajan

tulosta yltyvinä hyppäsivät pojat kiinni Pietun vehnäiskoriin. Pietu
kiihtyi kiroilemaan, lyömään, viuhtomaan. Oli siinä melua. Mutta kun
Pietu lopulta puhalsi juoksuun, tippuivat pojat tien oheen.

Tästä puoleen piti tätä vaihtokauppaa käydä salaa opettajalta

jossain syrjäisessä rakennuksen nurkassa tai tarvehuoneessa.
Saadakseen paremmin kaupan käymään lauloikin Pietu heille kovin
ruokottomia lauluja. Vehnäisensä sai Pietu vain lopultakin
vaihdetuiksi. Hänellä oli säkillinen ruisleipiä ja silliä ja rahaakin.

Uskaltaisiko ryhtyä puuhaamaan toista vehnäsäkkiä? Sitä miettii

Pietu muutamana yönä saunassa hiiloksensa ääressä. Kättä
pakottaa hirveästi eikä se anna enää untakaan. Mutta Pietu ei
uhallakaan sitä hoida. Enemmän hän käräjissä saapi, kuta huonompi
on käsi. Nyt on loppuiän eläke kysymyksessä ja pitää kärsiä. Ei hän
enää sitä siteestäkään auo.

Uskaltaisiko ryhtyä puuhaamaan toista säkkiä? Sitä Pietu miettii ja

miettii. Sillä se ei suinkaan ole hänelle pieni liikeyritys. Ensiksikin,
antaisiko pastori enää rahaa, toisiksi, saisiko niitä leivoksia pois
käsistään ja kolmanneksi, oliko tämä vaihtokauppa noiden
koulukkaiden kanssa oikein — rehellistä.

Viimeistä puolta kehitteli Pietu ensiksi. Mutta hänen ei tarvinnut

kuin silmätä loukattua kättään, kun tämä käsi huusi hänelle: kuka on
ollut rehellinen sinua kohtaan?

Sitä kättä kolotti, sitä pakotti, kivisti. Se oli koonnut itseensä

kipujen yhtenäisen jomotuksen. Jos hän sitä liikutti, niin kävi kipeästi,
antoi hän sen olla yhdessä kohden, lakkaamatta jäyti.

Pietu lyödä matkasi hiiliä kohennuskepillään, niin että kipunat joka

haaralle karkasivat, ja hän karjaisi:

— Aa… Juhmakka! Olisitpa tuossa, niin mä sinut pehmittäisin ja

löisin siihen suureen tohisevaan kärsään, että paukahtaisi… noin…
noin…!

— Ostaisivatko sitten? Eivät. Ehkä koulukkaat vaihtaisivat. Entä

antaisiko pastori rahaa? Mene ja tiedä sitäkään! Mutta onpa nyt
toistaiseksi leipää ja silliä… onpa… syödään ensin säästöt ja
maataan… sairastetaan… on se loikominenkin sopivaa työtä…
makaamiseen ei väsy… eikä siinä tule hiki… on se somaa sellaisen
tappelemisen ja ottelemisen jälkeen. Se kai se koulumestari opettaa
siellä niitä riettaita ihmisalkuja hyviin tapoihin minua häristelemällä…
minä olen pahennus koko koulualueella, ärjyi… mutta siitä hyvästä
lauloin minä niille puoskille… ja sillä hyvä. Minua köyhää ja poloista
ahdistavat ja kädenkin katkaisivat… antoipa Luoja kaksi kaunista ja
tervettä kättä, niin hovilaiset nämä kirkkomatkoillaan katkovat. Oo -
jaa. Eikä saisi sanaa päästää siitä lystistä, vaan rukoilla Jumalalta
sitä terveeksi, kuten rovasti neuvoi… nöyrästi… hyvin nöyrästi.
 Pietu vihelteli. Kättä repi kuin olisi sitä puukolla leikelty. Siinä oli jo
sietämätön tuska.

Aina kun elämä kävi Pietusta kovin mustaksi, muisteli hän

mielessään muuatta onnen aikaa, jota hänkin kerran oli elänyt…
kauan… hyvin kauan sitten. Sitä muistamaan taas mieli lensi tällä
öisellä hiiloksella. Sauna oli jo hyvin lämmennyt. Sen mustat seinät
katosivat pimeyteen, hiilos hyvin heikosti valaisi lähimmän
ympäristönsä. Sirkat kiukaan takana lauloivat ja tuoreet oljet
hajahtivat.

