ART-PRESENTATION: Body, Psyche and Taboo
Viennese Actionism is a school of radical Performance art that sought to nullify and loosen the grip of the bourgeois conventions of the post-war years. The movement points to cross-references with international developments and politics. It soon became evident that not only was the art abreast of current discourse, but the extremism expressed in it stressed the significance of a raw and uncompromising aesthetic. This aesthetic departed from traditionalism, far-fetched from the conventional realm of object-based practices, which at the time other artists had been operating in.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Mumok Archive
The human body became established as an integral part of the art-making, art-action process, blood, sweat and excrement included. The combination of grotesque sexual humor and catharsis in their Performances testified to the shocking nature of the works made by action artists. Others, such as Kurt Kren, Peter Weibel and Ernst Schmidt Jr., recognized that video and film could be used to critique the repressive aspects of language and mass media. Since the ‘80s, Viennese Actionism has become internationally established as one of Austria’s most valued contributions to the Avant-Garde. With the exhibition “Body, Psyche, and Taboo: Vienna Actionism & Early Vienna Modernism”, Mumok is taking a fresh look at Vienna Actionism one of the mainstays of its Collection by relating this to equally radical positions taken by some of its Austrian predecessors, creating an encounter between artists from around the turn of the 20th Century and Vienna Actionists. Works by Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, the scandal artists of the ‘60s, are compared and contrasted with pieces by their equally controversial colleagues working at the dawn of the 20th Century, from Gustav Klimt to Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka and Koloman Moser, to Anton Romako, Max Oppenheimer, and Egon Schiele. Both Early Modernism and the period around 1960 in Vienna were characterized by a revolutionary sense of a new start in society and in culture and the arts. Conventions of representation and artistic genres were redefined, a faith in the power of art to shape and remold society led to new utopias and radical forms of provocation against the traditional order. The works of both Movements made significant contributions to international art history, and their relevance is increasingly recognized today, as the achievements and intellectual developments of the 20th Ccentury are undergoing review. The works of both generations are replete with psychological portraits, and depictions of the exposed body with its experience of pain. Self-portrayals as martyrs are frequent, as are notions of the artist as a priest and savior of society. Restrictive borders are opened up, and art adopts an interdisciplinary approach. This also includes photographic (and later film), theater, literary, and musical art forms, often linking these with each other. Psychoanalysis and a critique of language also bring the potential of new scientific discourses into the artistic works.
Info: Curator: Eva Badura-Triska, Museum moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Museumsplatz 1, Vienna, Duration: 4/3-16/5/16, Days & Hours: Mon 14:00–19:00, Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00–19:00, Thu 10:00–21:00, www.mumok.at
