MUSA - The 1980ies in the MUSA collection

MUSA, Vienna’s „Start gallery“, artothek and collection of the municipal culture department, chose 100 items from about 4000 works of the very heterogeneous 1980ies, at the same time giving an insight into the artistic variety of the decade and the collecting activities of the department. MUSA was founded in 1951 in order to support local artists, by now its collection incorporates over 35.000 works of art by 4500 artists. Until the 1980ies, officials and politicians decided about acquisitions, since 1986 a jury gives recommendations regarding additional purchases.

The decade was marked by eclecticism and revivals and, as the curators Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer and Berthold Ecker state, also by an end of styles in art. Artists were on the search for new subversive and scandalous forms of expression, including Kitsch, revulsion, and the grotesque, but also starting to deal with the upcoming digital age in their creative output. In this context the decade brought a renewal of styles, in some peculiarities of Neo-pop and realist mannerisms, although with a more complex iconography than in the original Pop art movement. If there is anything new emerging it is design, a cross between art and business, very much indebted to its origins in the 1960ies. The plurality of artistic languages and modes of expression included environments created with light, sound or other means, surrounding the viewer. The performances and installations connected elements like video, sculpture and miscellaneous objects in a complex way, featuring a consistent intention: The event was documented by video and photography and ceased to exist after their disassembly. These approaches had their origins in the idea of decontextualizing objects and presenting them as works of art afterwards – not a new idea as this was already practised by the early 20^th century avant-gardes like dada and surrealism. Thus artistic approaches see the daylight emphasizing something that was already distinguishable beforehand: the ambiguity of roles that used to be clearly defined, like the one of the artist, the viewer or the work itself.

In the photo production of the three feminist artists Linda Christanell, Karin Mack and Margot Pilz “We about ourselves”, the context between woman as subject and object becomes manifest, one of the polemic topics of female artistic production. The mechanisms which condition the production of significants are unmasked. Tongue-in-cheek, the artists disclose the medias language with its deceits and tricks, based on the media imageries they implicitly denounce as a distorting mirror that produces alienating identifications. By objectifying themselves, the artists masquerade as beautiful, ugly etc., becoming an object as well as a subject of desires, enjoying and suffering these desires at the same time. Thus they become performers who use photography only to convey conceptual ideas, the act of photographing mattering less than the act as such and its implicit intentionality. The medium serves only to document the action. As in numerous examples of 1980ies art, the documentations of artistic acts are not only final products to frame and exhibit, but they are numbered and sold as photographs.

As a substantial shift in 1980ies art, works that were not for sale in the 1970ies –happenings or performances- were transformed into products for the market and sold. In which way is the spirit of political subversion maintained if the action ends up as an object that remains and receives a sales price? Trying to detect and to denounce the contradictions of artistic discourses, the artists encounter their own contradictions and impossibilities. (written by Cem Angeli)

https://www.wienmuseum.at/de/standorte/wien-museum-musa

Interviewee: Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer, Berthold Ecker
Artworks by: Hans Kuppelwieser, Hubert Schmalix, Karin Mack, Linda Christanell, Manfred Wakolbinger, Mara Mattuschka, Margot Pilz, Thomas Reinhold

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German, English
Subtitles: German, English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Wolfgang Haas, Helmut Feier, Roman Pachernegg
Production country: Austria, Vienna