Viennese Actionism
As Wiener activism movement of modern art is called, in the 1962 to 1970 a group of Viennese artists, the concept of the American Happening and Fluxus art seized upon and transpose to extremely provocative manner.
After the Second World War, a painting that nothing already wanted to represent Existing arose. There was an " art in order to leave the Arts ". The specialization and ineffectiveness of the modern art of the fifties led many artists to embark on a completely different direction. By breaking of taboos, the artists wanted to provoke the oriented only on the consumer society.
The central protagonists of this art movement were Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarz Kogler. After 1970, the artistic way the group parted. Muehl Nitsch and do indeed still have sporadic action art, which is, however, no longer referred to as Wiener activism.
The term " The Viennese action" in 1969, coined by Peter Weibel, a close friend of actionists. The Vienna activism, however, developed very isolated from the international cultural events as Vienna culturally lay on the edge and the majority of the population reacted with horror to the radical nature of the actions.
By provocation of the Vienna activism turned against repressive social conditions and consciously sought to confrontation with state and ecclesiastical authority. Should be drastic expression and aggressive taboo injury mechanisms on the one hand open and especially hidden (suppressed ) cruelty and perversion are represented in civil society, on the other hand, these same society should be so shocked - and succeeded. Particularly famous Viennese action by the authority designated by the media as university obscenity action on 7 June 1968 by Brus, Muehl and Oswald Wiener, which all participants withdrew after an indictment.
The Vienna activism is related to the Vienna Group and other Viennese intellectuals and artists of the time, including Valie Export, Frohner, Kurt Kren, Gerhard Ruhm, Alfons Schilling, Peter Weibel, Oswald Wiener and Otmar Bauer.