Pietu istui siinä köyhän elämänsä leiritulella ja haaveksi — hänkin.

Silloin oli isällä mökki. Oma se ei ollut, mutta se tuntui kuin omalta.
Sillä talo, johon se kuului, oli kaukana ja isäntäväki siellä kävi tuskin
milloinkaan. Hän oli vain poikanen. Mutta tunsi kyllä että silloin oli
oma koti. Mökissä oli tupa ja sen edessä pystylaudoista kyhätty
porstua. Talvella oli porstua lunta puolillaan ja kun yöllä oli satanut
sitä, näkyi sen pinnalla ehyenä hiiren jäljet aamulla. Tuvassa oli suuri
harmaista kivistä tehty uuni. Sitä he lapset erityisesti rakastivat, sillä
se oli niin lämmin ja hyväilevä. Ja kun tuli kesä, aukeni mökin
ulkopuolella uusi maailma. Siinä toisella puolella oli helkkyvä kangas
ja tuorepihkainen mäntymetsä. Toiselle puolelle aleni maa suoksi,
joka oli niittyä. Mökin takana kukki perunamaa ja ruis pienessä
peltotilkkusessa teki tähkää. Heillä oli lehmä talosta ruokolla ja sitä
hyväiltiin kuin ainakin yhteistä kalleutta. Kun tuli lypsyaika, he lapset
sen haasta suon takaa noutivat. Se oli suuri punainen romuluinen
mulipää, mutta vatsan alla oli paljon valkoista. Hän Pekka puhalsi
pajupilliä, kun äiti lypsi. Vähän se lehmä antoi maitoa ja joskus kävi
äiti salaa lypsämässä talon lehmiä… kun teki voita. Mutta silloin se
oli aina punainen ja hätääntynyt ja uhkaili isälle, ettei enää koskaan
mene. Mutta isä vain nauroi ja ryyppäsi varastettua maitoa… Se
olikin vain äitipuoli.

Pietu muutti vähän tuskauneena mietteensä toiseen suuntaan.

Mökin etupuolella loppui kangas veteen ja se vesi laajeni niin
kauas… hirveän kauas. Siinä uitiin, ongittiin, pidettiin pieniä verkkoja,
joilla saatiin särkiä. Oli heillä venekin… vuotava ja peräpuolelta
ylälauta poikki. Siinä oli vitsaksista hankaset, ja kun niissä sousi,
lonkkui tyynessä illassa niin kovasti, että se etäälle asti kantoi
yksitoikkoisena… niin kovin yksitoikkoisena, mutta säännöllisesti
toistuvana. Ja kun oikein huusi, niin kaiku kumahti vastaisten saarien
kallioisissa rannoissa, jotka olivat jyrkät ja korkeat. Kerran hirvi ui
sen salmen poikki, joksi selkä mökin kohdalla kapeni, ja tuli nuuskien
heidän mökkinsä seinustalle. Silloin isä kirves kädessä sitä ajamaan,
mutta hirvi potkaisi ja meni.

Kun talvi tuli, koottiin risua ja poltettiin aitoja, sillä talon metsästä ei
saanut puuta hakata… siitä puusta se oli jo silloin tiukka… ja
sentähden poltettiin aitoja. Mutta heidät ajettiin pois mökiltä… pois…
pois… Isäntä tuli muutamana syysaamuna ja sanoi: nyt joukko
pellolle, kun Maariaan päästään. Ne kirotut aidat… ja kostoksi poltti
isä mökin, mutta eipä joutanut sen hiiloksella lämmittelemään. Kun
isä sinne autiolle mökille iltamyöhällä läksi, seurutteli Pekka
mukana… mukamas salaa… näki kun isä pisti tuohta ja heiniä lattian
alle, sytytti ja lähti juoksemaan. Yössä savusi mökki taivaalle eikä
kukaan tiennyt polttajaa, vaikka isää epäiltiin ja jo kiinnikin pistettiin.

Pietu naurahti yksinään isän hommalle, sillä isä oli juuri viime
kesänä mennyt uusiin naimisiin eikä ollut kattoa pään päälle.

