Screaming in Gallery House
This is an edited transcript of an interview between Gallery House curator Sigi Krauss, his partner Lisa Renee Newman and the Gallery House Archive Project team. It was conducted via Skype on 28 August 2014
Sigi Krauss: I’m touched by all the interest [that] has came up recently, but anyway its for a good reason because of the good times in London, with something like an exhibition space which is not bound to any commercialism, which was the case [with] my first gallery, Sigi Krauss Gallery in 29 Neal Street, Covent Garden. I think I only sold one picture, one painting in all the time which […didn’t] bother me at all […] it wasn’t meant that way because I was running a print shop at the same time…
Lisa Renee Newman: Just to put things into context. So, Sigi was framing art for his main source of income …mainly framing German Impressionistic art for the Marlborough Gallery and the Tate, which were his main clients and then he had other private clients who would have him framing art and at the same time he was doing that he opened a frame shop and it had a stage [for] exhibiting the works of artists who were pretty much ignored by the mainstream galleries…and the art exhibitions were very successful I think because they were so new. So you had Phillip Mora doing things like his sculptures which were a statement against the war in Vietnam…The gallery gained a lot of attention, a lot of drop-ins. For instance Stanley Kubrick’s property manager came by and saw a work and decided he wanted that work for the set of the film “Clockwork Orange” and there was a lot of that kind of thing. It was fresh and new and it was problematic …The problem was conceptual art and how does the formal art world control and profit from conceptual art and [Sigi] was really the crux of it and they liked Sigi’s work as an art framer and he was very well known as an art framer but they didn’t want him to [do the] gallery exhibitions. So there was this concerted effort to close that [the Sigi Krauss Gallery] by way of the bankruptcy proceeding which they did on a weekend, and so essentially they closed his gallery and the business…So essentially he lost his income and at that time the Goethe-Institut in London had acquired a town house next to where they were located and it was empty and they had plans for expanding. So, Dr Schultz, [who] was the director at the time, contacted Sigi and asked him to run a gallery space inside that newly acquired town house. So, [he] let Sigi take it from there and that’s how it actually transitioned from the Sigi Krauss Gallery which was successful and already had a following, they [the artists] followed him to Gallery House.
SK: Dr Schultz, he was very fond of the things we were doing in Neal Street…he would come to the openings and other times …I was already showing…people who read concrete poetry and John Stezaker…I showed him for the first time and so once I got that space and heard of the bankruptcy hat hanging over my head I thought ‘I’m not going to give up’ and so I thought, why not get something moving you know well … and also [I had] the idea of bringing [in] David Medalla. [Sigi took an exhibition on a tour of Midlands polytechnics which attracted media coverage] and so then the next thing I know is Dr Schultz makes me that offer and I was in a conflict and then I said ‘Look I have a few ideas, I think its gonna work’….and he was a motivator you know …And he said ‘well, OK take it over’, this is the big house at Princes Gate…and I said [we’ll need a free hand] …and so it came to that…he [Schultz] said ‘that will be fine, I trust you, it should be fine.’ We had a little budget and it wasn't very big so I said ok then.
LRN: Also it should be mentioned that Sigi insisted that Rosetta Brooks come in as co- curator. Rosetta Brooks at the time was wife of John Stezaker and she was instrumental in ensuring that all the shows’ success and there were a lot of volunteers specifically John Blandy…Sigi, when he had the Sigi Krauss Gallery he tended to attract a lot of people who wanted somehow to get involved in the arts and so a lot of these people kind of followed over to the Gallery House, so he had a way of allowing people to be involved …there were a lot of volunteers and a lot of people willing to fund the exhibits, private sources people.
GHAP: we were quite interested in that, you did get private funding as well?
LRN: Well, the private funding came from individuals like the man that had the helicopter what was his name?
SK: Mr. Paul….it wasn't you know hundreds of dollars or anything like that, just some money for printing a little catalogue or something like that but much of it came from my own pocket. I had to go to Gallery House during the day and [be a] frame maker at night.
LRN:…Also the artists themselves were contributing and bringing their own donations. The ‘free-hand’ included the fact that the public would never pay entry, they would always have access to the art and so that means that essentially there weren't any set hours, they wanted it to be completely accessible in that sense.
