PAINTING ACTIONISM

Interview with Hermann Nitsch, by Otmar Rychlik

OR: The earliest painting actions took place in 1960. Out of which idea did they evolve and how did they take place?

HN: I realized the connection between my own action theater and informal painting, or action painting, around 1959/60. There was something dramatic about the way the abstract expressionists painted. The creative process, the happening in which the painting gradually evolved, became just as important as the result. In this sense I performed painting actions in 1960 at my studio at the Technical Museum where I was working as a graphic artist at the time. The dramatic procedure of the painting action was a component of my 0. M. Theater. With regard to informal painting, I think that I then exhausted its possibilities to the limits. I hardly used the paint brush anymore, the splashing and pouring of paint on a surface was the real event. The painting action was documented by photography as well as film.

Which of the statements of the 0. M. Theatre have the closest relation to the painting.

Originally the 0. M. Theatre was a "poetry of words". I had been developing this since 1956. Even at this time I wanted to write a six-day drama. My style was influenced by Trakl, German expressionism, French symbolism, Stephan George, Joyce and surrealism. I always sought strong forms of expression, an intense, sensual language which I only saw realized in dramas by Kleist and in Greek tragedy. Around 1958 I understood that what I really wanted was incompatible with traditional language. I proceeded to break with verbal expression and to provide the spectators with direct sensual sensations. My participants of the play should taste, smell, behold, hear and touch. I produced actual happenings whose sensual intensity was to deeply move the participants of the play. Besides the intake of odorous and flavorous substances, liquids like blood, vinegar, wine, milk, eggyolk and so on were spilled in the theater. Raw meat, luke-warm, wet and bloody mesentery was supposed to be looked at and get touched. The sensuousness of the substance was important to me. I see the same sensuousness of the substance within informal painting. Paint is poured and splashed onto a surface and then smeared, pulpy color mass is smeared upon the picture. The painting process becomes a real happening. Theater occurs on the perspective plane. I always say that the painting of the 0. M. Theatre is the visual grammar of my theater on such a surface. The intrinsic action, the intrinsic action theater leaves the places of refuge of the painting itself and goes beyond space to total reality.

The first painting actions still took place in a closed session. By that I am: also alluding to a biographical or you could say anecdotal question.

The so-called exclusion of the public inevitably resulted from the fact that only a small group of intimate artist-friends were interested in this birth of a real, new and non-verbal theater. Those few people though were mobilized for this documentation by photography and film. Already through this documentation the audience was included in this Utopian respect. Some filmic and photographical documentations of those painting actions exist.

Did any requisites — in the sense of the 0. M. Theatre - exist already then, were objects included and did they point to the cosmogony of their theatrical vision with their ritual character?

At the time of my earliest exhibitions it was a matter-of-course for me that art was something similar to religion and the performance of art corresponded to a ritual. In this sense I wanted and still want to expand theater. I saw similar thoughts being pursued by Stephan George and Gustav Klimt. Even they understood their part as priesthood. Klimt painted in a ritual robe. I myself was already wearing a cowl-like shirt during my first painting actions, without which my present painting-rituals are no longer imaginable. By the way, with such ideas one met with fierce resistance in 1960. The conservatives didn't understand me anyway and the avantgarde was very keyed to rationalism.

Did those robes at that time play the same part in the picture as today — and to state it more precisely: what actually is the part of the robe hanging in front of the picture, as a component of the oeuvre?

Already very early I thought of keeping the color-stained shirt as a relic. Three years after the first painting action I began to preserve the relics of the actions. I exhibited white clothes and even action robes were as relics in my actions. Around 1969 I started to hang the ritual robes of the Christian church in front of my action paintings. Later on I did the same with my used painting shirts. The robe as representing the marks of the bloodiest suffering corresponds to the earliest, most immediate development of painting.

.You speak of a "vera ikon", of the real picture, of a picture of God not made by man, of a picture that divinity has formed of itself after it has given the word of creation.

A blasphemous statement is the last thing I am thinking of but I do mean to say that a picture automatically seismographs something that happened, something created by the hand of man. It's something that goes beyond traditional painting. A touching tongue of the happening becomes apparent, a prototype of the orgiastic plot of the painting becomes absorbed in the white cloth of the shirt.

But this automatism could be taken for something "not created by the hand of man" , at least in the sense of the translation that the picture comes from the unconsciousness.