— Mutta me loiskansa ollaankin väkeä, jolla ei ole muuta maallista

hyvyyttä kuin aina nälkäinen suu ja tyhjä maha, lopetti Pietu
mietteensä.

Kättä kirveli niin kirotusti. Pietu kuin huvitellakseen puheli lopuksi

ääneensä, kun yksinäisyys ja hiljaisuus jo häntä ikävystytti:

— Ollapa oma mökki… siinä peltoa… siinä niittyä… siinä karjaa…

siinä kalaranta…siinä tietoa, että on jotain, jota voi sanoa omakseen.

— Sinussa olisi sitten mökinpitäjää! ärjäistään samassa ovesta,

joka viiden miehen voimalla auki repäistään.

Pietu hypähti säikähdyksestä. Ja vapisi. Nyt taisi tulla itse perkele

vieraaksi.

Vieraat tekivät tulen. Jo tunsi Pietu vallesmannin ja poliisin.

Kokardi vallesmannin lakissa oli hirvittävän ruhtinaallinen tässä
matalassa saunassa. Poliisi kävi Pietuun käsiksi, retuutti ja retuutti.

Joukko alkoi mylviä. Mutta Pietu vietiin ulkona olevaan rekeen ja

siinä pitäjän vankilaan.

Henttu Vänskä oli haistanut saunan tavatonta lämpöä ja Pietun

öisiä lämmityshommia salaa vakoillut. Hän suuttui silmittömästi, kun
huomasi Pietun käyvän hänen koreissa pinoissaan ja ilmiantoi hänet
korkealle esivallalle, joka tänä yönä omin silmin oli Pietua vaaninut ja
työssä tavannut.

Pietu sai menomatkalla kuulla nimismiehen suusta, että hänen

selkänsä takana on ollut kokonainen salaliitto: lukkari, hoitolan herra,
Juhmakka, opettaja y.m.

— Etkö yhtä hyvin voinut olla hoitolassa, kunnan lämpimässä, kun

piti päästä puita varastamaan? Mutta se on se synnynnäinen
varastamisen himo… kyllä sen tunnen, puhuu nimismies ja puraisee
sikaristaan pään poikki, syleksii ja tulta hommaa. Saat nyt taas
ilmaista lämmintä ja hoitoa, mies, lisää ja savua tupruttaa ja
maiskuttaa.

Pietu ei puhu mitään vastaan. Sillä vallesmannia hän on aina

pelännyt.
Ytimissään hän tuntee, että häntä on kohdannut suuri onnettomuus.

— Pääset kruunun leipiin lukemaan tiilin päitä. Tämä meidänkin

pojalta vietteli koulueväät, puhuu poliisi.

Ja niin mennään alas mäkeä. Mutta Pietu on kummastuttavan

vaitelias, sillä kruununmiehiä ei hän uskalla haukkua… voisivat lyödä
toisenkin käden poikki.

Seuraavana päivänä kuljetetaan Tiina poikineen ja

leipäsäkkeineen hoitolaan.
XI LUKU.

Käräjätalo hoikassa lumisessa niemen kärjessä on yltä päätä täynnä

rahvasta. Ylä-Karjalassa "jutellaan" vahvasti ja mielellään käydään
vieraissa vaikka vain käräjätalossa. Kuta alemmalla asteella ihminen
on yleisessä sivistyksessä, sen topakampi se on käräjänkäyntiin.
Täällä toisinaan jutellaan parista kolmestakymmenestä pennistä,
mitkä vastaaja ehkä erehdyksestä on ottanut liikaa korkoa. Monta
miestä et pitäjästä tapaisi, joka ei olisi ainakin jonkun kerran jutellut.
Sitten on olemassa varsinaiset käräjäleijonat, jotka harjoittavat tätä
ammattia huvikseen. Niin että kyllä käräjähuoneella on rahvasta kuin
markkinoilla.

"Isolla puolella" istutaan ja "pikku puolella" on kahvin ja monen

muun hyvän tarjoilu.

Hevosella kyyditään Pietua sinne pitäjän vankilasta poliisin

hoteissa. Pietu ei ymmärrä muuta kuin naureskella väkijoukolle, joka
tunkeupi häntä katsomaan.

