Günter Brus – Selbstbemalung (1964)
Viennese Actionism is something I’ve only come into contact with in the last several months.
Loosely: it’s less school or group and more a collective of people with similar ideas and therefore a similar approach to art making praxis and therefore also producing similar results.
In 1964, Otto Mühl summarized Actionism thusly:
…material action is painting that has spread beyond the picture
surface. The human body, a laid table or a room becomes the picture
surface. Time is added to the dimension of the body and space.
Consider Brus’ Selbstbemalung I (Kopfzumalung) from the same year:
Interestingly, in 1967 Mühl revised the statement from his manifesto to read:
… material action promises the direct pleasures of the table. Material
action satiates. Far more important than baking bread is the urge to
take dough-beating to the extreme.
With that in mind, direct your attention to the notorious Kunst und Revolution in 1968, where:
Gunter Brus, Muehl, Peter Weibel and Oswald Wiener staged a violent and
multiple taboo-breaking takeover of a student gathering at the
University of Vienna. The participants broke into a lecture hall before
whipping and mutilating themselves, urinating, covering themselves in
their own excrement, masturbating, and making themselves vomit – all
while singing the Austrian national anthem.
(For context: Chris Burden’s Shoot wasn’t executed until 1971–three years later.)
There’s ample criticism to be foisted against Actionism’s reactionary underpinnings–however, at the very least it took reaction to a place of visceral extremity. (Most of the stuff considered edgy and avant these days is blazing a very similar trail. Here’s a passable chronology of actions as well as the equivalent of a curated Greatest Hits collection.)
Acetylene Eyes 