Günter Brus

My body is the intention. My body is the event. My body is the result.

— Günter Brus

“Ritual” might be an acceptable term, if shorn of its overtly religious connotations.For me,breaking taboos became nothing less than a stylistic means. I allowed my body, my self, to be pushed into such extreme situations that certain norms of social behaviour could only appear utterly absurd to me.

— Günter Brus

Oswald Wiener had just dropped by. We were watching a football world championship game. Suddenly,in the middle of a game with Germany,the reporter said,“Bertie Vogts slid in like an Irrwisch [Jack-o’-Lantern]”. Eureka! That was the title I was looking for,and Oswald wiener commented,“That fits perfectly-an irrer Wisch”

— Günter Brus

I think my actions,like those of my associates,were possible in this form only in vienna. Our heritage was the vienna secession and Austrian expression,and that,along with the violent disapproval of our work,explains not only its frequently overwrought and aggressive character,but also its radical psychological insights.

— Günter Brus

Self-painting is a further development of the art of painting. The surface of an image has lost its function as the sole means of conveying expression. It was taken back to its roots,to the wall,to the object,to the living being,to the human body. By using my body as a means of conveying expression,the result created is a happening captured by a camera as it progresses,and an experience which viewers can share.

— Günter Brus

The white room is an interior to be made devoid of any specific sensualism emanated by objects. Ultimately it is classic white canvas expanded into three-dimensional space.

— Günter Brus

Pure painting or the art of drawing whose point of departure is based on purely formal criteria is,in my opinion, passé. I do not reject it if other artists make attempts,but as far as I am concerned,this is what I believe. if I do not place a text next to my drawings,I consider the work on such programmes to be futile.

— Günter Brus

In simple terms: art has not been a public nuisance for quite a while now. either the people have become well-behaved or the perpetrators of nuisances have become tired.

— Günter Brus

Art is gushing hot bile on the fields and harvesting the looks of nasty dwarfs.

— Günter Brus

I want to cover all areas that can be depicted visually. This ranges from fairytales to attempts to enter the abstract and view oneself as a social outcast or someone struggling to stay alive.

— Günter Brus

Art is created in a state of delirium. Anyting else is the restoration of monuments. Collectors are artist that do not have a home. they have to make one for themselves.

— Günter Brus

My picture-poems are linguistic margins on visual atolls.

— Günter Brus

For me,the Bild-Dichtung[image-poem] is the ideal form,because the drawing process is constantly being interrupted or contrasted by the writing. And since I always have something to say when I am writing,the effort has a balancing effect. Drawing and writing are wonderful complements.

— Günter Brus

Writing without making mistakes is like vomiting hot air.

— Günter Brus

Poetry is when words are robbed of their attributed truth.

— Günter Brus

In a certain sense,I never left Actionism as I understood it to this very day. Today,I work in “sittings” that are very similar to the course of the actions. Only the stage has changed on which the presentation takes place.

— Günter Brus

The pencil-stroke is like cutting into the heart.

— Günter Brus

My thinking at that time was determined by a kind of wilfully repressed pleasure[Freude] in Freud ,and I wanted to be as artistically direct as plumber illustrating the history of art with a spanner.

— Günter Brus

Analogously to Arnulf Rainer′s ‘overpaintings’,and extending thse with my own actionistic resources,the artist′s head should be in the picture ,should become one with the picture,and disappear in it.

— Günter Brus

Being covered in white paint ,you demonstrate behaviour intended to create a public nuisance,which did in fact cause offence to members of the public ,and created a breach of the peace and public order.

— Günter Brus

Color will play no part in the art of future.

— Günter Brus

I hate people,who force their way through at traffic accidents to see blood. They...rape and dismember virgins,and have orgies.

— Günter Brus

You become an artist to upset your family.

— Günter Brus

Creative children do not paint. They mess around. If they have to draw,creative children always end up being the ridiculous kind of child,who produces childern′s drawings Creative children wipe spinach round their gobs,that′s all. Any thing more that these crappy daubnings is the result of education-and before long we′re on a level with Paul Klee.

— Günter Brus

As a boy,I was extremely shy,certainly as a result of my upbringing. I was an expert blusher,and some of my harsh actions may echo this shyness by way of compensation.

— Günter Brus