Otto Muehl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Muehl (born June 16, 1925, at Grodnau, Burgenland, Austria) is an Austrian artist. He started painting in his youth and in the 60s was one of the co-founders, and an important member, of Wiener Aktionismus or Viennese Actionism. In 1972 he founded the famous commune Friedrichshof that flourished for several years before falling apart in the 1990s. Muehl himself was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for having sexual relationships with teenagers. He was released after 7 years and set up a smaller commune in Portugal.

In 1943, Otto Muehl served in the Wehrmacht and in 1944 he was sent to the Front. After the war, he studied teaching German and History, and Pedagogy of Art at the Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künste.

In the sixties his aim was 'to overcome painting on canvas through staging the process of its destruction'. He made rhizomatic structures with scrap iron ("Gerümpelplastiken"), but soon proceeded to the "Aktion" in the vein of the New York Happenings. In 1962, when he was 37, the first "Aktion" "Die Blutorgel" was performed in Muehl's atelier in the Perinetgasse by Muehl himself, Adolf Frohner and Hermann Nitsch. The "Fest des psycho-physischen Naturalismus" and "Versumpfung einer Venus" followed in 1963. From 1964 to 1966 many "Malaktionen" were filmed by Kurt Kren and photographed by Ludwig Hoffenreich. In 1966 a new concept of Aktion was developed with Günter Brus: instead of the canvas, the body became the scene of action. In 1968, Muehl, Brus and Oswald Wiener organised an Aktionsveranstaltung "Kunst und Revolution" in the University of Vienna, which caused a scandal in the press; they were arrested and Brus emigrated to Berlin.

Gradually, Muehl began to distance himself from "Aktion". He regarded the "happening as a bourgeois artform, mere art". The "transition from art to life" resulted in the founding of the commune as a kind of anti-society. All members submitted to the so-called Aktionsanalyse. The declared aim was the destruction of bourgeois marriage and private property, free love, and collective education of the children. In 1974 he played a small role as a member of an anarchic/therapy commune in Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie. In the eighties, tensions within the commune increased until they culminated in a revolt under the direction of Altenberg. When, on top of that, Muehl was arrested and imprisoned in 1991, the commune fell apart. In 1997 Muehl moved to Faro, Portugal to start a new commune experiment. Despite suffering from Parkinsons disease, Muehl continued his art work, and in 2002 developed "electric painting films", a new technique in which he paints digital photos from actions using a computer tablet and pen and edits the process into films.

[edit] Further reading

  • Aus dem Gefängnis, Klagenfurt, Ritter-Verlag, 1997
  • 7, (Exhibition catalogue) MAK Vienna, 1998.
  • Impossible: The Otto Muehl Story by William Levy, New York: Barany Artists, 2001
  • Leben/Kunst/Werk (Exhibition catalogue), MAK/ König; Vienna/ Köln, 2004
  • Writings of the Vienna Actionists, by Malcolm Green, London, Atlas Press, 1999 "http://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_arkhive&number=7"

[edit] External links