Hermann Nitsch @ MARTIN-GROPIUS-BAU

ARTFORUM.COM: It's no wonder that Christoph Schlingensief, current enfant terrible of epic theater à la Wagner-era Bayreuth, recently published an apologia for Hermann Nitsch. For a younger generation of artists—Jonathan Meese is another example—performance, particularly Viennese Actionism, has had a revival in the last decade. Nitsch, one of the movement’s principle protagonists, is now being honored with a retrospective at this museum, organized by Berlin’s Nationalgalerie. One of his more infamous concepts is the cathartic, transgressive “Orgien Mysterien Theater” (a mixture of Dionysian/Bacchanalian traditions and medieval performances), an ongoing project he began in 1962. The actions are now an annual occurrence, with large numbers of participants (or, more precisely, actors) at prominent locations like Vienna’s Burgtheater and Nitsch's own castle, Schloss Prinzendorf. “Orgien Mysterien Theater” stringently follows a complex choreography, aiming to produce a Gesamtkunstwerk of intertwined objects, performance, and music. Though some huge paintings on canvas bear resemblance to post–World War II abstract styles like tachism and art informel, the drips and stains are less concerned with aesthetic originality than with the introduction of random elements and an indexicality of actions like spilling and pouring. Red materializes through (animal) blood, as well as paint. This large-scale exhibition, spread over eighteen rooms, is a multifaceted synopsis of Nitsch's work with rich, sacral fabrics and colorful flowers. (Most exceptional are the photo, video, and film documentations of early actions.) In some rooms I could almost smell Catholic incense.