— Päästäkää mies irti! Tämäpä nyt on varkautta, jos

lämpimikseen jonkun puun kappaleen ottaa, puhuu syvä rintaääni
väkijoukosta.
 Ja sitä seuraa iloisia hyväksymisiä.

— Vai irti, hyvät ihmiset! ärjäisee samalla Juhmakka susiturkkien

sisästä ja joukko on kohta kuin puulla päähän lyöty hiljaan ja hiljaan.

Sillä Juhmakkakin on niitä käräjäleijonia, vaikka häpeääkin sitä,

että hänellä on tänään vastaajan osa tuon viheliäisen varkaan
kanssa.

Mutta se mies on työnnettävä linnaan ja ovelle pantava kruunun

lukko.

Käräjäsali on tavallinen kodikas perheen asuntosali. On vain nyt

keskelle huonetta nostettu suuri pöytä ja sen siivet levitetty. Se on
täynnä paperia ja syvää lakiviisautta, jota tänne on lähetetty
jakamaan hieno nuori herra, arvoltaan parooni ja paraallaan
ansaitsemassa varatuomarin korkeata titteliä. Hän tupakoi
istuntosalissakin ja selailee noita kihlakunnan oikeuden pöytäkirjoja
ivallisesti hymyillen kuin olisivat ne hirvittävän moukkamaisia hänen
ylhäisaateliselle järjelleen. Lautamiesten kanssa hän laskee leikkiä ja
sinuttelee vanhoja isäntiä. Korkean korkea kiiltokaulus tekee hänen
päänsä liikkeet ylhäisen kankeiksi ja äänen ahdistetuksi.

Kun Pietu tuodaan sisään, irvistää parooni ja panee tupakiksi.

Nimismieheltä tiedustaa hän ruotsiksi, mitä "loinen" merkitsee. Sitten
käydään kohta asiaan. Poliisi ja Henttu Vänskä todistavat, ja
ennenkuin Pietu on oikein saanut tarkastelluksi tuomarin uutena
nähtävänä, kuulee hän tuomionsa, joka määrää hänelle
yksinkertaista vankeutta.

Mutta nytpä Pietu äkämystyy.

 — Onko nuorta herraa koskaan palellut? kysyy hän ja lävistää
vihaisilla silmillään paroonia.

— On joskus, vastaa tuomari leikkien, sillä hän haistaa tässä alla

jotain hauskaa.

— Ja jos puuta on lähellä, niin eikö ota sitä ja polta ja lämmittele?

— Jaa, kun se on omaa.

— Mutta nuori herra on matkalla pakkasessa ja pyryssä ajanut

eksyksiin, täytyy leiriytyä metsässä ja tehdä nuotio, muuten
paleltuisi. Eikö nuori herra ota metsästä puuta ja polta, olipa metsä
vaikka tämän vallesmannin?

— Kyllä kai, nauraa parooni.

— Niin se oli minunkin kanssani.

— Ei aivan niin. Sinä lähdit vaivaistalon lämpimästä omin ehtoinesi

vieraita puita varastamaan. Tässä on suuri ero, puhuu nimismies.

— Viekää hänet ulos, komentaa tuomari.

Ja Pietu viedään. Mutta sitä hän ei ymmärrä, että hän olisi

samanlainen varas kuin se, joka rahoja toisen kaapista puhaltaa. Ja
hän alkaa riidellä poliisille, haukkuu Henttu Vänskää ja syljeksii
tämän päälle.

Siinä on syntyä tappelu. Pietu yrittää lähteä karkuun. Mutta poliisi

niskasta kouraa hänet kiinni ja asettaa Henttu Vänskän avulla
nilkkoihin raudat.
 Nyt jo ymmärtää Pietu, että hän on vanki. Ja silloin hän on
yht’äkkiä kuin päättömäksi lyöty. Nauru kuolee pois synkiltä kasvoilta
ja silmät käyvät kosteiksi. Näin pitkälle ei hän luullut heidän
menevän… näin… näin pitkälle…

Hän uskoi vielä sieltä vankilasta, jossa hän verrattain vapaasti sai
liikkua, lähdettäessä käräjiin, että ne veivät vain nuhdeltavaksi ja
sitten laskevat irti. Mutta eipäs! Pistetään raudat jalkoihin ja viedään
aivan yksinäiseen huoneeseen, jonne poliisi jää vartiaksi.

