Research on the Work of Arnulf Rainer

Overpainting

'What is paramount in Arnulf Rainer’s ‘Overpaintings’ is the specific fascination exerted by what is to be overpainted; the reserves, which demand correction, the thrill of making a good place into something even better; the complex gain in pleasure from, on the one hand, the rape and murder committed on the picture to be overpainted, on the other, the satisfaction of the creative urge through creating a new organic whole. What has been overpainted can afterwards in most cases no longer be seen; nevertheless it lives on as an extremely important (and not at all arbitrary) component of the final picture in that it has guided the process of overpainting through its individuality' (Hermann Kern, Übersicht über die künstlerische Entwicklung Arnulf Rainers, in: Arnulf Rainer, Exhibition cat. Kunstverein in Hamburg, 1971, p. 3).

From 1953 to 1965 Arnulf Rainer devoted himself principally to a series of Overpaintings, in which he obliterated his early expressive drawings or pictures by friends with whose work he was in sympathy, to produce almost monochrome paintings dominated by black or red, for example Red Overpainting. In building up a rough and encrusted relief-like surface that shows the trace of the brush and blobs of paint, he gradually asserted the predominance of the reworked surface over the virtually invisible original below.

With his concept of over-painting, Rainer wants no picture - contest, he wants to indentify on the base of the photodocuments.  The more intensive expression in the photos, the more successful it´s emphasized by over-painting.

Rainer emphasises the whole imprssion of the photo, which is different with each piece of paper. He thinks of all his pictures as unfinished.  Rainer works as much as he can, no matter whether he is tired or not.  Thus he feels alive and good. He works at facile grimaces. He is interested in body poses of twisting, convulsing and strained position - physical poses which he calls "body-expressionism". They express subjective forms and momentary impulses and emotions.

In 1951 Rainer starts to draw his pictures with closed eyes for the first time. He is searching for a zero-point, a new beginning. He doesn't know his own wishes and desires. With his scribblings he creates pictures, whereby his eye cannot follow the movement and his mind cannot think and decide what to draw. The faster such a scribbling is drawn the better it looks and the more unexspected is its effect.

Face Farces

From 1956 Rainer became concerned with religious theories and practices, particularly in a group of paintings dominated by cruciform shapes, such as Black Cross.  The interest in extreme emotional states hinted at in such works became even more pronounced in 1963, when he began to collect paintings by the insane, and in 1964, when he experimented with hallucinogenic drugs. From 1968 he used photographs of his hands and often grimacing face as the basis of partly overpainted works, such as Face Farces. His concern with the variety of facial expression and from 1969 with the expressiveness of body language was a conscious means of breaking taboos against what is ugly, absurd or instinctual. As with the Austrian performance artists associated with Aktionismus, in deliberately calling forth extreme emotional states Rainer sought to convey a sustained and intense experience to the viewer. Eschewing the ‘good manners’ of conventional techniques, from 1973 he also exploited the ‘primitive’ and inarticulate energy of finger-painting, as in Finger Smear.

From the mid 1970s Rainer reworked photographs on a variety of subjects. Constantly adding to his repertory of images Rainer continued to exploit the interaction of intellectual meditation and bodily expression.

If Rainer draws, he is excited, talks to himself, pulls faces, swears at peaple, constantly moves and transforms as a body, a character and as a person. He tries to step outside the tradition of classic drawing, by painting pictures with the technique Overpainting and Overdrawing of unreal faces.

For this Arnulf Rainer needs a dose of excitement and a high expressability of the face muscle and nerves. At times he has tried to pep himself up with drugs (LSD, alcohol, ...) but it didn't help him because the torpor of these drugs only caused a weakening of the muscles mobility.

He took the Overdrawing of his own personal photos very seriously because with them he had the feeling to create an accentuated self-reproduction but also both as a symbolic transformation and a self-destruction.  Like any other artist Arnulf Rainer with his self-portraits tries, to find a-social structures and the primitive man inside him.

A Nose Adjustment (Face Farce)1971

Untitled (Face Farce) 1970

Untitled (Face Farce)1971

Van Gogh 4 - 1980

Body Language

Before any language was spoken, communication was ensured by body pictures, body movements, gestures and facial expressions.
A very differentiated mimicry or form of facial expressions can be found in chimpanzee which is eagerly used by them for communication. People, however, are said to have a poor, almost reactionary ability to express themselves by using the shape of their bodies and body postures; they suffer from psychological suppression of the body.

Arnulf Rainer describes his work as a connection of the interpretative and the fine arts which have so far found their only expression in the theatre and dance.

An important movement in Austria body posture and body figures.  Arnulf Rainer also prefers to work without material , he limits his work to phisical or bodily expressions only.

Untitled (Body Language)1973

Death Mask

The following is a translation by the compiler of an extract from Rainer's text 'Rein-Pein-Schein-Sein' (Vienna, 1978):

The death mask is a record of the last stage of human expressiveness. It is the image of an (artistic) attitude originating in the final exertion of life still striving for expression. It is a cast of a self-portrayal at the moment of entry into facelessness ... In my death mask series both spiritual and formal principles are directly (and indirectly as metaphor) involved, which are important to the development of my work; extinction, turning away, disturbing taboos, clownish insolence, the quasi-sacred, removal, curiosity about death, the mysticism of death etc. In all my overpainted photographs, I induced in myself a search for identification, self-transformation, dialogue, empathy; at the very least curiosity or an attempt to communicate. Communication with the spirits of the dead is an old shamanistic ritual. However, this is not the reason for my approach to the theme of death. After ten years of cramped self-portrayals I was touched above all by the mimic-physiognomic language of these faces. No grimaces, no psychophysical tension, no allowance for dialogue-seeking, no desire to impress or deceive, no exaggerated mannerism here. Instead indifference as if it had a formal value, as if it were definitive. The face of suffering, of those who have given up the struggle, the quietened, the absent-minded, the decaying; both terror and redemption appear here ... I haunt cemeteries and morgues, collect photographs of the dead, observe dead physiognomies, study mortification. As a person I want to get closer to this secret; as someone astonished no longer ignore the problem. As a human being like any other it is the great confrontation for me too ... The works shown here are preparatory, preliminary. There are no big pictures, no central key work of museum format. They will never come into being, they can never be - with the exception of my own death mask - my own death photo (overpainted by me once more in an imaginary way?) ... The faces of the dead qualify the lives that have passed. They are taboo. We endure them only blotted out, transfigured through our culture. With the basic material used here - death masks of important historical figures - there were complication with their executors. Under suspicion of hubris and infringement of taboo ... I was never able at first to get a look at authentic casts. In the beginning I had to approach the theme through reproductions. I always had to work on the likeness I found, photographing it anew in order to distance myself from the interpretative style of the original photographer. These photographs seldom provided what I was looking for. After some brushes with bureaucracy I was granted the opportunity to photograph a few original casts for a very short time ... The faces of the dead, that is to say death masks, exhibit enormous differences of expression. Is this something fundamental, is it due additional retouching, or is perhaps a sort of naive personal projection? The faces of the military, of polititians, of managers and of the powerful look more polished, more beautified, but emptier and shallower than those of saints, thinkers, artists etc. Here was another kind of death. Through the original masks I was able to come to grips with every special expression I was looking for.

Untitled (Death Mask)1978

Untitled (Death Mask)1978