ART CITIES: N.York-Hermann Nitsch

Having trained at Vienna’s Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in the 1950s, Hermann Nitsch became a pioneer of the city’s avant-garde scene in the 1960s and 1970s, staging radical and controversial performances as part of the Viennese Actionism movement. The artist’s work in performance and painting, which has incorporated blood, flesh, and other materials, has itself become a kind of religious practice.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

In the exhibition “Selected Paintings, Actions, Relics, and Musical Scores, 1965–2020” are on show paintings, photographs, relics, and musical scores by Hermann Nitsch the exhibition is accompanied by the premiere of a new performance and installation by Miles Greenberg. Over the course of more than 60 years, Hermann Nitsch cultivated an intensive practice that spans performance, painting, drawing, printmaking, film, photography, music, poetry, and philosophy. A leading figure of the Austrian avant-garde, Nitsch was a founder of the Viennese Actionism movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The disruptive ethos of this movement brought irreverent performance work to the forefront of Vienna’s art scene in the latter half of the 20th century. A key art historical figure in Europe, Nitsch has been cited as an influence by Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Chris Burden, and other major American artists.  Nitsch’s extensive performance work often features nudity, multifarious noises, and enactments of tragedy in explorations of rituals and primordial urges. The artist’s seminal work is the large-scale six-day “Orgies Mysteries Theatre”, which he began developing in the mid-1950s. For this work, the artist drew inspiration from literature, art, music, and philosophy to produce “a total work of art” that engages all five senses. In the “Orgies Mysteries Theatre”, Nitsch incorporates substances like blood and meat to elicit intense and varied reactions from viewers. In summer 2022, an extended version of the 6-Day-Play of the “Orgies Mysteries Theatre”, first performed in full in 1998, was staged at Austria’s Prinzendorf Castle, which the artist purchased in 1971 and used as a set for his ambitious performances. This extended performance has a strong emphasis on music. Also last year, Nitsch’s 20th “Painting Action” works, which he first presented in the Wiener Secession in 1987, were shown at Oficine 800 on the island of Giudecca, Venice during the 59th Venice Biennale. The exhibition brings together works created by Nitsch between 1962 and 2020, offering a holistic survey of his painting and photography practices. In his paintings, the artist often incorporated splatters and splashes of oil or acrylic sometimes mixed with blood, producing visceral and evocative abstractions through a highly physical and gestural process. Nitsch understood his painting actions as the visual grammar of his theatrical actions, applied to a picture plane. The exhibition includes a selection of Nitsch’s large-scale paintings as well as two vibrant works on paper that the artist created in 2020. The show also features three photo collages that chronicle a so-called “Penis Irrigation Action” staged in Nitsch’s Vienna apartment over the course of four hours in January 1965. These works reflect the artist’s interest in uniting the mediums of photography, painting, and performance in a singular body of work.  On the occasion of the exhibition, Pace Live will premiere “Fountain II”, a new durational performance and installation by Miles Greenberg. On view and performed alongside Nitsch’s work during the first weeks of the exhibition’s run, “Fountain II” expands upon Greenberg’s initial performance from 2022, “Fountain I”, which was heavily inspired Hermann Nitsch and resulted in sculptures that were presented in a two-person exhibition at the New Museum in 2022. Greenberg has nurtured a practice that spans performance and sculpture, activating his large-scale, immersive, and site-specific environments with durational, poetic productions. A protégé of Marina Abramović, who participated in Nitsch’s 50th action in 1975, Greenberg has been deeply influenced by Nitsch. In “Fountain II”, two performers will stand atop a plinth surrounded by a pool of blood-red water. The performers will engage in a sustained and choreographed embrace over the course of 6 hours, with dyed water hemorrhaging from their bodies onto the plinth and into pool below. The work serves as a poem about the final stages of heartbreak, when one turns their entire body inside out to reach a sort of ecstasy. The visceral, poetic, and graphic work transcends gore, existing in the space of the surreal.

Photo: Hermann Nitsch, 20th painting action, 18.2.1987, Secession, Vienna, © Hermann Nitsch Foundation, Courtesy Hermann Nitsch Foundation and Pace Gallery

Performances on Pace Live on: March 17, 18, 24 and 25,

Info: Curator: Mark Beasley, Pace Gallery, 510 West 25th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 17/3-29/4/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/