HA Schult

Beautiful Trash

Conceptual artist HA Schult has been called the "German Christo" for the epic scale of his work.

Meeting HA Schult might best be described as an encounter with a visionary. The 63 year old calls himself a "Macher," a word that -- perhaps better than anything else -- embodies the artist's complex character. Macher can mean "a maker or worker," but in popular German slang a Macher can also mean someone who wants to be perceived as important, a Big Shot.

Born in Parchim, Mecklenburg on June 24, 1939, Schult knew very early on that he wanted to become an artist. "The period of childhood around five or six is the most influential time for most artists," he says. "When I was six years old, my parents arranged for an art teacher because I was already a wonderful painter, and from this moment on I began to be an artist."

Growing up in Germany after World War II has always influenced his work. "I saw Berlin when it had died. I saw the first black and white movies from the U.S. and I saw all the people returning from the war in Eastern Europe. Maybe the dialogue between reality and life in my work comes from this time," he says.

Schult went to school in both East and West Berlin, Düsseldorf and Heidelberg. From 1958 to 1961, he studied art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. "There were three artists who were important to me," Schult says recalling his studies, "Ives Klein, because he made a picture which gave us freedom. A French artist, George Mateu -- for him it was important how he made the picture. And Jackson Pollock. For him the picture was not important, but it was rather the floor, the whole space around it that was important. The picture was only one part of this kind of art."

Junk happens

In 1969, Schult caught the attention of the world with his art action "Situation Schackstrasse." The happening consisted of covering a street in Munich with trash and paper, and police immediately arrested the artist. But that was only the beginning -- the projects grew as Schult changed urban venues.

In 1976, he filled St. Mark's Square in Venice with old newspapers in an overnight action that surprised the authorities, Venetians and art lovers alike. Another of his pieces, a golden-winged Ford Fiesta, was placed on top of a column marking the entrance to the Cologne's City Museum. In New York, HA Schult hired a stunt pilot to crash a Cessna into the garbage dump on Staten Island and, in 1983, he created a paper river in downtown New York, using old issues of the New York Times, with the North and South towers of the World Trade Center as a backdrop.

New York City has played a crucial role in Schult's life. He moved there in the '70s, he says, because it was the only real center for contemporary art. "Before the Second World War, Paris was the most important city for artists," he says. "But after the war Paris was not important for contemporary art. London had only two contemporary art galleries, in Germany there were only five. But New York had a lot of influence at that time. It was the starting point for many artists, Jackson Pollack, (Willem) de Kooning and many others, and I thought that I would go to the center."