« I want to show with my work everything that is, ... I don’t know what is bad or good. All art, tears the borders apart. »
Hermann Nitsch
Hermann Nitsch
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) Read Less
