HA Schult, Art is Life | Action

Action Fetish Car

The car is a protective covering and at the same time a material of assault. It is the means of escaping the world as well as it being an instrument to conquer it. Peter Sloterdijk, 1992

We are all cars. Wir sind alle Autos. HA Schult, 1988

Street, 2012
Tripoli, Libya

Deconstruction Department Store, Cologne, 1968

Deconstruction, Kölner Ladenstadt Department Store, Cologne, 1968

Aktion 20.000 km Feldherrnhalle, Munich, 1970

Aktion 20.000 km
Kunsthaus Hamburg, 1970

Aktion 20.000 km
Kunstverein Munich, 1970

The entire art movement of the sixties, which was combined under the expression Pop Art, was nothing more than the large-scale attempt to bring art back into a very close relationship with life. Consider the famous sculptures by the American Claes Oldenbourg, who modelled a store, a sculpture.

An action like the one by HA Schult follows here the same line, the attempt to fuse art and life again into one unit, which of course still gives the individual the liberty to accept this as art or not. But those who don't accept it as art should recognize the serious attempt behind such an action. The attempt to include the world around us, the technique, the ear, in our artistic expressions. The task of art has always been to make obvious what people of a certain time think, feel or care about.

Consider art during the Middle Ages. It creates the world of the Belief. It tries to make the world of the Belief graphically obvious. A man like HA Schult, if you accept this comparison, tries to make our world obvious. The world of the car, the world of the travel, and the permanent immobility of man which has never existed in this way before. HA Schult's approach to art, in my opinion, is not only legitimate, it is right and worthwhile. Peter Ludwig, 1970