Page 39 - Studio International - May 1972

with Walter Pichler, who has only recently had experienced by the observer. However much The new Austrian art of the 196os and the
the opportunity, at the Museum des 20. symbolism is involved here, as in the work of early 197os clearly lacks certain well-defined
jahrhunderts in Vienna and at the Hamburger of those mentioned hitherto, however much the characteristics : developments which can be
Kunsthalle, of showing his objects and work in question seems to afford him concrete detected elsewhere, and which lead by way of
arrangements in the way he had intended them aid through its translation into terms of reality Primary Structures to Minimal, Conceptual
to be seen. His pseudo-liturgical world was put Prantl's Stones manifest, in a wholly and Land Art. Trends in Austria have their
together in a setting which invited meditation. unmannered way, the combination of extreme own regional orientation, and are marked by a
In Pichler's formal vocabulary, religious materiality and the cancelling-out of this same strong literary, romantic and surreal tendency.
symbols and objects recur. Cross and Reliquary, materiality through the conceptual element No improvement of the situation is yet in the
Altar and Phallic Reliquary, Lectern of Flames which accounts for the presentation of the stone offing : the progressive galleries have disappeared
for the Song of Songs, are just a few of the titles itself. (with the exception of the Galerie nächst St
of his designs and executed works. As in Wiener Any unprejudiced account of the new Stephan, in Vienna, run by Monsignor Otto
Aktionismus, there runs through his work a tendencies within Austrian art must include a Mauer and Oswald Oberhuber), as have
threat of traumatic fixations and imaginings, group of artists who exert a great influence progressive classes at the art schools (there are,
which require to be seen in the context of mainly on a younger generation of Viennese for instance, no arrangements such as are
Freudian interpretation. artists who have not taken their cue directly customary in America, guest professorships,
The recurrent theme is that of the space in from international exemplars. The surreal, the visiting critics, etc.); the intermediary
which the human individual spends his time, subliminal, as story, fable, myth or history, is institutions have given up the ghost entirely;
from Utopian city plans to garments, graves, detectable in their pictures, even if not in the there is a lack of affluent collectors and private
beds, cars and houses. By virtue of their souped-up guise of Fantastic Realism (which, patrons who could offer some corrective to the
precision finish, Pichler's objects have the same with its bland virtuosity and its combination of watering-can method by which State monies
degree of reality as usable objects; they occupy erotic voyeurism and philosophical profundities, are distributed; and politically and culturally
the place of cult objects. Sense and has now been promoted to the status of an Vienna is a peripheral city. As a result of a freer
significance become simply dimensions of official art). The group known as Neue exchange of ideas, there is going to be more
communication. Wirklichkeiten ('New Realities'), Peter activity in the provinces, as there already is, for
Untouched by these developments, but Pongratz, Kurt Kocherscheidt, Robert Zeppel- instance, in Graz and Innsbruck; the emphasis
linked to them, perhaps, by the theme of Sperl and Wolfgang Herzog, makes ironical will perhaps shift from the capital to the
meditation (which Rainer, Pichler and the play with the traditional categories of petit- individual regions, where there are greater
Aktionisten pursue with greater irony, or more bourgeois decorative painting, such as genre, possibilities of exchange with neighbouring
shaman-like absorption, than he), is Karl the nude, the landscape, the conversation piece. countries. q
Prantl. Within contemporary Austrian Their anti-aesthetic impulse is directed, not TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY DAVID BRITT
sculpture— which is otherwise either figurative, against the form, the medium of the easel
in the tradition of Wotruba, or derived from painting as such, but towards the disruption and
figuration—Prantl is an interesting if isolated destruction of outworn subject-matter. Their
figure. His stone works are specifically entitled attitude to the medium itself is one of affected
Stones for Meditation. This would suggest that naivety. The target is the iconography of
the end in view is in fact the meditation, and factitious consciousness, the bourgeois need
that the work, the stone, is only a means to that for pictures. The closeness to literature is
end. In fact, however, there is more to the work obvious, not only in the analogies between their 3 Arnulf Rainer
than an aid to a process of meditation; the stone ideas and the 'linguistic criticism' of the Face—Farces 1971
itself, the work, is intended as a real and present literary Vienna Group (H. C. Artmann, Konrad 4 Bruno Gironcoli
entity in relation to its interlocutor, the Beyer, Gerhard Rühm, Friedrich Achleitner), Object 1971 (installation shot)
spectator. Its concrete quality, its weight, and its but also in their figurative tendency, approaching 5 Hermann Nitsch
material nature qua density, are meant to be art by way of fable and story. Crucifixion of the Lamb (action)
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