I enjoyed your performance enormously.” Turning to the four-hundred-plus attendees, he proclaimed, “I think these gentlemen have earned a round of applause.” 1 This was the twenty-one-year-old Franz West, and applaud the audience did.Īlthough this story is by now a well-known originary myth in West circles, its full import has hardly been grasped and extends beyond the general reaction of a young artist-to-be against the imposing specter of Viennese Actionism. One young man stood up to break the self-conscious hush and politely replied: “Thank you very much. At the close of the evening, sponsored by the Socialist Austrian Student Organization, Wiener asked whether anyone in the crowd would like to comment on the proceedings, a question that was met with a deafening silence. These stunts, courtesy of Wiener’s Viennese Actionist pals, later led an outraged public to dub the legendary event the Uni-Ferkelei (campus mess or ribaldry), while the authorities charged participant Günter Brus with defecating and masturbating during a rendition of the national anthem, and Wiener with reportedly instructing the audience to repeat these activities in Vienna’s St. ON JUNE 7, 1968, the crowd in Lecture Hall 1 of the University of Vienna’s New Institute Building was treated to an evening of “Art and Revolution,” consisting of writer Oswald Wiener’s lecture on the relationship between language and thought, as well as less decorous displays of onstage nudity, vomiting, and urination. On the occasion of West’s first US retrospective, opening this month at the Baltimore Museum of Art, art historian CHRISTINE MEHRING unearths these roots and explores their relevance to West’s ongoing polymorphous production. Less well known, however, are the Austrian artist’s formative efforts within the fervent Viennese cultural scene of the late 1960s and early ’70s, where he forged the participatory aesthetic and unassuming political tactics that have made him a touchstone for future generations. OVER THE PAST two decades, FRANZ WEST has gained renown for his boundary-blurring installations of sculpture, furniture, and their perplexing mongrel offspring.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |