Page 37 - Studio International - May 1972

New tendencies To the outside observer, as distinct from the was no sign of any new tendency at all. The
informed insider, the Austrian art scene, with dominant influences were late art informel
in Austrian art its self-projected image dominated by and—yes —Expressionism.
obstruction, reaction, tedium and diehardism, The present-day scene reveals the
Peter Weiermair apparently has little that is new to offer. This is coexistence of the most varied tendencies, partly
deceptive : the official scepticism about anything as a matter of differences between generations;
that is new, and above all experimental, the but there is no escaping from the fact that the
strongly entrenched conservatism, and the crisis of easel painting as a medium and as a
perennial dominance of a gourmet musical form, and the supplanting of sculpture by
culture and a museum-piece theatre, conceal the object, the environment and the installation,
from view a number of interesting groups and have been basic preoccupations for many
attitudes which reflect, with the inevitable artists. Artists like Hans Hollein, working as
national variations, universal situations and designers, creators of urban living contexts,
tendencies. The fact that experimental ideas inter-media researchers, point to the enormous
have been driven underground, have been expansion of the field of possible creative
neglected for years, and have received public activity open to the artist.
attention here in Austria only after gaining The crisis of easel painting, which has
recognition abroad, has served to make the become apparent on the international level in a
artists concerned a good deal tougher, while at long drawn-out process, implies a new and
the same time protecting them from over- transformed relationship to reality on the artist's
exposure. The term 'new tendencies' does not part. 'The development of art has tended
necessarily apply only to an evolution peculiar towards the use of reality as a direct means of
to Austria but also involves developments which formal creation. Art has automated itself,
have been detectable on an international level transformed itself into a pure contemplation
for some time. Even so, even into the 196os there of reality.' (Hermann Nitsch.)

Karl Prantl
Stone for Meditation, Black Granite 1971-72
2 Günter Brus
Test to Destruction, Munich 1970