Activity

This week's activity focuses on the action painting of Viennese artist, Hermann Nitsch.

 

Participants are encouraged to collaborate with one another to create an art piece using various parts of their bodies (eg. their feet, hands, forearms, etc) as 'paintbrushes' and ‘pencils’. They could opt to splash paint onto the blank canvas to create splotches of various shapes, sizes and textures, as well as use charcoal sticks and crayons to create the art piece.

 

Through such an activity and process, participants are encouraged to focus on their actions and gestures while creating their artworks, as well as their feelings, thoughts and body movements while carrying out action-painting.

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Participants are advised to bring an extra change of clothes. Aprons and protective sheets, as well as wet wipes and tissue paper/serviettes will be provided for our participants.

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About the Artist

Hermann Nitsch is an Austrian artist whose practices revolve around performance art and abstract 'splatter' painting. While receiving training in painting in Vienna, he was drawn to religious art, as well as the intensity of religious feelings for life.

 

In the 1950s, Nitsch conceived of the performance praxis of the Orgien Mysterien Theater—where suffering, ecstasy and notions of sacrifice and passion derived from the Greek god Dionysus, are manifested in a poetic manner. His subsequent works were inspired from this performance praxis, which often involved music, dance and active participants, similar to a ritual. The cloths, bandages and fabrics used in the performances also inspired and led Nitsch to create paintings.

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About the Artwork

Hermann Nitsch's 'Action Painting (Bodentuch)', was created in 1984 and employs thick layers of red paint to symbolise blood, wound, pain, danger and death. Red is key to everything as it points one towards the colour of ecstasy, passion, sacrifice, blood and flesh. The use of bright red colour also seeks to invoke intense emotional and psychological states.

 

To Nitsch, the whole action-painting process paired with the intense colours makes him feel alive and that he wants to be alive. Art in this sense, is his way of experiencing life and very intense feelings.