OTTO MUEHL

'Otto Muehl' (born June 16, 1925, at Grodnau, Burgenland, Austria) is one of the co-founders, and an important member, of ''Wiener Aktionismus'' or Viennese Actionism. In 1972 he founded the famous commune Friedrichshof that flourished for several years before falling apart in the 1990s. Muehl himself was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for child sex abuse. He was released after 7 years and set up a smaller commune in Portugal.
In 1943, Otto Muehl served in the German Army and in 1944 he was sent to the Front. After the war, he studied teaching German and History, and Pedagogy of Art at the Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künste.
In the sixties he began to paint; or rather 'to overcome painting on canvas through staging the process of its destruction'. He made rhizomatic structures with scrap iron ("''Gerümpelplastiken''"), but soon proceeded to the "''Aktion''" in the vein of the New Yorker Happenings. In 1962, when he was 37, the first "''Aktion''" "''Die Blutorgel''" was performed in Muehl's atelier in the Perinetgasse by Muehl himself, Adolf Frohner and Hermann Nitsch. The "''Fest des psycho-physischen Naturalismus''" and "''Versumpfung einer Venus''" followed in 1963. From 1964 to 1966 many "''Malaktionen''" were filmed by Kurt Kren and photographed by Ludwig Hoffenreich. In 1966 a new concept of Aktion was developed with Günter Brus: instead of the canvas, the body became the scene of action. In 1968, Muehl, Brus and Oswald Wiener organised an Aktionsveranstaltung "Kunst und Revolution" in the University of Vienna, which caused a scandal in the press; Brus was arrested and emigrated to Berlin.
Gradually, Muehl began to distance himself from "''Aktion''". He regarded the "happening as a bourgeois artform, mere art". The "transition from art to life" resulted in the founding of the commune as a kind of anti-society. Inspired by Wilhelm Reich, all members submitted to the so-called ''Aktionsanalyse''. The declared aim was the destruction of bourgeois marriage and private property, free love, and collective education of the children. In 1974 he played a small role as a member of an anarchic/therapy commune in Dusan Makavejev's ''Sweet Movie''. In the eighties, tensions within the commune increased until they culminated in a revolt under the direction of Altenberg. When, on top of that, Muehl was sentenced for sexual abuse of children in 1991, the commune fell apart. Muehl moved to Faro, Portugal to start a new commune experiment. Despite suffering from Parkinsons disease, Muehl continued his art work, and in 2002 developed "electric painting films", a new technique in which he paints digital photos from actions using a computer tablet and pen and edits the process into films.

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Further reading

External links

Further reading

★ ''Aus dem Gefängnis'', Klagenfurt, Ritter-Verlag, 1997

★ ''7'', (Exhibition catalogue) MAK Vienna, 1998.

★ ''Impossible: The Otto Muehl Story'' by William Levy, New York: Barany Artists, 2001

★ ''Leben/Kunst/Werk'' (Exhibition catalogue), MAK/ König; Vienna/ Köln, 2004

★ ''Writings of the Vienna Actionists'', by Malcolm Green, London, Atlas Press, 1999 "http://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_arkhive&number=7"

External links

★ Otto-Muehl-Website

★ Otto Muehl biographical overview and essay about Muehl and the commune Friedrichshof, written by Stefan Beyst, (August 2002)

★ An interview with Otto Muehl

★ Films by Otto Muehl at UbuWeb