The Magazine is the Message: het papieren netwerk van de Europese neo-avant-garde (1958-1963)

Abstract

At this moment, postmodernism has become history. This allows a fresh look at the ‘pre-postmodern’ past. Rereading Zero and other radical artists’ magazines of the early 1960s gives us the opportunity to broaden the historical scope of the magazine as an artistic medium. Having been written almost exclusively from the conceptualist perspective of the late 1960s, the history of the artists’ publication (both magazine and book) can benefit from an archaeology of the years before conceptual art. Especially at the time young DIY-oriented artists are rediscovering the potential of print, a more nuanced approach of the publications that are at the root of this practice, is of crucial importance. In this essay I will sketch a chronological topography of the crucial years between 1958 and 1963 and the use avant-garde artists made of the magazine medium. A detailed description of the neo-avant-garde artists’ magazines of this period provides the possibility to draw the network of the international Zeromovement and to situate it in a broader context.