Günter Brus: Quotes about art

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

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 12 (Introductory text to the portfolio Transfusion,1990.)

Pleasure , Art , History , Thinking

“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.”

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 140 (1985)

Art , Painting

“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.”

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 238 (2002)

Art , Feeling , Nature , Time

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

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 216 (2003)

Art

“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.”

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 226 (2003)

Art , Home

“Pure painting or the art of drawing whose point of departure is based on purely formal criteria is, in my opinion, passé. I do not reject it if other artists make attempts, but as far as I am concerned, this is what I believe. if I do not place a text next to my drawings, I consider the work on such programmes to be futile.”

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 208 (1993)

Art , Departure , Drawing , Painting

“Color will play no part in the art of future.”

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 20

Art , Color , Future , Parting

“In simple terms: art has not been a public nuisance for quite a while now. either the people have become well-behaved or the perpetrators of nuisances have become tired.”

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 208 (2003)

People , Art

“Total actions are a further development of the happening and combine the elements of all art forms, painting music, literature, film, theatre, which have been so infected by the progressive process of cretinisation in our society that any examination of reality has become impossible using these means alone. Total actions are the unprejudiced examination of all the materials that make up reality. Total actions take place in a consciously delineated area of reality with deliberately selected materials. They are partial, dynamic occurrences in which the most varied materials and elements of reality are linked, swapped over, turn on their heads and destroyed. This procedure creates the occurrence. The actual nature of the occurrence depends on the composition of the material and actors′ unconscious tendencies. Anything may constitute the material: people, animals, plants, food, space, movement, noise, smells, light, fire, coldness, warmth, wind, dust, steam, gas, events, sport, all art forms and all art products. All the possibilities of the material are ruthlessly exhausted. As a result of the incalculable possibilities for choices that the material presents to the actor, he plunges into a concentrated whirl of action finds himself suddenly in a reality without barriers, performs actions resembling those of a madman, and avails himself of a fool′s privileges, which is probably not without significance for sensible people. Old art forms seek to reconstruct reality, total actions unfold within reality itself. Total actions are direct occurrences(direct art), not the repetition of an occurrence, a direct encounter between unconscious elements and reality(material). The actor performs and himself becomes material: stuttering, stammering, burbling, groaning, choking, shouting, screeching, laughing, spitting, biting, creeping, rolling about in the material.”

Günter Brus

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 166 (1966/1972)

People , Food , Fools , Art