Performance 2003, 2003

Hermann Nitsch was a multimedia artist from Austria. His work in multimedia involves depicting human excesses of many kinds, including abstract splatter pieces and performance art. Hermann Nitsch is most noted for his performance work Theater of Orgies and Mysteries (1962-1998) which included almost one hundred staged presentations.He has many abstract paintings which share the title Splatter Painting and are identified with the year of their creation. These are mostly combinations of oil and acrylic on canvas. Each has a predominant, focused area of paint and varied amounts of spills, drips and runs rolling down the canvas from the largest area. Typically painted in one range of color, such as all red, these paintings are intended to convey the intensity of the performances that generated them. They are backdrops to his live Aktion (or action) events held during the course of his Theater of Orgies and Mysteries staged events. During Hermann Nitsch's theatrical performances, he was known for incorporating themes of sacrifice and ritual while enacting brutal scenes of symbolic crucifixion, animal sacrifice, blood drinking, and a plethora of pagan rituals enlivened by robed processions, nudity, drunken excesses and the addition of viscera and entrails to the props and activities. Hermann Nitsch was called “the Pope of Aktionism” in Vienna. The movement sought to shun traditional painting and sculpture as being illusions rather than reality. In doing so, participants hoped to create art that existed in real time, using violence and the corporeal world as themes and subject matter. Hermann Nitsch and artists who embraced the ideals of Aktionism were both hated and praised for their performance art. Viewed by many as part of a cult, other artists in this movement included Rudolf Schwartzkogler, Gunter Brus and Otto Muhl. (Artist website)