Hermann Nitsch | Under My Skin

Hermann Nitsch, Karlyn De Jongh & Sarah Gold

Under My Skin

Leiden, The Netherlands \ s-Hertogenbosch, Belgium: Global Art Affairs Foundation / Luiscius, 2010 

20.5 x 43.5 cm.

Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies

Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold were blindfolded naked and bound to crosses in Hermann Nitsch’s 130th iteration of Aktion (Action), at the Museon Hermann Nitsch in Naples. This publication functions as documentation and a diary of their experience working with the artist for a week in May of 2010. 

A purple box houses a red faux leather clamshell box with gold lettering, containing a book with similar red cover, and a red sleeve with a DVD featuring the performance. It also includes a piece of cloth [37.8 x 20.5 cm.] folded into three, covered with dried blood. 

De Jongh and Gold's other boxed publications include works by Herman de Vries, On Kawara, Yoko Ono, Roman Opalka, Arnulf Rainer, Lee Ufan, Ben Vautier, and Lawrence Weiner [above, top]. 

"Sarah Gold: Nitsch, you have told us that your mother used to ask you “Why are you doing this nonsense?” Do you have any idea why you made this so called “nonsense”?

Hermann Nitsch: In a positive way, you come very close to me now. Now I will not answer you with academic rubbish. I made it because I was convinced that it was necessary and still is. To work in this way and to question the world in this way. Christ said, “What is truth?” It was Pontius Pilate. The fact that he washed his hands and really did not want to have anything to do with politics and then plainly asked “What is truth?”—I want that, too. I have always fought for the truth. One cannot reach the truth, but you can move in the direction of the truth. I never wanted to improve the world as a whole for that, the world is far too great, too complex. You can only extract great moments from the world, in terms of large, deep experiences that penetrate into being. But Being is actually the thing in itself. Since everything is inside of it: the terrible abyss, the glorious splendor, the greatest moments of joy and the deepest holes. I have always fought. I would say, it was for the truth of Being.

Karlyn De Jongh: By now you have been creating your work for about 50 years. Having lived in Vienna, I am of the opinion that the Viennese Actionism was destined to arise there, have you been able to change something? Have you in your environment, or perhaps even to a larger extent, made a difference?

HN: Look, a great example for me is Freud. Whether the therapeutic success of Freud was really so great is a question I do not want and even cannot answer. But he had a great influence on our whole culture, even on mythology and theology. Actually, he preventively has eliminated dispositions towards the classic Freud Neurosis through his educational work. In this sense, he was therapeutic in insight therapy and that is for me also the case. I do not believe in an improvement of human beings, or an improvement of nature. But I think that we can use the conditions that we have better and more intensely, and that everyone by himself can intensively develop his Being.

SG: Now, from today on, you will live maybe 10 years more… These last 10 years, what can you still give us as a final accord?

HN: I would like to make the most beautiful thing that I am, perhaps, still able to make. I would like my work to become more colorful in every respect and more undogmatic, unspeakably a message of Being. That Being says, “Come to me,” you are created to be and experience it. You do not experience it in hell, not in distress and not in pain, but you experience it in the greatest joy. Just look at the suffering and the Cross, the tragedy, the tragic and death, in the eye. The images of wars and Holocaust unfortunately, that all belongs to Being. I would like to be on the side, just because I have intimately and altruistically experienced Being. In that moment I am then fully there; when I am completely in luck, then I do not understand humanity. Another 10 years? Visions for the future, I am not really as interested in them as I am in experiencing the moment, the now, the experience."

Daisy Chain Fields

Olivia Rodrigo's inaugural all-female music festival, Daisy Chain Fields, took place Saturday in Irvine, California. Inspired by Sarah McLachlan's '90s festival Lilith Fair, the event featured musical acts such as Bikini Kill, the Breeders, Chappell Roan, Devon Again, Die Spitz, Doechii, Eli, Garbage, Mitski, Not for Radio, Quiet Light, Rachel Chinouriri, Santigold, and Rodrigo herself (with guest appearances from McLachlan, Alanis Morissette and Stevie Nicks). 

The fair also featured art projects by Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, The Guerrilla Girls and others. Ono’s Wish Tree project is above. 

Jean Tinguely : Hanover Gallery

Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely : Hanover Gallery

London, UK: Hanover Gallery, 1968

9 x 16 cm.

Edition size unknown

An accordion-fold catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition held at Hanover Gallery between the 5th of December, 1967 and January 5th, 1968. 

The coloured serigraph leporello (folding out to 9 x 288 cm.) features a collage of drawings, photographs, writing and stamps. The work also includes illustrations by Niki de Saint Phalle, who was married to Tinguely for twenty years, until his death in 1991. 

Tinguely died thirty-five years ago today, at the age of 66.

Valie Export | Biennale di Venezia 1980

Valie Export

Biennale di Venezia 1980

Austrian Federal Minisrty of Education and Art, 1980

128 pp., 27 x 21 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

In 1980, Valie Export represented Austria (alongside Maria Lassnig) at the Venice Biennale - a rare instance of a female artist feted there at the height of her career, rather than its end. 

