untitled

5b Aktion
Photo: Ludwig Hoffenreich

gelatin silver print

The youngest of the Viennese Actionists has been dead almost as long as he lived. Rudolf Schwarzkogler's early death spared him the fate of artistic "normalization" that the creation of legends around his person had brought him. Even if he avoided the transformation from enemy of the state to state-artist, he did not avoid the firm cliché of the martyr for art. The legend of suicide and self-castration as a "consistent" consequence of radical physical self-questioning is still being written today, even in serious publications. This is particularly remarkable as the role of victim is assigned to those who have the least prerequisites for it, since Schwarzkogler's art was the least expressive and most restrained in its theatrical content of all the Actionists. And in contrast to Günter Brus, for example, who understood the body as a substitute for the canvas and dissected it after painting it (art-historically logical), Schwarzkogler's analysis of bodily experiences always took place on the level of the symbolic. Apart from dead fish, no one was hurt, not even the aesthetic sensibilities of the audience. Except for a few friends, the public was not admitted to Schwarzkogler's actions.
(Christian Kravagna, from Kunstforum, vol. 122, 1993/ translation)