Design

VIENNA ACTIONISM: PROMOTIONAL LEAFLETS PRINTED IN ONLY 40 COPIES NOT IN OCLC Eight different spirit duplicates promoting the "Direct Art Happening" also known as "Direct Art Festival" Nov. 9 1967 Porrhaus Vienna six of which feature elaborate designs by Günter Brus; his illustrations are numbered Brus-Design 4 6 9 of 15

réf. 55783Vienna: self-published 1967. Eight single leaves each measuring 29.5 × 21 cm on differently colored stock. "Brus-Design 9" slightly creased and later flattened; with minor marginal losses well away from the text and image; "Brus-Design 6" hole-punched; the "Direct Art Festival" Program in faint print; else very good. Six prints from the set were designed by Brus and printed in editions of no more than 40 copies each Grabner. For the "Direct Art Festival" Brus designed a series of fifteen illustrated advertising leaflets which he numbered under the title "Brus-Design." In addition there were further unnumbered press releases of his own typographic design in which he announced the "Happening Popes of Vienna" whose festival was the "prototype" for a world tour that was to include among other places London New York and San Francisco. In fact however the festival held in the trade union building named after the construction company "Porr" near Vienna's Karlskirche the Academy of Fine Arts and the Viennese Music Association was the last action under the label "Direct Art" with which the Viennese Actionists had one year earlier at the London "Destruction in Art Symposium" gained recognition beyond the boundaries of the international neo-avant-garde. For example Time magazine reported on the group's performances. Although Brus uses the term "Happening" on the leaflets discussed here the designation "Direct Art" was intended particularly in the international context to distinguish itself from Allen Kaprow's position. For the Viennese the primary concern was not temporality performativity and eventfulness but rather the "direct" immediate engagement with real bodies objects and substances. Whereas Hermann Nitsch also appeared in London together with Kurt Kren and Peter Weibel as a member of the "Vienna Institute for Direct Art" after his return from London he rejected the term for his own work. The publication of a journal under this title was likewise planned. However following a dispute between the group and Nitsch the cover designs and the first pages of text were destroyed so that no preparatory materials for the project survive. On this and the following see Eva Badura-Triska and Christian Höller Direkte Kunst / Direct Art in: Wiener Aktionismus. Kunst und Aufbruch im Wien der 1960er Jahre Cologne 2012 pp. 180f. Brus and Muehl developed the concept of "Direct Art" out of their intensive collaboration in which beginning in 1966 they merged their two different approaches into so called "Totalaktionen" Total Actions. Whereas Muehl in his "Materialaktionen" Material Actions engaged with foodstuffs paints textiles objects and the bodies of others Brus in his "Körperanalysen" Body Analyses used his own physical body as material pushing it to its limits through "Selbstverstümmelung" self mutilation. Whereas Brus initially used his body merely as a mobile painting ground he later proceeded to assault his skin with razor blades scissors and scalpels and also to involve his bodily fluids in the actions. His collaboration with Muehl led not least to Brus no longer carrying out his actions only before the camera but now also directly before large audiences. Their joint actions bore titles such as "Vietnamparty" "Wir sind Krüppel" We Are Cripples and "Die Zerstörung und Verstümmelung des Menschen" The Destruction and Mutilation of the Human Being. At the beginning of 1967 Muehl founded the "Direct Art Group" for these actions which also became known under the title "Muehl-Dogs". These participants also took part in the "Direct Art Festival" which as it were foreshadowed the major scandal of the event "Kunst und Revolution" Art and Revolution which took place in a lecture hall at the University of Vienna. Media reports on this event led to the arrest of Brus Muehl and Oswald Wiener to court proceedings and ultimately to their conviction among other charges for "violation of morality and decency" "intentional bodily injury" and "degradation of Austrian symbols." Looking back Günter Brus recalled that the scandal had been a deliberate provocation "because it takes place at the sacred university. We all knew that; it was a unique opportunity to create a scandal." Quoted in: Kazuo Kandutsch Die Veranstaltung Kunst und Revolution ibid. p. 185. The principal provocation was