SK: I was totally against that [paying to see] contemporary art… I would say [it was] a good time to really not worry about what it was gonna cost and we really got to do it [at] Gallery House you know…
GHAP: Can you tell us a bit more about the audience?
SK: …hundreds of people came and all that happened, you know I think also we had the press too, Richard Course? Was a great fan of my gallery and [then Gallery House] the German government had already bought the building, so it had already hit the papers. It was the most expensive building, you know the highest type of a mansion with a 12 meter ballroom on the ground floor and an elevator and a spiral staircase going around the gallery up to the fourth floor and a basement... And you know that’s what it was, it had lots of light, if you’re familiar with it, [it] had a park in the back? [and] what they call a porch…in the back…[we had] a couple of shows […] outside of the building…John Latham, he was already coming to my gallery and we had meetings there, you know, and we had people coming in [who were] interested in art and science and….
LRN: I’d like to put in something, there was an interesting encounter where a writer showed up and didn't know what to make of all that.
SK: Oh yes, of course, you know… I invited him, he came along…so what happened was that [name unclear] wanted to use the elevator as an exhibition space and that would go out to the living room but then they had a lot of complications and …then somebody came from…a German magazine, an art critic, and he came into the gallery and asked ‘What’s going on?’, he went next door and complained to Dr. Schultz saying that ‘I’ve been trying to write my article about this exhibition and I can’t see nothing.’ So he [Schultz] said well lets find out. I don’t know what happened…John Latham had a prominent installation there at Gallery House…also we had exhibitions between the exhibitions, we never wasted a single hour. We were open until 9 o'clock at night, people had to had access and at times we had 2000 people coming for the opening night. Well some of it was because of the German wine with little flags of the German federal republic on the bottles which I forgot. Anyway, we had already a good critiquing and then suddenly, you can’t touch this subject, for example the Vietnam war…
GHAP: Where were those negative comments coming from?
LRN: The problem was that most of the exhibits were controversial, [protesting] against the [Vietnam] war, many people at that time were pro-communist, so this was counter culture and you’re in a space owned by the German government who was at that time very worried about their public presence […] So the Goethe-Institut is a cultural institute that the German government intends to use as a way to introduce people to German art and culture and they want to put the best light on it …and they don’t want to be associated with political, messy happenings… So they had some attempts to censor some of the shows, which didn't go over very well. That eventually led to the end of Gallery House…
GHAP: Who was the Israeli artist?
SK: …He [Maty Grunberg or Menashe Kadishman] came from Israel and he stayed, he never left. They [The German Embassy?] were very critical of artists...but it [Affidavit, the exhibition of six Israeli artists, it] was obvious that it was a good thing to do and I was approached and we thought about it and immediately it blew out in our faces because the politicians were fighting each other. It was a really hot thing and they were accusing each other of being yellow and cowards and [asking] what’s going on and that… and when finally they [The German Embassy?] came to the point that they actually wanted to take things down in the gallery as we were doing the exhibition. And we really can’t do that because we should not take things down, you can’t just brush it under the carpet and then what happened is I said [it] is going to be written down what’s going on because, where is the free-hand, this has been paid [for] by somebody else not you… I had to physically stop them from taking things down...
