R
ARNULF RAINER
Austrian
Arnulf Rainer is one of the leading artists in Aus-
tria. His work alternates between photography and
painting. His photographic work should be con-
sidered performative photography, similar to that
by Valie Export, Ulay, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nau-
man, and Vito Acconci. He became international-
ly famous in the fifties for his ‘‘over-painting’’ of
already existing paintings and later for his over-
painting and over-drawing of photographs. He
uses self-portraits and other photographs as the
base for his Bildu ̈bermalungen (Over-paintings).
Expressive, spontaneous, and gestural, his work is
important because its cross-disciplinary nature and
focus on the body opened the doors to the innova-
tions by many later artists.
Arnulf Rainer was born on December 8, 1929 in
Baden (near Vienna), Austria. In 1948, he dis-
covered Surrealism and until 1951 worked with
Fantastic Realism style producing Surrealist-fig-
urative work. Except for attending two Viennese
art schools for very brief periods in 1949, he was
basically self-taught. Since the early fifties, along
with painting, photography has played an impor-
tant role in Rainer’s work, starting with the pub-
lication of the photography portfolioPerspektiven
der Vernichtung (Perspectives of Destruction)in- Rainer’s interest in religion has made it a
frequent theme for his art since 1953 when he began
painting plywood crosses in hisDie Kreuzenseries.
In this same year, he also began reading mystical
texts and made his first photographic self-portraits.
Between 1953 and 1959, Rainer executed his most
well-known group of works, Die U ̈bermalungen
(Overpaintings), utilizing a method that was to
become a constant in his work. With gloomy colors
and a violent technique, Rainer painted over his
own paintings, the paintings of other artists, and
photographs of Old Masters.
Between 1962 and 1968, Rainer was involved
with the Wiener Aktionismus (Vienna Actionism),
whose activities sought to challenge accepted beliefs
and traditions through performances that were ero-
tic body rituals centered on sacrifice and suffering
and could only be documented photographically. A
period of preoccupation with the human body and
body language followed his involvement with this
group, the results of which began in 1968 with the
firstGrimacephotographs made using an automatic
photograph booth. Since 1969, Rainer has pro-
duced numerous series of painted-over and drawn-