The Surrealist attempts at automatic writing suffered from the fact that the construction of language ultimately did not enable a free, automatic flow. Only the abstract expressionists and the informal painters succeeded in suddenly imparting an idea to the throng of the unconsciousness and the creativity. The non-verbal tongue of the sensual orgy flew over the picture. In this sense, one could say that the creative Dionysian sensation is reflected on the perspective plane. Of course this art is not possible without psychoanalysis. It led us to radical results in this field. Many aspects of life within us were to brought to the level of consciousness again by action painting and the visual action of O.M. Theatre.

How long did the phase of the first painting actions last, how was its development and when did it end?

At the same time as my first painting actions were taking place, I created my "way-of-the-cross-stations", 2-3 m large pictures. Here I tried to expand my ideas of the painting action with a view to producing something lasting. The quintessence of the numerous painting actions was the documentation of the painting itself, because the results, mostly surfaces of paper on which I had poured the cheapest paint were destroyed. The first, up to the third painting action took place, as I already said, at my studio at the Technical Museum. My associates there photographed and filmed the process. People thought I was crazy and felt compassion for me. I'm happy to own some of those documentations. My fourth painting action took place at my first private studio which I had rented in a housing-estate in Großjedlersdorf on Mitterhofgasse. Again one of my associates filmed and photographed what took place. The fifth and sixth painting action already took place at my second studio which also was in Großjedlersdorf in the Brünnerstraße — which I rented until 1976. A friend of mine, Peter Jurkowitsch who was very much interested in art documented those actions. The seventh action took place in the "Mühlstudio" in the 20th Viennese district on Perinetgasse — in the course of our well-known "immuring-action" — together with Otto Mühl and Adolf Frohner. This painting action paved the way to the intrinsic actions. It was coupled to the crucifixion of an immolated lamb. The meat was not yet included in the action through the happening. For the first time blood was poured on the canvas. Despite the slaughtered sheep I still think that this action is part of the painting action. In 1962 I did my first real action with my own body. After that the eighth painting action — which was the last one for a longer time — took place on Brünnerstraße again. In the following years, I'm almost tempted to say, all over the world, mainly the actions of the 0. M. Theatre took place. Only in the seventies did I organize smaller painting actions again.

But still the momentum of painting is also crucial for the complete theatrical actions. Could one speak of symbol meanings or do you view such narrative models of interpretation with distaste?

Again and again I try to elaborate my own action in a didactic way. By my work I want to tell the history of the origin of the psyche and the consciousness. Parallel to this the logical development of my work results. In this sense I repeatedly show my action painting as the first element of my action. My theater is an extremely visual theater. The qualities of my painting are increasingly manifested in every action. Nevertheless it makes me very happy to bring the actionistic happening back onto a perspective plane on which it can be endlessly expanded in the surrounding space. In my theater my painting is supposed to always have a function like in a litany, comparable to the Gregorian chorale. My painting ought to be an initiation formula, a meditative formula in the sense of the orgiastic happening of dramatic excess. It would be my goal that the participants of the play in my theater take part in the painting ritual and liturgy. They themselves would pour paint or blood on surfaces painted white. The painting should open our senses to a deeper and more intense sensual regimentation.

It leads, if I understand it the right way — from my Catholic understanding — , to an intensified empathy with the symbolism of passion.

When I was young I was brought up a Christian by the world around me. Schopenhauer conveyed to me an understanding of Asian philosophy. This resulted in a radical denial of world in favor of a being in transcendence. My own vitality, my most intense and overwhelming experiences with nature and the impression Nietzsche's works made on me and my study of psychoanalysis enabled me to relate affirmatively to life and without reserve. I love the phenomenon of creation and want to be completely at one with it, to be conscious of myself and of creation itself. The idea that the vitality suppressed by Christianity, the orgiastic plot suppressed by phenomenon of passion could be revived, deeply touched me. Passion is the reversion of the orgiastic plot. Suppressed life appears at any rate, it seeks intensity even at the price of suffering. Intense living is very close to suffering. Blood is the fluid of life and the red blood spurting out signals the wound, pain, danger and death. Passion is life derived from the Dionysian fact of the tragical suffering of being. In documenting the great representations of passion in painting and music, I was again and again unsettled by the power of life and the dark, gruesome abysmality of life evident in its everlastingness and endlessness. The enormous nature resulting from its own abyss profoundly upset and scared me. 1 had to see in what dreadful guises life presents itself. Again and again the deep and enormous power of life moved me to the abysses of pain, resulting from passion. Red is the most intensive color I know. Red is the colour that registers most intensely, for it is the color of life and death at the same time.