SK: This was across multiple shows involving different artists because censorship ideas and the desire for the Goethe-Institut administration of wanting to control the content of the shows, so it was on going and growing and it came down to censorship of the artist…[Sigi and some of the artists started to plan a protest] there was a big panel, George Brecht was there, Carlyle Reedy [was] there and other elements, and that happened in the large ballroom and it was packed. On top of this [in] the previous shows [such as] a story of the avant-garde in Britain, [which was] mainly curated by Rosetta Brooks there were films, poetry, sculptures hanging up on the outside of the building and they [the German Cultural Institute or Embassy] wanted to cut the foam bubble machines off [David Medalla’s installation] and I put my hand in front of it and I basically said if you want to cut it you have to cut my hand first. So we had the panel discussion happened, Dr. Schultz turned up and I did too, and people [from] the German Embassy, I can’t remember, but they were the motor behind Dr Schultz. [Sigi explains that the German Embassy had paid for a special souvenir programme of the Munich Olympics in a British magazine that also featured David Medalla protesting the Vietnam War and other political issues. The Embassy felt embarrassed by this and tried to close the House]. Finally, we had to protect the exhibits, [placing] somebody at the door, securing [it so] that nobody came in to destroy the pieces…
…Hundreds of artists were shown…these were exhibitions without the big exhibitions. [For example,] The Big Breather in the stairwell [Latham] had that structure going on between the space of the staircase all the way up to the ceiling with a bulge on top with a flute in it, a bilge, so he was demonstrating the tide of the ocean especially in the Irish sea which is the high[est] …and then [Latham] said well we can have an iron and the ocean will lift the iron and that would be power and he wanted to lift it up and then the water goes down like the ocean and then you have the sheer weight of itself again turns over… and there was a plumbing problem and we tried it out and he said, Sigi you have to go down there and fix it, and then he put a rope around my ankles and put my head upside down all the way from the top, all the way into this 2x2 construction of pexiglass and wood and aluminium and I did some plumbing at the very bottom and [had to] catch a hose and get the water in there and it would push up a plate and the water would try to go up and it would make a sound and as it went up it went [Later in the conversation Sigi indicates that the sound was like that of a foghorn.]
SK: It was more like a, maybe like from a boat, it was a dark sound whooooooooooooo not just for a while you know whoooooooooooooo and once the air was in and the tides would go down and you know the air would go out and the whistle was….it might have been two whistle…] and once it was up there and the water goes down then it would make the sound again… Eventually, just the day before the opening of the Düsseldorf show I heard [Sigmar] Polke laughing and talking and coming down to the office with Rosetta and saying that water was coming down and everything was flooded. It made a crack in the pexiglass so the entire floor, [and on] the street …there was water everywhere we had buckets, we had to do that and keep quiet about it…
LRN: There was an opening, the carpet was squishy.
SK: Oh Dr Schultz, the carpet is squishy. What we did we couldn't hide it…it was late at night and [we had to] be back at 9 am to be open in the morning… So then we were told to leave this kind of political stuff out. Where’s the freedom [of the] the promise? So eventually and I think it had nothing to do with Schultz, the Ambassador…he ordered two lawyers to fire a complaint against me.
LRN: So it was the German government versus Sigi Krauss and the charges were anarchy and occupation of German property. They took him to court and I would love to get the transcripts or do some research around them but the judge threw that case out.
GHAP: When was this trial?
LRN: About 1973.
SK: [Sigi and Rosetta stayed up most of the night to prepare for the court hearing] and then eventually [the court] threw it out. And I was very lucky because [they]claimed I’d done damage to the building of hundreds of thousands of pounds….holding up an architecture firm…trying to modernise the building….which didn't happen until two years later. So we were given some time to vacate and we had to leave a lot of things behind and then there were pieces of property, stuff that artists left behind…an archive and all that had to be….disappear…..what happened to the Israeli artists, you know what happened, I don’t know.
LRN: For the artists that were involved they all went on to be very successful and now many of them have archives in…Tate Gallery, National Gallery, Goethe-Institut…
[GHAP ask about other artists at Gallery House.]
SK: He was so energetic and so full of ideas…I mean John was he was full of tricks too you know…and so he would come and read one of his poems and I'm looking at him and say well….and he had glasses on and there were no lenses on them so he is reading and he is reading like um ‘yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes’ and then ended up with ‘no no no no no no yes no no no no no’ and on for an hour. Yeah that’s John Latham…And then we had Stuart [Brisley] an artist in residence…..upstairs in the room….we had people using the kitchen…basically a musician and composer so the whole house was used, the basement, the garden….the elevator…Painting…..the ballroom…everything the ceiling, the floor and that was after Stuart Brisley did a meat sculpture there he was in a wheelchair for 14 days and a microphone on his heart.. and everything black… very quickly drips and….black paint you know….art…you know…screaming in Gallery House.
GHAP: And what did you do after Gallery House?
LRN: He ran away from London.
SK: Rosetta, John Blandy, David Medalla and others you know we all we got together…we had a proposal… for a museum, an international museum of modern art…it would be run by artists and build a collection…that was the main idea…we put that proposal forward….we do, we had good contacts with the Arts Council…and they said no. It is a very good proposal but we've gonna be in trouble to support it, its too revolutionary…[Joseph] Beuys told me he was gonna do it…