Certainly the
>Actionists were the only ones to kill and disembowel animals in the name of
>art as well as explore a range of unusual social and sexual behaviour that
>even today many would still consider shocking.
I know of a couple other examples of killing off animals in the name of art.
Joe Coleman came to pulic noteriety by killing (and maybe eating live) mice
during the course of his performances. It was puported to be about his
parents dying of cancer, and his relationship with them, crossed with his
sideshow geek affiliations. There was another artist that used to smah a
mouse between two canvases and display the results as paintings.In the
latest Art News, there was a little blurb about an artist who set up a
number of blenders with goldfish in them, and was shocked when people in the
gallery actually turned them on and killed the fish. Another artist, John
Jeffries, in his MFA show, had a container filled with flies and a bottle of
cyanide. it had a mechanism where people could vote whether to kill the fies
or release them. some fellow artists made t-shirts to plead with people to
free them, the the overwhelming vote was to kill the flies.
My impression of the Vienna Aktioists is that they all did similar rituals
but for different reasons. The following are my somewhat uninformed opinions
on the subject, mostly from seeing photos of the perfomances and my
impressions from that.
I see Nitch's long orgies as trying to create a large ritual event, to
celebrate (if that's the right word) the power of being human. They seem to
be celebrations of the ego, with all the sacrifices, and the staged
domination of others (crucification, dousing bound participants with blood,
etc etc)
Muehl's work seems to be more about an intimate Dominance/submission kind of
situation, where a model allows the artist to control and sculpt asn use
him/herself for the artists puposes. The photos I've seen of his aktions
show him basically binding and covering a nude model with various things
witha small audience present.
Gunter Brus seemed to be more about nullification of the self, blaking
himself out by painting his body white, placing himself in an envrionment of
refuse, things like that. It's like an acting out to get attention. I don't
mean to downplay his work, I find it very evocative, I think he is using a
lot of psychological motifs that childern use to get attention, just on a
scarrier, larger scale.
Rudolph Schwartkongler, is really my favorite. His work seems to be about
suffereing, and the narcissism that can be exhibited by those who suffer,
particularly manic-depressives. Again, I don't mean to downplay his work or
the real suffereing of depression. The way he uses medical implements, like
bandages and eyedroppers, how he made himself look pregnant, or bloated by
strapping a ball to himself, shows to me that he was an artist trying to
truly and poetically come to terms with his misery.
Overall, I don't think the VA artists were just trying to shock, but to
somehow redifine their humaninty in what is an increasingly inhumane,
mechanized world, whether by flying the banner of human power like Nitsch
and Muehl, or by finfishing the job of dehuminazation like Brus and
Schwartzkongler.
Thanks for the links, Sol. I'll definitely go through them to learn more
about it. I got introduced to VA when Simon Anderson was a teacher at
Louisiana State Univeristy, before he took his position in Chicago. He and I
became friends and he opened my eyes to a lot of art that I might not have
known about otherwise.
Bob Flanagan's work, from a long article on him in Artforum a couple years
back, is an interesting mix of extreme masochism (he once had a pit built
under his house where he was placed, and was fed through a tube that
originated froma funnel inside the house, where his dominatrix lover would
pour things down it, etc etc) and increasing pain and vulnerability, since
he was suffereing from Muscular Distrophy. In an exhibition in LA, he was
present the whole time in a hospital bed where he could talk to museum
visitors. His legs were attached to a hoist that, on a timer, would lift him
up and dangle him for a few minutes naked in the gallery, with his hospital
gown hanging around his head. He managed to work the ravages of his disease
to an adavntage of sorts, because it put him in a position where he really
was at the mercy of others. Re/Search published an good book on him called
"Supermasochist" taht you might be able to find at your more hip
establishments.
And now that you have all suffered through my ego-ritual-orgy of half-ass
art history blathering, I'd like to hear any other thoughts on the VA
artists.
-Alex
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