Willem de Ridder

Willem de Ridder died three years ago today, at the age of 83. 

The Dutch artist, anarchist, storyteller, publisher, and composer had a career that stretched over seven decades, typically working in the margins of the art world.  

De Ridder graduated from the Academy of Arts in Den Bosch, and shortly afterwards decided to stop painting. He first came into contact with Fluxus when he interviewed Nam June Paik, who introduced him to George Maciunas, who asked him to join the group. 

He ended up running the Fluxus European Mail-Order House. 

"An enormous crate arrived by freight, delivered to my house," de Ridder told me in 2002. "There was a huge amount of things from Maciunas: suitcases, boxes, all kinds of work. I thought, "Shit, now I have to do something about it." So I arranged all the various editions beautifully and had a friend of mine take a photograph of the display. My girlfriend [Dorothy Meijer] at the time sat in the middle of display. The photo looked so great that I distributed it and made a catalogue of the work, which I also heavily distributed. It listed all of the Fluxus works for sale, with prices and a description. Of course, I didn’t sell anything. Not a single thing."

The photograph became an iconic image of Fluxus publishing (see below)

A recreation of the work (with a cardboard cut-out of Meijer) is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York .

“The list of fluxprojects that I did is endless,” he said, "and it became very clear to me that the young generation is very interested in the way Fluxus liberated us from all those officials who not only decided how we had to live, but what was art and what wasn’t.”

Together with Wim T. Schippers, de Ridder organized Dutch Fluxus festivals in 1963 and 1964 and, later, the Wet Dream Festival, the first international erotic film festival. 

The latter was a spin-off from Suck: The First European Sex Paper, which he ran as part of the SELF group (Sexual Egalitarian and Libertarian Fraternity), alongside Germaine Greer and others. Only eight issues were produced over a five year period of the periodical now called "an experimental amalgam of sexual liberation, feminist ferment, alternative visual culture, and literary ambition." De Ridder provided an office for the newspaper, and spearheaded the graphic design and artistic content, tapping his network for contributions by John Giorno, Valerie Solanas, Otto Muehl, Thomas Bayrle, Gunter Rambow, Ed van der Elsken, and others. 

Previously, the artist had founded the music newspaper Hit Week, which published 32 issues between 1965 and 1969. He also co-founded the "counter culture" nightclubs Provadya and Paradiso.

“When I started at Paradiso, everyone could just jump on stage. And if you didn’t know what was going to happen, we didn’t either,” De Ridder recalled in 2018. “In no time it was packed and they came from all over the country.” The venue - operational for over fifty years - has hosted performances by Adele, Arcade Fire, David Bowie, James Brown, Nick Cave, Duran Duran, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Hole, Ice Cube, Curtis Mayfield, Willie Nelson, Nirvana, the Pixies, Prince, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth, U2, Frank Zappa, and countless others. 

He was the co-founder of the Mood Engineering Society (MES) and started the Society for Party Organizing (SPO) to introduce audience generated theatre. Together with Schippers he founded the Association for Scientific Research in New Methods of Recreation. 

De Ridder collaborated with performance artist and porn star/activist Annie Sprinkle, with whom he was also romantically involved, from 1978 to 1980. 

A consummate story-teller, with a captivating voice, de Ridder hosted a weekly radio show on Amsterdam radio station Radio 100 for over twenty years. 

"I hated Art. Shit, it kills everything. All creativity is killed by calling it fucking art. But I liked what the Fluxus people were doing - making things up on the spot. So I organized a big Fluxus concert at a very famous big theatre on the coast, near the Hague. I made big posters and a lot of people came. I invited friends to do some pieces; [George] Maciunas came, Dick Higgins, and several others. I also organized one in Amsterdam at a student theatre. Jackson Mac Low was there, and Alison Knowles, Eric Anderson. You name it, lots of people. And it generated a fair amount of interest.

- Willem de Ridder