Concerning Consequences STUDIES IN ART, DESTRUCTION, AND TRAUMA Kristine Stiles The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London KRISTINE STILES is the France Family Professor of Art, Art Flistory, and Visual Studies at Duke University. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2016 by Kristine Stiles All rights reserved. Published 2016. Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 12345 ISBN­13: 978­0­226­77451­0 (cloth) ISBN­13: 978­0­226­77453­4 (paper) ISBN­13: 978­0­226­30440­3 (e­book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226304403.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloguing­in­Publication Data Stiles, Kristine, author. Concerning consequences : studies in art, destruction, and trauma / Kristine Stiles, pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978­0­226­77451­0 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978­0­226­77453­4 (paperback : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978­0­226­30440­3 (e­book) 1. Art, Modern — 20th century. 2. Psychic trauma in art. 3. Violence in art. I. Title. N6490.S767 2016 709.04'075 —dc23 2015025618 © This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48­1992 (Permanence of Paper). In conversation with Susan Swenson, Kim Jones explained that the drawing on the cover of this book depicts directional forces in "an X­man, dot­man war game." The rectangles represent tanks and fortresses, and the lines are for tank movement, combat, and containment: "They're symbols. They're erased to show movement. 111 draw a tank, or I'll draw an X, and erase it, then re­draw it in a different posmon.... But when they're killed they're erased and fl A gh0St image­ 80 the erasing is 3 vefy 'mPortant elemen of the war drawings.... The important thing is that it's always 2005^ (SUSan Swenson' conversation with Kim Jones: April 25 0 1 4 W"°rkC'ty; WarP™<*™^ NY: Pierogi 2005], 4). Two years earl.er, Jones described his "war drawings" as mages 0 , hat ^ ends„ ^ q ^ ^ ^ A Studio Vuit wuh Km Jones, a fifteen­minute video codirected bv ' David Schmidlapp and Steve Staso (2003). Notes on Rudolf Schwarzkogler's Images of Healing: A Biographical Sketch (1990)' Rudolf Schvvarzkogler was born in Vienna on November 13, 1940. He studied graphics at the Graphische Lehr-und-Versuchsanstalt (Pedagogical and Experi­ mental Institute for Graphics) between 1957 and 1961, where he befriended fel­ low artist Heinz Cibulka one year after meeting the artist Hermann Nitsch. In the autumn of 1963, Nitsch introduced Schwarzkogler to the artists Gunter Brus and Otto Miihl.2 That November, Schwarzkogler met the graphic artist Edith Adam at the now defunct Cafe Sport, a Viennese coffeehouse once frequented by artists.3 Schwarzkogler and Adam began living together in the fall of 1964 while Schwarzkogler was working as a commercial artist for Koreska, a firm that made ribbons and correction fluids for typewriters. Schwarzkogler quit his job in late September 1965, and Adam supported him for the rest of his short life. That same year, Nitsch, Brus, and Miihl began plans to found Das Fieber (The Fever), a magazine with a cover designed by Schwarzkogler. While the publica­ tion never appeared, Das Fieber served as a catalyst for the foundation of what would become Wiener Aktionismus (the Vienna action group).3 After Schwarzkogler met Nitsch, Brus, and Miihl, he destroyed most of the abstract graphic works that he had made on transparent paper between 1962 and 1963, works showing his interest in Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, and Yves Klein.5 But several untitled assemblages, paintings, and drawings from the mid-1960s survive, and are characterized by Schwarzkogler's severe formal sim­ plicity, purist aesthetic, and use of monochrome with surfaces purged of extra neous elements including gestural strokes. From 1965 to 1966, Schwarzkogler realized six actions, including two performances with an audience and four pri vate action tableaux made for the photograph. In the last two years of his life, 1967 to 1969, he returned todrawing and sketching, concentrating on picturing an imagined ritual space he called The Consecrated Austrian F}avilion, and draw ing objects related to that space, which he called Consecrated Things. He also drew images for a playground, executed spare line drawings of heads and bodie. resembling the Buddha, and wrote short theoretical statements. Schwarzkogler began participating in the happenings of the Viennese actionists in October 1964 when he appeared in Miihl's Luftballon Konzert(Ba loon Concert), Muhl's Materialaktionen no. 13. Several months later, on January 16,1965, Schwarzkogler assisted Nitsch in his 7. Aktion (fur Dr. Tunner), a pri­ vate event celebrating Nitsch's friend Wolfgang Tunner, who had just received his doctorate.6 The action took place both in Nitsch's studio, at no. 132 Briinner- strafie, and