Günter Brus Quotes

The seven dwarfs were devastated when an eighth joined them one morning before they went to work. He went straight into their house,took little plates and cutlery out of his waistcoat,grabbed the mining tools and was the first dwarf to set off for work. Caught off-guard by his cheeky but honest manner,the others followed,angry because he was showing them the way along the path they took every day and surprised when they found he had turned into dark grotto into a glass palace with Snow White hewn in gold. For these established prospectors it was terrible to behold the intruder appropriating for himself the right to mine the virgin goldmine.

Art is gushing hot bile on the fields and harvesting the looks of nasty dwarfs.

You become an artist to upset your family.

It′s always seemed odd to me that people don′t paint with both hands. I mean, if I′m technically so shackled that I can′t paint with my hair, stomach or bottom, what about my other hand? You′ve got to live in painting. All-round painting... Indefinable space-at least indefinable in traditional terms-that′s what I require of my paintings. There must be absolutely no central focus... There can be no progress until that damned centre has been eliminated... My paintings are sublimated stamping,screaming and hissing-I try to translate a process experienced physically into a physically visible one.

In a certain sense,I never left Actionism as I understood it to this very day. Today,I work in “sittings” that are very similar to the course of the actions. Only the stage has changed on which the presentation takes place.

In fact,my art generally nauseated me. Often,when I wanted to set down a poem on an uncontaminated piece of paper,I′d start feeling sick and I did actually throw up in front of many drawings. I tremble all over in front of each picture-poem and before every action I would swallow a jar of pressed vine vermin. Time and again I strove for a kind of non-art,and time and again I failed,like a chimpanzee wanting to throw away a banana without peeling it. My disgust at producing art naturally atracted collectors,and ocassionaly photographers.

P. 14 (Cit.after LockerWiener Aktionismus.Der zertrümmerte Spiegel.Wien1960-1971,op.cit., p. 299.)

Analogously to Arnulf Rainer′s ‘overpaintings’,and extending these with my own actionistic resources, the artist′s head should be in the picture ,should become one with the picture, and disappear in it.

Art is created in a state of delirium. Anyting else is the restoration of monuments. Collectors are artist that do not have a home. they have to make one for themselves.

My body is the intention. My body is the event. My body is the result.

Color will play no part in the art of future.

Writing without making mistakes is like vomiting hot air.

Self-painting is a further development of the art of painting. The surface of an image has lost its function as the sole means of conveying expression. It was taken back to its roots,to the wall,to the object,to the living being,to the human body. By using my body as a means of conveying expression,the result created is a happening captured by a camera as it progresses,and an experience which viewers can share.

My thinking at that time was determined by a kind of willfully repressed pleasure[Freude] in Freud ,and I wanted to be as artistically direct as plumber illustrating the history of art with a spanner.

I want to cover all areas that can be depicted visually. This ranges from fairytales to attempts to enter the abstract and view oneself as a social outcast or someone struggling to stay alive.