She presented Body Configurations (1972–76), a series of hand-tinted black-and-white photographs of the artist encircling the curve of a curb or conforming to the angle of a corner; Remote…Remote… (1973), a twelve-minute film of clipping her nails and dipping her bloody fingers into a bowl of milk [see below]; HOMO METER II (1976), performance documentation of Export walking down the street with a loaf of bread tied around her her neck, inviting passersby to cut themselves a slice; and Geburtenbett (1980), a “birthbed” consisting of a large rusty steel frame with bedsprings, a pair of fibreglass legs, and a small monitor displaying a priest performing mass, in place of the figure’s chest and head.

This exhibition catalogue - in Italian, German and English - was published on the occasion of the Venice Biennale, and is now quite scarce. 

Four decades later, Export remounted the Venice pavilion exhibition at the London Ely House, from November 2019 to January 2020. 

Export died in Vienna on May 14th of this year, three days before her 86th birthday.

 

Milan Knížák | Zeremonien

Milan Knížák

Zeremonien

Remscheid, Germany: Vice-Versand, 1971

[unpaginated], 20 x 16.8 x 2.6 cm., spiral-bound

Edition of 500 numbered copies

Zeremonien is a hard-cover, spiral-bound artist book published by Wolfgang Feelisch, in 1971. The following May, the work was seized from German collector Hans Sohm by Czechoslovak border guards, leading to arrest of Milan Knížák. 

Sohm was interrogated for hours while trying to return to Stuttgart, and the book (and other materials) were impounded on the pretext that they were “intended to discredit the image of Czechoslovakia abroad” and that their content was “pornographic.”

Knížák wrote to Feelisch asking him to organize people to write about the arrest, as well as asking lawyers and the “society for human rights” to supervise his next trial. He reasoned: “If I will go to jail, all Czech art will with me, all artfreedom will be jailed, tooooo.”

A later letter asked that Feelisch contact Wolf Vostell, Allan Kaprow, George Maciunas, Ay-o, Ben Vautier, Ken Friedman, and others, on his behalf. 

“It might seem very stupid to do all these things,” he wrote, "but they can KEEP me OUT of a jail. Best would be to send a protest of most avant-garde famous world artist and art magazine etc. to Czechoslovakian government. But this is probably too phantastic and too overblown.”

Deemed an Enemy of the State, Knížák was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. 

Wolfgang and Sohm co-edited an issue of Reflection Press Magazine (No. 31) in 1973, in order to draw attention to Knížák’s imprisonment. It featured an introduction by Albrecht D., letters of support from artist Allan Kaprow, curator Harald Szeemann, and others, as well as texts by the artist himself.

The international campaign indeed helped precipitate an early release. 

Later in life, Knížák became the director of the Czech National Gallery in Prague between 1999 and 2011 and was awarded the Medal of Merit by the Czech Republic.

Milan Knížák died last month at the age of 86. 

Bill Burns and Yeni Ma | It’s the Sun and Rain that Makes the Salt and Goats and Honey Bees

Bill Burns and Yeni Ma

It’s the Sun and Rain that Makes the Salt and Goats and Honey Bees

Seoul, Korea: The Oil Tank Culture Project, 2026

144 pp., 14 x 20 cm., softcover

Edition of 190

"It’s the Sun and Rain that Makes the Salt and Goats and Honey Bees was a happening involving more than a dozen farmers, beekeepers, musicians, goats and farmers at and around Seoul. The project was a collaboration with dramaturg Yeni Ma. Goats were milked, bees provided honey, and salt was harvested from the sea. Bankers planted a pollinator garden, children tasted the goat’s milk infused with salt and honey and players dressed as a donkey, a goat and a honey bee carried the milk, honey and salt across the city until it was finally mixed together at the Oil Tank Culture Park at Seoul. The happening was directed by Mr. Burns who also mixed the milk, honey and salt and made the drawings in this book. The dramaturg was Yeni Ma. The associate producer was Juwon Park. The players were Dongsol Seo, Hyeyoung Na, Yeji Lim. The violinist was Hyojin Kan. The goat farmer was Youngki Min. The principal beekeeper was Jin Park. The salt was procured at Sorae Salt Farm. Costume design was by Pascale Déry. Photography was by Chul-lim Choi and Bill Burns.

Graphic Design and typography of this book is by Seoul-based graphic designer Gunjung Lee, whose award-winning work often blurs the lines between typography and image. The book includes many pictures and words, including a meandering conversation between Yeni Ma and Bill Burns touching on the joys and contradictions of consumer culture, container shipping, acceleration, slow farming and collaboration between species.”

- publisher’s statement

The book launches with a signing at Art Metropole tomorrow, Saturday August 29th, from two to four PM.

Addition events will take place at Marcus Campbell Art Books, London, England (September 19, 2:00 - 4:00 PM),  Bienal de Curitiba, MON, Curitiba, Brazil, (November 14,  2:00 - 4:00 PM) and Cite des Arts, Paris, France (February 6, 2027 2:00 - 4:00 PM).

Yayoi Kusama, RIP

Yayoi Kusama died last week at the age of 97, in a hospital in Tokyo.