| | | |
| |
"Kunst ist Leben, Leben ist Kunst"[art is life, life is art]is the programmatic demand of Timm Ulrichs. The "Totalkünstler" [total artist] (self-description) has made himself into a test case and study object for this maxim, in which he more or less exhibited himself in a glass box as "erstes lebendes Kunstwerk" [first living artwork] (1961), examined his body according to all the rules of natural-scientific art (surface area of skin: 18260 square centimeters) and compared his egocentric experiments with the general geocentric worldview.
Ulrichs takes an interest in concrete poetry in the circle around Prof. Max Bense of the TU Stuttgart [Technical University, Stuttgart] (which also includes Ernst Jandl and Gerhard Rühm). The first publications of "typogrammen" appeared as early as 1960/61. Publication of poems called "typewriter Art" and "typotextur" (T.U.) (periodicals "schöngeist bel esprit" [aesthetic bel esprit] and "pflugblatt" [plough sheet]) as well as "optischer Poesie" [optical poetry] (e.g. "W/Ü/R/F/E/L"-Würfel [dice]) from 1964. |
|
|
| | | |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
Artists of the Artikel-Editionen:
|
Photograph: Peter Fabian, 2003
Timm Ulrichs
Born 1940 in Berlin, studied architecture at the TH Hannover [Technical University, Hanover] (1959–1966), founded the "Werbezentrale für Totalkunst" [advertising headquarters for total art] in 1961, opened a "Kunstpraxis" [art practice] in Hanover, where he still lives, in 1969. Professor at the Kunstakademie Münster [Academy of Art, Münster] 1972 till 2005; documenta exhibitor 1972 and 1977. Winner of many awards, works in well-known private and museum collections as well as in public spaces; numerous books and catalogues, some with his own essays and manifestos; video works and documentary films; an index of his printed graphical work was issued in 2003 (published by Sprengel Museum, Hanover).
The “total artist” (self-description) has exhibited himself since 1961 (in the Patio Galerie Frankfurt/Main) as the “first living work of art”. His field of action includes performances and experiments on himself, body-art visual poetry, land-art, objets trouvés, collages, ad-actions etc. Ulrichs’ ideological forerunners can be found above all in the Dada movement which revolted against the bourgeois-academic cultural scene. There are affinities with Raoul Hausmann and the “Merz art” of Kurt Schwitters, artistic kin to Marcel Duchamp and René Magritte. |
|
| |
|
|