Pietun mieleen kohosi nyt jylhä alakuloisuus. Se tuli outona…

raskaana… tuli kuin äkillinen säikähdys voimat ryöstäen ja veret
pelottaen. Hän nyt tajusi, että se oli kruunun rautainen koura, joka
hänet puristi tähän näin aivan mäsäksi. Mielikuvitukseen se nousi
mustana vuorenkokoisena kummituksena, jonka kädessä on suuri
rautainen miekka kohotettuna ja nivusilla vyö täynnä mahtavia
vankila-avaimia. Niitä se kalistaa, miekalla häristää ja lyö
tajuttomaksi. Tämä se on se esivalta, joka aluksi sitoi hänen
jalkansa. Ja sen ensimäisenä käskyläisenä tuossa näkee hän
poliisin, mikä vain tyynenä tupakoi.

Pietu lähettää suustaan poliisin silmille hävittömän

haukkumaryöpyn, johon on ladattu hänen koko mielikarvautensa.

Hetken kuuntelee poliisi, nousee sitten ja menee Pietun luo käsi

nyrkissä.

— Koetapas lyödä, niin tuolla paikalla kielin, ärjyy Pietu ja viittaa

oikeussaliin.

Nyt istutaan äänettöminä odottaen Pietun oman jutun vuoroa.

Ensin oli Pietu jo siitä melkein välinpitämätön. Mitäpä siitä, kun nyt
kerran näin kävi.

Mutta nyt tässä odottaessa kaikki entiset kultaiset ja koreat

kuvitelmat eläkkeestä iskevät taas lumoavina mieleen. Hänen pitää
ponnistautua ja hypätä Juhmakan kukkarolle vaikka vangin raudat
jalassa… niin niin niin…

Eivätkä ne siellä vankilassa monta vuotta pidä… sieltä palataan

Juhmakan ruokiin.

— Pietun juttu nyt huudetaan esille, sanoo vallesmanni ovelta

poliisille.

Niin mennään. Eteisessä ottaa poliisi vallesmannin käskystä pois

jalkaraudat. Pietu siitä rohkaistuu. Oikeustuvassa ei ole Juhmakka
näkevinään kantajaansa, kääntyy häneen selin ja puhelee jonkun
lautamiehen kanssa.

Pietu tekee kanteensa ja vaatii 500 markkaa vuodessa eläkettä

loppuiäkseen Juhmakalta.

Tuomari ottaa kohta asian huvittavalta kannalta.

— Kirkostako palatessaan ajoi sinulta käden poikki? kysyy parooni

naureskellen.

— Niin juuri… tässä on käsi.

— Vastaaja siis oli selvällä päällä? kysyy parooni kääntyen

Juhmakkaan.

Nyt kaksi aatelismiestä katsoo toisiaan. Mutta Juhmakka

punastuu, sillä miten sen selvyyden lie ollut laita.
 — Luuleeko tuomari minun olevan juopporentun? kiivailee
Juhmakka.

— No! kivahtaa parooni ja lyö kädellä pöytään.

Juhmakka olisi jo valmis koko herran lapioimaan huoneesta

pellolle.

— Onko kantajalla todistajia?

Pietu luettelee hoitolaisia. Kutsutaan sisään ja todistavat.

— Näkivätkö todistajat itse tapausta?

Eivät ole muuta nähneet kuin Pietun palaavan kirkosta ontuen ja

parkuen, vaikka terveenä sinne lähti.

— Sepä se. Vaikka olisi itse paiskelehtanut, puhuu Juhmakka ja jo

nauraa.

Kutsutaan esille Juhmakan todistajat. Rovasti todistaa yleensä

Pietun elämänlaadusta, joka on ollut monessa suhteessa
pahennukseksi seurakunnassa. Lukkari todistaa, että Pietu
hoitolassa on rikkonut läpeensä hyviä tapoja. Vaivaistalon johtaja
todistaa, että Pietu on ollut uppiniskainen esimiestään kohtaan ja on
suuri valehtelija. Opettaja todistaa, että Pietu kavaluudella on
vietellyt lasten koulueväät.

— Mutta ettehän yksikään todista siinä asiassa, josta on kysymys,

huomauttaa parooni ja tuskastuu, laittaa kaulahuiviaan ja enemmän
tuskastuu.