Morgan Is Sad Today

The photo series by Jean-Pierre Maurer and RobertMüller was only shown once, in the KunstgewerbemuseumZürich in 1968, without any commentary otherthan a text by Ettore Sottsass. It is now displayedin this same way in Morgan Is Sad Today, which has been republished. The title of the book comes from asong whose lyrics go on to say "?sadder than yesterday"-and which in turn comes from the movieMorgan, A Suitable Case for Treatment, 1966, by KarelReisz. It marked the beginning of a new way ofmaking movies, the Free Cinema, with statements like"No film can be too personal," or "Perfection is notan aim," which are also reflected in the photographs athand. The staged documentations and the stagingsdocumented in the studio recall elaborate, but unpretentiousconcepts in art photography series by Swissartists such as Manon or Urs Lüthi; on the other hand,though, the formal style, motifs, and narrative threadsecho comic books. The pictures capture the Zeitgeist:on a trip to the myth-obsessed London of the Sixtiesor when Zurich Beat bands still posed for recordcovers standing head to head, or made leaps wearingsuits with skinny ties and Flamenco dancer ankleboots. The Mid-sixties were also a time when the firstlarge-scale black and white prints of posters becameavailable: of Buster Keaton or Albert Einstein stickinghis tongue out, or Trotsky. The photo series Morgan IsSad Today is in this sense very much also a conceptualstringing together of posters. In his text Ettore Sottsass stays very close to whatthe Zeitgeist embodied without glorification or denigration,with a subtle sense of amusement. And SandroFischli draws on the backgrounds of the pictures,sometimes sharply, sometimes deliberately, frayinga subjective and associative social and cultural historyof the 1960s, and looking back on an economicallybooming Switzerland in which the boundaries of highculture were becoming increasingly porous.