Vienna Actionism : Art and Upheaval in 1960s’ Vienna
Viennese Actionism is the most important Austrian contribution to international avantgarde developments in the Sixties that extended the definition of art.
Viennese Actionism is the most important Austrian contribution to international avantgarde developments in the Sixties that extended the definition of art. Similar to the contemporaneous Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus or American Literalist Art, artists regarded the pictorial surface as no longer suitable because, in the final analysis, the medium is always illusionistic and, led by their feelings, they turned to working directly with real bodies, objects and substances.
Austrian art of the 1950’s and 1960’s is formatively influenced by reactions to a restrictive political and cultural climate. The Wiener Gruppe (Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm, Oswald Wiener) implemented their concept of thinking of language as visual and acoustic material in collages, typogrammes and happening-like events such as the Literarischen Cabarets [Literary Cabarets] (1958-59) and thus prepared the ground for the Viennese actionists.
Comprehensive overview of Vienna Actionists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Edited by Eva Badura-Triska, Hubert Klocker. Text by Eva Badura-Triska, Kerstin Barnick-Braun, Rosemarie Brucher, Thomas Eder, Marie-Therese Hochwartner. Includes 1,400 color images, biographies and an illustrated chronology and index of all the “actions,” literature and films. “Brus, Mühl, Nitsch and Schwarzkogler shared a similar reaction to the restrictive political and cultural climate of the Austrian art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. Others, such as Kurt Kren, Ernst Schmidt Jr., Valie Export and Peter Weibel, used the medium of video and film to critique the repressive aspects of language and mass media, and the Wiener Gruppe (Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm, Oswald Wiener) saw language as a visual and acoustic material, and transformed it into collages, happenings and ‘literary cabarets.'” — from publisher’s statement. Text in English.
Edited by: Eva Badura-Triska, Hubert Klocker, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
Foreword by: Karola Kraus
Texts by: Eva Badura-Triska, Kerstin Barnick-Braun, Rosemarie Brucher, Thomas Eder, Marie-Therese Hochwartner, Christian Höller, Gabriele Jutz, Kazuo Kandutsch, Hubert Klocker, Edelbert Köb, Brigitte Marschall, Manuel Millautz and Johanna Schwanberg
Dimensions: 23,5 x 28 cm
Volume: 416 pages
Images: 983 illustrations
Hardcover
Language: english
ISBN: 978-3-902490-74-2
Publisher: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König 2012, Mint condition, edition of 2000 copies, hardcover NEW copy still in publisher’s shrinkwrap, in decorative hard covers,heavy oversized, shipped insured, 4.5 lbs, as issued 416 Pages, 2012
$ 900.00
