It was animals that were created first, only thereafter, human beings. Seniority, the privilege of age, was compensated by the privilege of designation, the late arrival meant: “the ability to observe and appropriately designate what came before“. (Peter Sloterdijk) But human beings are the notorious late arrivers, one should not be deceived by the biblical version. Because humans only come into their own through language, the individual must always harbor the eerily daunting gap of pre-linguistic existence.

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When Deborah Sengl uses metalinguistic capability in order to create a new word, she refers to the fact that the found language masks as much as it reveals. By creating the word “ertarnen“ (“to deceive through displacement”), which is used in most of the titles of her artworks, she incapsulates the central themes of her work: humans, animals, camouflage, and breeding. more »

In the early twentieth century, in the course of the modern art’s search for the “very early origins” of art, so-called “outsider art” was discovered. At the same time, psychiatrists who hoped to be able to use works of psychiatric patients for diagnostic purposes began actively collecting for the first time on a large scale. Along these lines, the art historian and physician Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933), received a commission from the Heidelberger hospital in 1919 to extend the small educational collection of the institute and to find methods that would help to gain insides into the type of the patients’ illness using their creative works. However, Prinzhorn rejected taking a purely clinical psychiatric approach to the works. Instead, he set the works into an art-theoretical context and thereby brought the aesthetic beauty of the until-then marginalized “mad art” into focus for the first time—a pioneering achievement.

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Part 3

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In 1922, Prinzhorn published the book, Artistry of the Mentally Ill, in which he documented and interpreted a large part of the collection, drawing parallels to other forms of artistic patterns and contemporary art. While his colleagues mostly rejected the book, it was enthusiastically received by the modern art world. It inspired artists such as Max Ernst, Alfred Kubin, and Pablo Picasso, and had a substantial influence on twentieth-century art theory and reception, which is reflected in—not least of all—today’s occupation with “state-bound art” and “outsider art“. more »

There has been substantial evidence for the theory, according to the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, that it is far less important for humans to know who they are, than where they are. The persistent ignorance regarding one’s place of existence is one of the causes for what newer philosophy calls oblivion of being.

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The inquiry after the “where” and the placing of one’s person and works represent central aspects of Wilhelm Scherübl’s work. His work realizes itself in the examination of his locations of residence and life, and in the integration of the respective condition of the places and resources which he finds there. more »

The art world is one which takes itself very seriously. Whether it is in the hushed classrooms of art schools where aspiring students dutifully sketch nude models, or in the fancy words of the latest review in the glossy pages of a top art magazine, or in the hallowed, guarded, temperature-controlled halls of a prestigious national museum, fine art is nothing to be laughed at – apparently.

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There was a time when William Anthony wanted to be taken “seriously”. But then came the day when he finally got through to his drawing students. He thought he would demonstrate the classic “don’t”s of figure drawing by incorporating them into one representative form. Then, something interesting happened. They laughed. He had somehow struck a chord. “Learning from mistakes” seemed to have made the greatest impact on his students. more »

We keep things on hand because they are important to us. We store them. They are available: for example, birthdays of friends, important telephone numbers, and sometimes, works of art. In Vienna, the Museum on Demand (Museum auf Abruf, MUSA) serves this purpose. This museum of the city of Vienna keeps a collection of artworks by artists living in Vienna which is accessible to the city’s residents.

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The collection began in 1945 with an acquisition of watercolors. Since then, the art collection has increased to nearly 20,000 works. They represent the work of Vienna’s resident artists for over a half century. Acquisition, says the present director of MUSA, Berthold Ecker, is the most significant form of support for artists. This has been the cornerstone of MUSA’s artistic policy since the beginning and remains so until today. The city of Vienna purchases about 130 new works of art annually for this collection. Today, one can find works from Franz West, Maria Lassnig, and Erwin Wurm there. more »

For a long time, contemporary art was strictly a national phenomenon in Turkey and was therefore, to a large extent, ignored internationally. This has changed. In the 1970s and 80s, artists such as Füsun Onur, Ayse Erkmen, Gülsün Karamustafa, Hale Tenger have begun to break through traditional and national orientations and to bring in international influences. As international attention grew stronger in the 90s and the Istanbul Biennales offered venues of presentation and publicity to the more progressive contemporary art of Turkey, awareness of the value of this art and its development was promoted locally. The recent generation of Turkish artists profited from these changes both thematically and professionally.

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One of the internationally renowned Turkish artists of the post-2000 generation is Ahmet Ögüt. The past twelve months of the 27-year-old artist, who lives and works in Istanbul and Amsterdam, have been densely packed: his work has been featured in group exhibitions in San Francisco, Berlin, Sydney, Athens, Eindhoven, Seoul, Helsinki, Santa Fe, Nimes, Malmö, Stockholm, Zagreb, London, Banja Luka, and Stuttgart. In addition, he has had solo exhibitions in Basel and Barcelona, three Biennales, as well as numerous online and print contributions. more »

Sculptures and installations of the artist Thomas Baumann possess the quality of being alive. Usually, they are moving. They de-form, they make noises, they move their observers: emotionally, in terms of their beliefs, through the challenge to participate even physically. Movement, says the artist, is a language of our time. We understand it and feel addressed by it on different levels.

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Thomas Baumann’s produces his work from mechanical, technological, and electronic materials. The units of construction have their own aesthetic, and do not remain hidden behind the façades of design. In this way, the sculptures retain the quality of being mechanically engineered works of art which create the effect of being the siblings of those machines that are used in the production lines of industrial manufacturing. more »

Picture for yourself reality. Is that reality immediate, direct, unexpected? Should we attribute this power of reality to something within the medium or to the medium itself? Reality, realized as a procedure of exclusion, as an attempt at reduction, has reigned over the scientific and artistic arguments that have existed over centuries. In the last twentieth century, this gateway was submerged in the continually rising flood of the everyday vocabulary of visual art.

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The influence of this radical change on the work of the painter Franziska Maderthaner is visible. Instead of reduction, construction, de- and re-construction, and bricolage prevail. Instead of strict exclusion, surplus of meaning. Instead of the pathos of one, a play with references with which to assemble and compose. more »

“He was discovered at an exhibition. Since then, he has been the outsider who routinely gets slammed by the critics. He is the only “modern” in Vienna. He sees ghosts, secretly suffering souls. He loves to rub salt into wounds. He will end up going mad. These are all compiled from my reviews…” —Oskar Kokoschka to his friend in Berlin, Herwarth Walden, in 1911. He had become acquainted with the publisher of the expressionist magazine, Der Sturm, through the writer and journalist, Karl Kraus. He had been occasionally working with Walden for a year already.

Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 1

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Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 2

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Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 3

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Kokoschka, who wrote this letter when he was just 25 years old, had already gained success in recent years. He was “expressive”—as a painter and writer, as an up-and-coming artist, as well as as a lover. His unbridled expression, his distancing from art nouveau, his bluntness polarized and provoked the artistic establishment and society in Vienna and elsewhere—often to violent reactions. Die Presse called him the “Oberwildling von Wien” (“The Wild Child of Vienna”); in 1909, the opening of his drama, “Mörder - Hoffnung der Frauen” (“Murderer - Liberator of Women”), led to his expulsion from art school. more »