in his apartment, at no. 171 Jedlersdoferstrafie, and it was attended by Tunner and his two brothers, Nitsch's wife Eva (a psychologist), Edith Adam, the Austrian filmmaker Peter Kubelka, and the Austrian poet Reinhard Priess- nitz.7 Schwarzkogler then served as the model in Nitsch's next four actions be­ tween January 22 and June 30, 1965.8 But despite this intense period of collabo­ ration, Schwarzkogler did not travel in September 1966 with Nitsch, Brus, Muhl, the Viennese filmmaker Kurt Kren, and the Austrian artist Peter Weibel (then only twenty-two) to participate in the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London. DIAS was the first time the Viennese action artists had performed out­ side Vienna, and Schwarzkogler's inability to attend estranged him further from the activities and cohesion of the group. Upon their return from DIAS, the artists staged a happening, Action Con­ certfor Al Hansen (October 29, 1966), at the Galerie Nachst St. Stephan for the American pioneer of happenings, artist Al Hansen, who had accompanied them from London and DIAS back to Vienna. Schwarzkogler did participate in this event, but while the others performed energetically around Hansen, Schwarz­ kogler withdrew into a small cardboardlike cage that he had earlier installed in the middle of the gallery.9 From that time forward, Schwarzkogler's sense of isolation and rejection by the group grew steadily. Nevertheless, when plans for DIAS/USA were under way in the United States, Schwarzkogler wrote to the artist Raphael Montanez Ortiz (then known as Ralph Ortiz) requesting an invitation as a member of the Viennese "Direct Art Group" (the title Muhl and Weibel had concocted to secure funding from the Austrian state to attend DIAS in London, explaining that he wanted to participate).10 In 1968, Schwarzkogler appeared in two films: Muhl's With Verve in the New Year and Brus's Satisfaction. But by the end of that year, he had stopped com­ municating with almost anyone, and had become so withdrawn that Edith Adam, Nitsch, and Nitsch's wife, Eva, suggested treatment by a well-known Mu­ nich psychoanalyst." This plan was never carried through, and Schwarzkogler plunged to his death trom his second-story apartment window in Vienna on June 20,1969, three years after his last action. II Schwarzkogler began what would be his short corpus of actions in the summer and fall of 1965. His first four actions took place in his friend Heinz Cibulka's apartment. Schwarzkogler performed in the first action, Hochzeit (Wedding), Lik'C ftatUred as a groom and Anni Brus (Gunter Brus's wife) as a bride. e N'tsc'h» and no doubt following Nitsch's method, Schwarzkogler under- St°°d tlle process of painting [as] strongly associated with ritualistic and 2 7 5 I I NOTES ON SCHWARZKOGLER'S IMAGES sacred ideas," which he attempted to communicate using symbolic materials: a black mirror; a knife; a pair of scissors; glasses containing red, blue, yellow, and white chemical substances; glasses with blue paint; a yellow bath sponge; eggs; a chicken; a brain; and so on. These elements fused materials associated with the objects and substances employed by the other action artists: Brus's use of tools that could wound; Nitsch's use of visceral animal materials; and Miihl's use of foodstuff's in the creation of material actions. When Anni Brus's dress caught fire during the event, Schwarzkogler abandoned live action until he ap­ peared alone in his last work, 6. Aktion (1966). Between Hochzeit and 6. Aktion, Schwarzkogler worked with Cibulka, posing him as a "passive actor" in a series of four different photographic tableaux simu­ lating castration and healing. He initially titled these four actions, made for the production of photographs, Aktion mit einem menschlichen Korper (Action with a Male Body).12 Schwarzkogler himself did not photograph the tableaux that he designed with Cibulka as his model, but collaborated with the Austrian photog­ rapher Ludwig Hoffenreich, who had photographed for Nitsch since the early 1960s. In other words, Schwarzkogler designed the tableaux and positioned Cibulka; Cibulka posed in the tableaux that Schwarzkogler orchestrated to ap­ pear to be live actions; and Hoffenreich took the photographs of Cibulka, cre­ ating stills that simulated real life events.13 In these four actions in which Chibulka's body is the model, each action comprising numerous Hoffenreich photographs, Cibulka's body is frequently shown only from below the neck to the lower part of the torso, with the focal point being on the genitals, often wrapped and bandaged in gauze or hidden bv flayed fish that appear to be his penis, opened and bloody. When Schwarzkogler organized Cibulka's upper torso or entire body to be displayed, he often covered Cibulka's eyes with gauze bandages. In 4. Aktion (1965), simulated blood ap­ pears to ooze from under Cibulka's gauze-covered head and right eye.