the incorporation of the flag and the national anthem into the action. The group had not yet taken this step at the event held one year earlier in the trade union building. Nevertheless the festival also attracted the attention of the press. In the journal Schastrommel later published during the artists' exile in Germany an article from the tabloid press was reproduced which states among other things: "No one believed any longer that Vienna's two popes of nonsense Messrs. Günter Brus 29 and Otto Mühl 34 were still capable of surpassing themselves. Yet these days they are proving it in the Porrhaus on the Wieden: for two hours before a paying and politely applauding audience they produce sheer naked madness at the head of their amateur troupe . They call it 'Direct Art' and stage for the audience a kind of snake pit where men seriously imagine themselves giving birth to a child the act of childbirth is demonstrated in unmistakable detail where young men shake uncorked beer bottles and spend minutes screaming while spraying beer foam into the audience where the entire group spends minutes eating from the floor like dogs where the effects of electric shocks are played out at length where incomprehensible shouting convulsive spasms and rasping groans prevail." Transl. from: Schastrommel 8b p. 71. In the same issue of Schastrommel the sequence plan for a series of actions performed at the festival under the title "Das Unikum" The Curiosity is also reproduced. It becomes evident from this that these brief actions whose sequence has often been described in the literature as revue-like also bring to performance various stages of the previous work of Brus and Muehl so that upon reading them the impression arises of a "simultaneity of the non simultaneous." Thus Action 3 "Selbstoperation des Unikums" corresponds to Brus's Body Analyses. According to the plan the clothing is first cut open on the right thigh and the area of the incision is marked with blue circles. The skin and the "instruments" are then disinfected the "surgical procedure" is "carried out" the blood is dabbed away with cotton wool and the "surgical site" is bandaged. By contrast Actions 4 and 5 appear as reminiscences of earlier not yet invasive actions by Brus. Thus Point 5 reads: "The Curiosity is white from head to toe. It does not move. After approximately five minutes a man from the audience comes onto the stage and shakes hands with the Curiosity whereupon it breaks into a fit of screaming and behaves on the floor like a madman." Also reproduced in Schastrommel is another action plan for the festival under the title "The I.D.A. Space Thriller." As in Brus's early body actions the protagonist is to be "painted white." Beneath the instructions a sketch shows a man tied to a sawhorse desk here designated as a "Geh-Aparat" with a leash attached to his right hand and a toy fastened to it. By once again invoking the interplay of painting and the body Brus made clear from which artistic genre he saw his "Körperanalysen" and "Direkte Art" as departing. On this issue Brus had fallen out with Oswald Wiener who regarded Actionism not least as a continuation of the literary and semantic work of the "Wiener Gruppe" around Achleitner Bayer and Rühm. This conflict went so far that Brus who regarded painting alone as the foundation and Wiener did not participate jointly in actions during this period. Cf. Hubert Klocker Viennese Actionism: The Shattered Mirror Klagenfurt 1989 p. 211. Against this background the "Porrhaus" as the venue of the festival is likewise remarkable because in 1959 it was the very same room in which the Wiener Gruppe performed its second literary cabaret. Badura-Triska and Höller ibid. This conflict may also have contributed to the fact that for the "Direct Art Festival" not only purely textual announcements were used for the first time but pictorial representations were also produced for its promotion. Brus made use for this purpose of a spirit duplicator that he found among the discarded materials of the trade union building. Grabner Erdruckt. In addition Muehl produced a screen printed poster in two color variants. Grabner Erdruckt und Erstochen pp. 61 variant on white paper there here on rose 62 variant on rose paper there here on yellow 64 variant on white paper there here on blue 68 variant on orange paper there here on white 69; Grabner Herzeigungen pp. 234-237 the same color variations as in "Erdruckt und Erstochen"; Sohm Happening & Fluxus no page number; listed under the date 11/09/67. As of June 2026 none of the flyers traced via KVK OCLC. unknown

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