 |
| Scene from an Orgies Mysteries Theatre event |
When my good friend Z from Latina (whom I'd last seen during An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – see this blog March to October 2020) joined me for some of my time in Naples, I suggested a visit to the Hermann Nitsch Museum (knowing that she was keen to see some modern art).
However, I had absolutely no idea what I was letting us both in for.
It didn't start well. The doors were locked and the place seemed closed (even though I'd had it confirmed by email that it would be open). Fortunately, I went for a walk around the back of the building, spied someone in a kitchen, and – after a bit of hand signalling – he made it clear that he would come and let us in. There was no one else in the large three-storey gallery – just this young curator and us.
It almost felt like the beginning of a low-budget horror movie... and that's pretty much the direction in which things were about to go...
I was busy examining what appeared to be huge blood-stained pieces of wood and canvas (which is what they turned out to be) when Z nudged me into looking at the video screen above us. I watched a succession of naked young men and women led ritually before a crowd of onlookers to take up crucifixion-type poses and then have jugs of blood force-fed into their dribbling lips or poured over their genitals.
This was all part of performance artist Nitsch's extraordinary decades-long oeuvre of what he calls his Orgies Mysteries Theatre – an explosive mixture of stripped human bodies, pseudo-religious ceremonies and copious quantities of animal blood and guts (literally) – or sometimes fruit such as strawberries and tomatoes (any colour as long as it's red).
The large bloody stains at my feet were the leftovers from one of these "orgies", themselves now artworks.
At this point I felt slightly sickened and if I had been there on my own I might have left. But Z has a more open mind than I do, and we both persevered. And I'm glad that I did. Because I came to realise that this is genuine art...
Nitsch knows exactly what he is doing in shaking up the spectator or visitor and making them face the question: 'What exactly do I think about this?'
Other pieces feature unnervingly neat layouts of little piles of tissues... and medical instruments that made one think of torture and suffering rather than surgery and healing. It is the stuff of nightmares... maybe Nitsch's, maybe our own.
Finally, we walked down an ominous and inexplicably awful subterranean corridor lined with large black and white abstract images and carefully arranged benches that looked as if they were waiting for bodies to be laid on them. It all induced a feeling that I had not experienced in quite the same way anywhere – apart from when I once visited the prison huts of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
If you want to get some idea of what Nitsch is all about – and have a strong mind and stomach – visit https://www.museonitsch.org/en/.
No comments:
Post a Comment