In the mid-fifties—within the community of Viennese Actionists which Hermann Nitsch founded that used meat, blood, and intestines in their artworks—the artist developed the concept of 'Action Painting' whereby he embraced the impulsive application of paint through dripping, splashing and smearing, using all five senses. This turn in his working practice was part of a drive to force the viewer to look closely at what is considered normal in society, uncovering things that are kept strictly hidden or are too disturbing to be acknowledged.
Read MoreViolence, spontaneity, and chaos are adopted as positive attributes and incorporated into works with an intense passion through performances with disturbing, piercing sounds, the use of animal flesh, and wild, erratic movement using groups of participants. Unexpectedly, peaches, tomatoes, sugar cubes, and flowers are also present. Examples of such paradoxical actions are Dark Mofo (2017); 122th Action (2005); and the painting Rosenbild (1963).
Orgies Mysteries Theatre
In the development of the Orgies Mysteries Theatre, after Viennese Actionism, Nitsch attempted to write a six-day drama based on the Oedipus Myth, but it was never finished. He decided to abandon using language to focus on the sensuality of elemental materials and substances, and their emotional impact on the body, to expose repression, using myth and community ritual to explore human existence itself.
In the sixties (influenced by Antonin Artaud, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche) he switched from the word to action, from representation via language to the physicality of substance, searching for participant catharsis via excessive experience. To this ecstatic end he developed a painterly equivalent of Actionism, using 'ecclesiastic' ritual with smeared, splattered, and showered oil or acrylic paint in works such as Schuttbild, spill painting (1978) and Schuttbild (1989). Sometimes, mottled surfaces on parts of table supports left from performances were screenprinted over with images of opened-up cadavers, based on earlier drawings like The Last Supper (1983).
Nitsch also has a serious interest in composing music, to be performed in Prinzendorf Castle, devising work not only for the conventional Vienna State Opera, but also for 'noise orchestras' and 'scream choirs'.
