CHRONOLOGY

1913

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, a “readymade” play object that transformed Duchamp’s outlook on life while he played with it (see essay).

1923

Bauhaus, Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, Bauspiel and Josef Hartwig, chess set, two of the first play objects at the Bauhaus.

1926-31  

Alexander Calder, Circus, and ca. 100 additional figurative, playful sculptures in the following years.  Calder is best known as the inventor of mobiles. With the motion of his mobiles he created the same playful enjoyment that Duchamp experienced while spinning his wheel. (see essay)

1953

Yaacov Agam, at his first exhibition at the Galerie Craven in Paris, 45 transformable works for the participation of the spectator were exhibited. He later explored other art forms but continued with this type of work throughout his entire career.

1960

Lygia Clark, Bichos, Sundial, and a large number of additional hinged objects over the next fifteen years. Clark was frustrated by her audience (galleries, collectors, museums) that did not want to understand that her hinged objects were meant to be played with. (see essay).

1961

Kurt Naef, Swiss toy maker, began production of wooden play objects by a growing number of international artists.  After 1977, he also reproduced  Bauhaus play objects under license of the Bauhaus Museum.  By 1995 ca. 120 artistic objects were published.  The Naef collection was supposed to be an essential part of the planned PlayArt exhibition at MoMA in 1969 (see Lanier Graham below).

1962

Ernst Lurker, while an art student in Hamburg, created four moveable wooden sculptures that invited playful interaction by the viewer. He coined the term “PlayArt” as a descriptive categorization for this type of work. One of the pieces was later enlarged for the Munich Olympics (see statement and video).

1968

MoMA produced two PlayArt objects, the chess set by Lanier Graham, a MoMA curator, and Multiplications by Betty Thomson. They were the first objects a museum produced for its museum store, and MoMA set an example for other museums to follow.

1969

Lanier Graham, former curator at MoMA, devised plans for a PlayArt exhibition at MoMA.  The project was not realized as he left MoMA and moved to San Francisco (see his letter).

1972

Munich Olympics, the first, large, public introduction of the PlayArt movement. The Olympic committee needed a contrasting program to the pompous and overbearing Hitler Olympics of 1936. It was decided to let the audience interact with a playful art environment. The entire theme was called “Play Street” (Spielstrasse). (see this letter)

Art – action and participation, Author: Frank Popper, the authoritative book on the movement to that point. The study documents how “ludic” activities evolved from many different art forms. (Review) 

Tokyo, three exhibitions by the name of Museum of Fun; curator: Itsuo Sakane, sponsor: Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo newspaper). Sakane later regretted that he did not know about PlayArt, he would have preferred to use that name. (see excerpt of his catalogue introduction)

1985

Bayer AG (pharmaceuticals), publication of the book PlayArt and Creativity (in English, with illustrations) by Ernst Lurker, with a preface by Hans Theodor Flemming, art historian (E 269-865/840-193). (see foreword)

1987

Susi Brunner Gallery, Zurich, PlayArt exhibition, primarily the Naef collection.

Additional documentations of other such private exhibitions (i.e. Berlin and Budapest) are currently underway.

Creation of the Institute for Research and Education in Play (Institut für Spielforschung und Spielpädagogik) in Salzburg, Austria. As a member of TASP (The Association for the Study of Play), Ernst Lurker reported about its first international symposium in the TASP Newsletter. The PlayArt movement was an important topic. (see report as PDF)

1992

Leo Castelli, supported the PlayArt movement. He contacted his liaisons at leading institutions but without success (see his letter and an essay).

1995, 1997,
1999 and 2001

Itsuo Sakane continued his curatorial work with four additional exhibitions. They were called “Interaction” but he saw the connection to play. (see excerpt of his catalogue introduction)

1995

Berlin, the City made a commitment to create a Museum of PlayArt.  The concept included funding by the city and the creation of a new type of museum.  More than 1,000 artists were on the program.  (see this letter)

2001

Charles Long creates 100 Pounds of Clay, a groundbreaking work of PlayArt that is shown for the first time at the Dan Elias Gallery in Boston and subsequently in various museums. In its starting configuration, the artwork consists of 100 one-pound blocks of brightly colored modeling clay. The audience is invited to pick them up and play with them, thus a multitude of ever changing individual sculptures is being created.  The piece obliterates the "do-not-touch" rule of art exhibits and it circumvents the frequent objection that PlayArt tends to deteriorate and loose its value through the intended play activity. In this case, the installation is constantly being transformed; a finished work of art and a saleable commodity never materializes. The players also develop their own creativity, a primary objective of PlayArt.

2002

Relational Aesthetics, author: Nicolas Bourriaud. Up until this time, the term “interactive art” was the dominant designation for this art form. Bourriaud’s new term “relational art” (which he coined in 1995) gained more and more currency. The implication is that artists began to work more with communicative group activities. Nevertheless, they remained a form of play. (Review)

2006

Carsten Höller, one of the most ambitious and powerful works of PlayArt, the slide (Test Site) at the Tate Modern (see video)

2008

Berlin, suspended the museum plans.  After the return of the German government from Bonn to Berlin (1999) the city’s financial situation was significantly strained.  Hopes that this situation would improve were defeated by the global financial crisis.

2009

Wikipedia, the PlayArt entry (click here to see a screenshot of it) was deleted on the grounds that the art form does not exist.  This action brought to light the necessity for documenting this movement.

2010

Play Biennial, a collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum and YouTube for a video competition. The event is a significant breakthrough in two areas. The use of the term Play in conjunction with an art museum indicates a groundbreaking change of attitude since art and play were previously considered incompatible. The opening of such a venerable institution to a mass media is a giant step towards the democratization of art (see essay).

2011

Venice Biennale, PlayArt is represented by (alias) Norma Jeane. Her work consists of numerous plasticine bricks that form a large block in the center of the room. The visitors are invited to remove the individual portions and play with them, using the walls and the floor. The installation breaks down over time as the players use up the malleable material. The old "do-not-touch" rule and the commodification of art works are again invalidated. The audience is encouraged to become creative, a primary objective of PlayArt.

2011

Carsten Höller, one person show at the New Museum in New York. The show spanned work from 1993 to 2011 and was a huge success with the public. The museum staff had to be doubled, the attendance figures doubled and tripled. The reviews by art critics were less enthusiastic; one writer called the artwork "interactive claptrap". But the audience was undeterred by the critics. (See details of the slide installation)

2012

The Art of Video Games at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a watershed exhibition that documents the forty-year evolution of video games and authoritatively establishes this medium as an art form. In 2010, the revenue of the global video game market hit $66 billion and it is expected to rise to $81 billion by 2016. There is no better indicator for the status and the direction of our culture than the phenomenon of video games. They are the manifestation of the playful mind, and true to the predictions of the renowned play theoretician, Brian Sutton-Smith, the twenty first century “will be the century of play.” (See his letter) (read more)