In what relation did you — quite some time later, namely in 1983 — take up the theme of the pure painting action? Was it a desire for retrospective and overview or for a new orientation with the means already applied used ? What motivated this?

Between 1963 and 1983, being fully busy with writing my scores, realizing my actions and preparing my action relics, I hardly arranged anything but small painting actions, mainly for fill-in-pictures, or just new small pictures for many of my exhibitions that were supposed to complete the whole structure of the installations exhibited. 1983 Rudi Fuchs invited me to take part in a large retrospective in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands. My big studio, the loft of the castle, was emptied. I knew that all those pictures would never come back to Prinzendorf for they were sold and the lenders claimed them for themselves. A sort of melancholy overcame me. I saw the empty room. A great, innocent desire to paint again overwhelmed me. Carelessly, more careless than ever before. Never before did I have the possibility to paint so much surface as provided by the large rooms in Prinzendorf. I also had the means to supply myself with the material such as canvas and paint. I called many of my young friends — and in this wonderful, hot August I was able to fully indulge in the voluptuousness of painting every day. I literally poured red paint on everything — from top to bottom. In the evening I sat in front of my wine cellar with young friends of mine and we drank until the dead of night. Until this painting action I had not carried out a big theatrical action for a long time. In every respect I was drying to make an actionist happening, even if it was only a painting action. Given my real actions I suddenly realized that I was very much sensitized to painting. I was able to paint again. I have learned to approach painting in a much more spontaneous way. I think that also by those big painting actions I have learned something for the action of the 0. M. Theatre. In 1963 I still believed that my painting has developed within 0. M. Theatre and has also became less rigid. I didn't want to paint anymore and thought that the theatrical action would inevitably surpass all the painting. Today I know that painting actions and the actions of the 0. M. Theatre mutually need each other. I always have to come back to the "well-tempered clavier" of the painting in order to realize my theater in a much better and more intense way.

Further big painting actions followed in 1984 and 1986 in Turin, Naples and Prinzendorf. Did they differ from your return to painting in 1983?

I hope it's possible to resume painting again. Painting is supposed to seismograph the general psycho-physical feeling of the painting person in a direct way. So the results are inevitably always different. In 1983 it was the spacious and monumental quality of the paintings of the 0. M. Theatre that I was interested in. I spent this summer sensitively tasting and mastering details of these big areas. The basic situation always is a different one and new problems always appear. I hope to continuously improve and expand myself and to learn from my innermost self and the world around me.

You talk about refinement — but what about the excessive impulsiveness that always is expected from you?

Again and again I talk about it — that my painting is supposed to be a Dionysian one. Dionysus is the God of tragedy for me, the God of wine and of creative impulses pure and simple, which include creation as well as destruction within themselves. He's the God of the stars and the basic powers of being that accumulate in front of consciousness and the intellect. Though they should be transformed into lived life and lately have to be restored to consciousness. Thus my painting correlates to an enormous flush of vitality. Basic powers of being directly present themselves for perception. Two elemental forces of being — that keep creation alive and impel it — that let the stars rest and rip apart billions of galaxies that then disappear in the bottomless abyss of space. I mean gravitation and centrifugal force.

Are you going to relate to the setting — which actually is an eminently historical one and has assumed numerous symbolic implications from the sacral range — here at the Wiener Secession?

Despite of all the tribulations my homeland and especially Vienna have caused me — I was imprisoned three times here, my teaching passion is still being suppressed and inhibited by intrigues — I love our complex, cultural tradition without being a patriot. Klimt, Schiele, Mahler, Schönberg, Trakl were holy to me from an early age on. The sacrality — and Gesamtkunstwerk — of the Secession group always have been very important to me and is basically related to my intentions. The fact that I am allowed to show my work in a house where Hodler had his first successes and Klinger's presentation of his Beethoven sculpture became a sacral total work of art not bound to a confession, makes me happy and proud. Moreover, I already had planned an action environment for the Wiener Secession in the heyday of Viennese actionism. The action was supposed to last for three days. Maybe it will now be possible to realize even this difficult conception in this beautiful building.

Prinzendorf, on the 1 st and 2 nd of February 1987