© Lars Bang Larsen. #2

“His disappearance was not merely due to vulnerable artistic strategies, but also the result of being ostracised by the (art-) political powers that be. A case in point is Ann-Charlotte and Sture Johannesson’s exhibition on the issue of freedom of speech On Germany — in Time (“The Pen is Mightier than The Sword?”), at KulturHuset in Stockholm in 1976 that, ironically, was totally censored. Here, Johannesson again proved himself to be difficult — probably a terrorist sympathiser — and his art intolerable.
  This exhibition, that took Ulrike Meinhof as the point of departure for a discussion of political freedoms and rights, was closed two days after the opening, and the Johannessons were escorted back to Malmö by the police.
  The repeated censorship of his work, probably unique in recent Swedish history, were harsh disciplinary measures that also had the privately detrimental effect of making the artistic identity Sture Johannesson incommunicable. His work could not be understood within the established frameworks; it was made a perfect misfit. Art became anything but easy.
  If we are to be a little cynical about it, there are basically two established career strategies for people who work with art. You can either speculate in pleasing the system or speculate in resisting it. In both cases it is rather simple to understand what is expected of you at any given time. So whether you are inside the institutional framework or outside of it, art is easy. The real results, and the real trouble, come when you struggle with the frame — massage it, manipulate it, puncture it. Johannesson finally adopted a dissident position with regard to the centralised hegemony of State-sanctioned Swedish art life.”