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ART |
 Man of Aktion
The Viennese artist
Hermann Nitsch's work may repulse you, but it'll give you lots
to think about.
by Roberta
Fallon
Stay calm when encountering Vienna actionist
Hermann Nitsch's works in his 41-year retrospective, which
opens Saturday at Slought. While the videotapes of the
artist's actions-drinking animal blood, stomping on animal
entrails and showing humans on crucifixes-may seem to be
exercises in shock, forays into bad taste or the actions of a
cult, they're not.
Nitsch's hypertheatrical work is a kind of symbolic
exorcism of the horrors that took place in World War II-and
the entire thrust of the work is reparations, as curator
Osvaldo Romberg, a longtime friend of the artist, explains.
It's work I frankly find incompre-hensible, vaguely annoying
and, at bottom, repellant.
Romberg points to the work's historical and geographical
context-the post-World War II era (in which violence, death
and guilt hung over populations like a dark cloud) and the
extreme wide-open theatrical orientation of Vienna.
"From my point of view, the people in Vienna are very
liberal, very open. On the other hand, it's very conservative.
It's a contradiction," says Romberg, an Argentine-born artist
and curator who shows his art at the same Paris gallery as
Nitsch.
"Viennese people have an extravagant taste for opera and
for theater. He's creating an operatic event to express things
people repress."
America, of course, had its "happenings" at about the same
time-but our taste isn't nearly as extravagant and our
happenings were tame by comparison. The difference comes down
to the wars fought on European soil, says Romberg. "In my
opinion, after the Holocaust in Europe, poetry, writing and
art couldn't be the same.
"American art is optimistic. Not lately with Bush, but
America always was a society of happiness, of optimism.
Europe, because of war, is more existential. Nitsch is an
extreme manifestation of that mentality."
Romberg says Nitsch's pageantry is different from a lot of
performance art because it involves groups of people and
doesn't focus on the artist. "It's not about him," Romberg
says. Nor is it about religion, dogma or preaching of any
sort. It's an expiatory performance-when it's over, it's over.
Romberg compares the blood of Nitsch's pageants with that
in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. "Gibson's
film is absolutely bloody, masochistic and sadistic. And it's
to provoke people. It's propaganda," he says.
Nitsch's point, simply put, is that violence isn't good.
This transcends religion and goes right into common sense.
"The ultimate objective of Nitsch is not destruction and not
to make you moral," Romberg says. "You're either moral or not,
but you can't become moral by dictate. Nitsch wants you to
think."
By all means check the exhibit out and participate in
Slought's discussion groups surrounding the show. Art of this
nature-so completely and utterly different from anything
you'll see anywhere else-has relevance for a population at
war, even though the war isn't fought on our soil. If nothing
else, it's a visceral reminder of war's ability to make
everyone a witness-and a victim.
"Hermann Nitsch/Die Aktionen: 1962-2003"
Opens Sat.,
Feb. 19, 6:30-8:30pm. Free. Through May 19. Slought
Foundation, 4017 Walnut St. 215.222.9050. http://www.slought.org/
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