Willoughby Sharp

Willoughby Sharp (January 23, 1936 – December 17, 2008) was an internationally known artist, independent curator, independent publisher, gallerist, teacher, author, and telecom activist. He founded the art magazine Avalanche in 1970, and published it until 1976.

Willoughby Sharp, Berlin, 2006 Photo by Pamela Seymour Smith

Quotes

• The old art depicted space as uniform and enclosed. The new art perceives space as organic and open. The old art was an object. The new art is a system. The configuration of the movement is more important than the shape of the object. The message of a kinetic and luminic work is the light and movement it produces. It has no other message. It has no meaning besides movement.
  • Willoughby Sharp, "Luminism and Kineticism," in: Minimal Art.- A Critical Anthology, Gregory Battcock, ed. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968), p. 358

• When I met Terry Fox in Berkeley in 1970, we became fast friends. I felt his sensibility had a lot in common with Beuys, whom I’d known for some time, and I helped get them together.
  • Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp. The Early History of Avalanche. CHELSEA Space, 2005.

Quotes about Willoughby Sharp

• MAM: Liza Béar, welcome back to Arts Magazine. Avalanche—tell us what it was and what it’s going to be.

LB: OK. The best description that my partner, Willoughby Sharp, and I came up with some years ago is that it was a cross between a magazine, an artist book, and an exhibition space in print. Basically, it was devoted to avant-garde art, from the perspective of the artist. Most art magazines at the time, actually all commercial art magazines at the time, gave the critic precedence. I met Willoughby in ’68 when I moved to New York from the London subculture. I was one of the editors of a London underground magazine that published Bob Dylan lyrics and the Situatonist Manifesto. When I met Willoughby, he was curating the Earth Art show, a show of works made in the landscape or of earth materials.br>In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, this new art seemed so fresh, so radical—not only Earth art, but conceptual art, poststudio sculpture, arte povera, performance, video—all kinds of art that stretched the boundaries of art-making and was very sort of freeing in spirit. A lot of it was made outside the studio and could take place on the street, on the page, or out in the desert. The mantra at the time was, “live in your head,” which was the subtitle of a very significant 1969 exhibition called “When Attitudes Become Form.”...

• Liza Béar and Mary Ann Miller, "The Business of Art: An Interview with Liza Béar by Mary Ann Miller" at nyfa.org. Posted June 30, 2010.