Dorothy Iannone: The Story of Bern

“As much as Love and Eros have defined my work since its beginnings, so too has censorship or its shadow, accompanied it,” recalls Dorothy Iannone in her introduction to this facsimile publication of her legendary “The Story of Bern, [or] Showing Colors.”

First published in 1970, the book documents the censorship of Iannone’s work “The (Ta)Rot Pack” (1968–1969) and the subsequent removal of all his works by her then companion, artist Dieter Roth, from a collective exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern. For his exhibition entitled “Freunde, Friends, d’Frьnde,” Harald Szeemann invited Karl Gerstner, Roth, Daniel Spoerri, and Andrй Thomkins who all decided to exhibit their artists friends; Roth chose Iannone alongside Emmett Williams. The censorship of Iannone, and Roth’s protest, eventually led to Harald Szeemann’s resignation as the director of the institution.

Telling the story of this act of censorship as well as the context of the exhibition in Bern and its iteration in a non-censored version in Dьsseldorf, “The Story of Bern” is emblematic of Iannone’s distinctive, explicit, and comic book style, and of her openness about sexuality and the strengthening of female autonomy.