Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch was one of the founders and leading figures of the short-lived Viennese Actionist movement, which in the 1960s and 1970s staged transgressive and destructive performances involving naked bodies, violence and blood as well as animal sacrifices and crucifixions. Some of the performers even went to jail – Nitsch himself was hauled into court three times for violating public decency.
He died in 2022 at the age of 83, but this year under the impetus of his third wife Rita, we are reconstructing what many consider to be the culmination of his work, the six day game OrThe Theater of Orgies and Mysteries, first performed in 1989 to outrage, howls of profanity and protests from animal rights organizations.
The first two days took place last year. Then, on May 28 this year, more than 250 paying guests, 150 musicians and dozens of voluntary and unpaid helpers converged on Prinzendorf Castle, a Schloss about an hour from Vienna which Nitsch acquired in 1971 and refurbished, courtesy of his second wife.
The peaceful setting surrounded by verdant wheat fields contrasted sharply with the day-long performance, with its dissonant music, the clatter of gongs, drums and clanging bells accompanying scenes of gore and general mayhem. Nitsch himself left precise instructions for the day and had composed all the music, including a 287-page score.
While early performances featured a live bull being stunned before being slaughtered, this is no longer legal and the corpse of a flayed bull was solemnly brought in, hoisted up to form the backdrop for a series of bloody tableaux featuring his entrails, blindfolded naked performers tied to crosses being ‘fed’ with blood and milk and a melee of performers dumping those entrails along with hundreds of kilos of tomatoes and grapes, while more blood was thrown on them.
Hermann Nitsch, Theater of orgies and mysteries (2023) © Feyer
It was certainly moving, with the stench of guts contrasting sharply with the surroundings, where onlookers seated at tables quietly sipped iced tea and ate apple strudel as they watched. Thousands of peonies were dotted around the courtyard while the air was also scented by white-clad entertainers swinging incense burners.
With the six day gameNitsch created a Gesamtkunstwerk, a large-scale total work of art appealing to the senses – olfactory, visual, auditory. With such actions, the Actionists in Vienna – including Günter Brus, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler – faced the post-war Austrian denial of World War II barbarism. Nitsch himself, though not necessarily very religious, was obsessed with ritual and the Catholic Church, and much of the performance was ritualistic in its unfolding, with a series of staged “crucifixions”. After the climax of entrails and spurts of blood, the day ended in catharsis, as night fell and guests were served a dinner of lentil stew and potato goulash.
Although short-lived, Viennese Actionism had a great influence on subsequent artists, from Jasper Johns to Paul McCarthy. In 1975, Marina Abramović took part in a performance of Nitsch, and her curator was present at that year’s play. Also in attendance were many collectors of his work, including Austrian businessman Gernot Dolezal as well as Werner and Sonia Trenker, who acquired over 100 Nitsch works from the past two decades when the artist worked with color as opposed to to the red (blood and paint) that characterizes earlier paintings. “You can’t see [a performance like] this anywhere else in the world,” Sonia said. “All religions are about sacrifice; you can’t ignore the dark side of life and it’s about life, all of it.
Nitsch has long been represented by the Austrian gallery Kandlhofer. The estate is now in the hands of a foundation headed by general manager Gudrun Marecek; The Pace Gallery now also represents his work and held an exhibition in New York from March 17 to April 29 this year. THE six day game was fully funded by the foundation and private donors.
