This December 2011, it is almost one year ago that we, Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold, started an Art Project with the artist Arnulf Rainer (*1929, Austria). Since the 1950s, Rainer’s work is characterized by over-painting: he uses existing images (paintings, photos or drawings of his own art or that of others) to work over, in order to make them “better”. Besides his Crosses and Finger-paintings, Rainer became well-known with his “Face Farces”, a series he started in 1968. The Face Farces are black and white self-portraits – photographs that Rainer took late at night in a photo booth at a train station in Vienna – showing his face contorted in grimaces and his body twisted in uncomfortable poses. At home, Rainer then accentuated these photos by working over them with pen and chalk. Using his own body as a vehicle, these and other self-portraits seem to have been a way for him to explore human expressions. But, after several years of using his own face and body, he became tired of ‘himself’ and started using other images instead, other faces to work over. Last year, we became two of these faces.

It began with our dream that Rainer would over-work one photo of us. We managed to convince him to consider including us in a series he was working on at that time in December 2010, called “Schleiertanz” [Veil Dance], and received his letter with initial ‘instructions’: you should dance in synchronized poses with a fishnet or other type of ‘veil’. And so, we started dancing together naked on our bed, with a veil. After meeting Rainer on Tenerife, Spain, in January 2011, the situation changed. Contrary to the many stories we had heard (of a rather difficult old man, who often does not say a word), we met a vivid artist, still very eager to learn, to develop himself and to challenge us in doing things we had never done before. We were a good match. Soon, the veil-dance photos were too boring for him. In his mind the project quickly transformed: from slapstick and belly dancers in Chinese negligees it turned into SM, bondage and later developed into series of angels, opera singers, masked gods and even a series of orgasms. And it continues until today, with requests from Rainer that include itching powder and positions only done by highly skilled circus athletes.

At a certain point, however, we had to put an end to it - at least an in-between-stop - to realize Rainer’s numerous “Blätter” [sheets] into ‘results’. So, after a year of collaboration and the promise to continue, together with Rainer we decided to present the Art Project until where it is at this point in time. A selection of 100 works has now been published in the special edition book “Arnulf Rainer: Unfinished Into Death”. Part of the erotic series was published by the Global Art Affairs Foundation as a limited edition, a set of twelve photos and a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist, presented together in a black linen bound box. Part of this edition and our book, is also the following text: Rainer’s side of the story.

Women, fighting, hissing  (A short chronology)

Am I as an unworldly, hermit artist ever allowed to create series of works, when behind them may stand the whisperings of the devil?

After an automatic camera had been installed in my studio in Tenerife, and its background had been covered with white linen, so that you would perhaps be able to see blood and tears, the first séance began. A rival fight: “Ladies’ Wrestling” and similar acts were planned. I had to be cinematographer, referee and story editor, all at the same time. I had, however, never attended a sports academy, and although I was a professor once, I did not know any duel tricks, nor various clandestine strategies and neither any possible danger for the referee.

Two young Dutch art historians were to compete, the lovable Sarah and the bolder, naughtier Karlyn, who knew each other much better than I knew them. They did not care about how I had imagined this, and with loud screams they started attacking each other. We had pushed the room inventory to the side—only the old faded pink armchairs and an Italian iron bed with its accessories, we could not remove. The two ladies got into a wild foreplay. They pinched and bit each other, pulled each other’s hair and then put on hair-nets. Half-naked, dressed in a kind of veil nightgown, they felt most free. Under the bed they had secretly hidden “Sado-Material”.

I had the feeling that they were somehow attuned to each other. Could it be that they practiced more often at home?—Headlocks, knuckle crushing, tearing out body parts, etc.? At first everything went smoothly, as if it was rehearsed. So, I had to cheer them up. As a reaction, they were cursing in Dutch (at me, as I later learned). Karlyn’s nose and chin were getting redder and redder—will blood be spilled now? Which of the two is scratching and choking harder? The camera shot one picture after the other. The automatic shutter responded quicker than I could see.

I suffered from this brutality. Karlyn stuffed some sort of ball in Sarah’s mouth so that she could not talk to me anymore. Then she whispered something in her ear, both women focused on me and Karlyn pulled a rope out of a corner. It was the famous, Dutch three-mast-rope, with a kind of “devilish circle-sock structure”, which is so very dangerous because it can wrap itself around your body like a snake.

I gave Sarah a red curtain to divert Karlyn, “the tall one”, away from me like a bullfighter. But she then bound Sarah with one end of the rope. The other end she threw over me like a lasso, tied me up and announced that she would now tickle me “to death” using the famous Chinese-Dutch torturing method. Sarah, however, bravely freed first herself and then me.

During the turmoil the camera had fallen, so no more pictures were taken. The tripod, however, was in my reaching distance. Although I was the referee, I could not blow the whistle for the end of the scene, because in the meantime “the tall one” had put a Venetian tennis-ball into my mouth. Now all I could do was swinging the tripod against her. It hit her on her back, down from the shoulders.

Right after that, we immediately started using our camera again. Sarah insisted on this photographic documentation. We started a new series. I now had the role of the beast; they played the Angels, “Angels in Négligée”. For that, I put (self-painted) Dionysian masks on them, after which they positioned themselves or lay down as if they would give birth to a god.

Next, I proposed a series of “Sabbath of the Witches”. Witches’ brew was quickly taken care for. My terrace neighbor cultivates daturas, and the thorn-apples keep falling over and over again into my studio.

The women retreated and rubbed each other in. Karlyn was the first one to come out of the bathroom. She had the hypnotic, crazy, piercing look of a giraffe. Scared, I ran into my bedroom and put on my cross-embroidered nightgown. That calmed her down and she began to softly and melodically sing lullabies. That moved me very much.

Meanwhile, Sarah was looking in every room for brooms, but found nothing. Frustrated they left me, kissed each other, before going up into the sky, flying into heaven.

Left alone, I watched the resulting film. Everything was just black. Next time we will have Rene join us, the photographer of darkness. Even if he has never taken snapshots of embracing angels before. Over time, we might be able to make it happen, to provoke these secrets from the sky. For a new series, of course. But what do angels do when they are not singing, flying or kissing each other?   (Arnulf Rainer,  Tenerife Spain, March 2011)

If you are interested in more information about Arnulf Rainer’s limited edition of twelve erotic photos or the book “Unfinished Into Death”, please check www.globalartaffairs.org.

Credits:

Arnulf Rainer, Untitled (Unfinished into Death), 2011. Mixed media on paper. Courtesy: Global Art Affairs Foundation