Accompanying programme to the exhibition “Body and Territory: Art and Borders in Today's Austria”

The lecture “Sheer Madness” retraces Günter Brus’ development from his informal painting practice to his symbolic actions of the mid-1960s to the body-analyses of the late 1960s until his last and ultimate action “Stress Test” in 1970.

Following discussions with his friends Hermann Nitsch and Otto Muehl, who have already carried out actions, Brus performs his first action ‘ANA’ in 1964. Detaching the gesture from the painting, Brus develops his body-based action art, a development from action painting to the action that can be summed up as follows: Action on the canvas, action in front of the canvas, action without the canvas. In July 1965 he carries out his first public action- the iconic “Vienna Walk”. Painted white and split by a black jagged line running the length of his body, he walks as a living picture from Heldenplatz in the direction of Stephansplatz and is stopped halfway by the police. Throughout 1967 Brus develops his concept of ‘body analyses’, in which he takes as his main theme elementary existential experiences, working only with his body and his fluids. Carrying out one of these body analyses at the Vienna University under the title “Art and Revolution” the scandal is perfect. Brus is arrested and declared the bogeyman of the tabloid press and ‘most hated Austrian’. He is sentenced to the maximum penalty of six months of ‘strict confinement’ but manages to flee to West-Berlin. In 1970 he carries out his last and most radical action in Munich’s “Aktionsraum 1”, the “Stress Test”. At the climax of the action, the extremities of the shaven-headed artist are in slings, the ends of which he pulls himself while blood trickles down his back from the wound at the back of his head. The black line from the ‘Vienna Walk’ has become a red trail of blood.

Roman Grabner

Studies of Art History, German Philology and History at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. Worked as a curatorial and scientific assistant at the Neue Galerie Graz, the Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten in Graz and the Kunsthalle Bielefeld. Since 2012 director of the BRUSEUM and curator at the Neue Galerie Graz at the Universalmuseum Joanneum. The focus of his interests and curatorial practice is the art after 1945 with a specific focus on drawing and performance. Selected exhibitions are: “1968. The Great Innocence” (Bielefeld 2009), „Mother. New Images in Contemporary Art“ (Graz 2010), „Damage Control. Body Art and Destruction 1968 – 1972“ (Graz 2014), „Total View. Retrospective Gerhard Rühm 1952–2015“ (Graz 2015), „Yoshio Nakajima. Out of the Picture“ (Graz 2017), „Schiele Brus Palme. Dreams of Falling“ (Vienna 2018), „As if with the Scalpel. The Actionist Drawings of Günter Brus” (Graz 2018), „Alexander Brener and Barbara Schurz. Conspiracy of the Cephalopods“ (Graz 2019), „And Freedom will Have Been an Episode“ (New York 2020), „Günter Brus and Alfons Schilling around 1960“ (Graz 2021), „Hermann Nitsch. The 20th Painting Action“ (Venice 2022), “Günter Brus. Disclosure. A Retrospective” (Graz 2022).  

Lecture  - ROMAN GRABNER: “GÜNTER BRUS. bright madness”
Accompanying programme to the exhibition “Body and Territory: Art and Borders in Today's Austria”
Gorgona Hall, 13 April 2023 at 7 p.m