Thomas Trummer In Austria's history there is no date with serious ...

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Thomas Trummer
In Austria’s history there is no date with serious consequences that
might make the national unconscious clearly visible. There is no
magical entry in the calendar which would, as it were, push ahead
the fate of the country in chronic attacks of fever. Instead of being
subject to repetition compulsion, its history is deep-rooted in
the Middle Ages and it flourishes in the Baroque period. Unlike
its northern neighbour, Austria does not have a ninth November
which could be used as a yardstick by which to compare the destiny
of the people, its nadir and proud zenith in its national memory.
Neither is Austria traumatized by a perilous attack like 9/11. Its
history is older, more absolutist than German November events
and also vaguer and more complex than the recent US-American
self-authorization against the villains in the world. And yet there are
leitmotifs in Austria, too, which polarize without any shades of grey
or appraising nuances. In people’s collective memory, however, the
dramatic changes in Austria’s history seem to be almost exclusively
such that were inflicted on the country. Austria sees its heroism in
the roles of defence and just resistance. It owes its medieval castles
to the bulwark against hostile and uncivilized hordes from the east.
Indeed, even in the Resistance against National Socialism there
were proportionately more Austrians than Germans. In passive
self-underestimation, the country never sees itself as an aggressor,
but always as a victim stumbling through history. It likes suppressing
past events and suppresses a great deal. Among these events there
is the cheering crowd at Heldenplatz before the war, and there is
also the cheering crowd under the balcony of the Belvedere Palace
after the war, because the garden around the Baroque palace was

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only chosen because it is considerably smaller than Heldenplatz
and, consequently, easy to be filled. Probably the best example of
this conception of history as a history of defence is the much older
defensive action against the heathens. The resistance against the
advancing Ottomans, pride and justification of Habsburg imperial
power and religious conviction is at that time still present – at least
it seems to be so. As if it were a coincidence, the attacks of the
17 th and 18 th centuries find their late and inglorious imitators in the
campaigns of the xenophobic parties of the present. But even in the
past, during the monarchy and the corporative state, the alliance
of throne and altar and the common defence strategy against the
east and the southeast were balm to the country’s inner cohesion.
According to this conception, true faith and a just community are
the requisite know-how for the national conception of itself. Whichever
way you look at it, the malice against anyone that is foreign
proves to be profitable and strengthening the national community
spirit any time.
Franz Kapfer’s latest project devotes itself to the Turkish wars from
today’s perspective and from an artistic perspective. Kapfer reconstructs
and investigates. He shows the deliverance of Christianity
as a historical example and its after-effects up to the present. Nevertheless
Kapfer is not a historian, but an iconograph and an attentive
interpreter of images. In an exemplary fashion he finds in concrete
pictures what collective ones are based on. In his dossiers,
which prepare the exhibition in Galerie Hohenlohe in Vienna, photos,
sketches, extracts from texts, translations, articles and essays
are piled up. He has an abundant fund of absurdities which could
be the basis for numerous exhibitions. However, the surplus value
of the idea does not consist in plenitude, but the unbroken activity
of the same. As Kapfer is concerned with the recurrence of motives
and of the repetition compulsion of ideological patterns, he finds his
subjects in almost all epochs. He collects subjects and messages

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in as large numbers as footnotes. Presented together, they expose
their similarity, comparable to the legendary picture atlas which the
cultural historian Aby Warburg pinned on olive green felt boards.
Bringing together ethnographic and cultural historical views, Warburg
had put together a cartography of human gestures. Over the
boundaries of cultures and epochs the picture researcher collected
typical pictures of human expressions and physical gestures. He regarded
these ‘pathos formulae’ as symbols of extensive excitement,
expressions of timeless suffering and happiness.
Travelling through history, Kapfer uses a similar technique, but has,
in spite of that, a very different intention. Kapfer is more political,
more critical and sharper, more biting than Warburg. Instead of
passion and of being of the same kind, he looks for pictures of
power, of suffering and of being different. Kapfer is on the track
of symbols of suppression, those signs of humiliation with which
the victor punishes the loser even after the battle. In contrast to
the person who has an academic interest in pictures, the gestures
which are encoded in the motives are seen by the artist not as anthropologically
constant, but as historically contaminated, that is,
politically explosive.
For months, Kapfer has been touring through Austria’s monasteries,
castles, holy places and mausoleums. He finds the material for
his astonishing studies almost everywhere, in the centres of religious
and political power, but always in the niches. Belittled as
marginalia, but nevertheless of importance, these motives lie dormant
in places where devout pilgrims and zealous tourists can still
discover them without any problems. It is a repertoire of pictures
which is displayed in an amazingly uncensored way, but has to give
way to the self-opinionated war profiteers. The magnificent staircase
of the Upper Belvedere shows Ottoman prisoners next to great allegories
of noble Prince Eugene. The outcasts are pushed to the margins

and flattened to spaceless stucco reliefs. In artistic respect, however,
their tortured bodies are more than ornamental accessories.
Aesthetic leanings and fashionable pleasure are the reasons why
artists from the Baroque period devote more time to the twisted bodies
that are distorted with pain than to the statue-like motionless
bodies that they associate with the past. Unlike in the Renaissance
period, artistically there is no longer a focus on balance and the reconciliation
of different forces, but on dynamics and dominance,
as well as, in political respect, on a sense of power, rule and control
and hierarchical differences. Thus the Turks always appear to
be muscular and strong, but defencelessly forced into architectural
spandrels. They are everywhere where there is really no space any
more, where confinement and wretched pushing and shoving dominate.
According to Baroque conceptions, Turkish warriors are suitable
for peripheral, marginal borders, for doorknobs and for plinths,
for embellishments of statues which pose above them, for doormats
for other people’s soles, crushed by the machinery of war and humiliated
by emblems that quickly pick up these things. Their position
in space remains iconographically constant, and so does their
appearance. In the marble hall of the Lower Belvedere the creator
of the frescos shows them bald, but with long beards and chained
legs, fitted into the small groin between moulding and ceiling.
The eroticism of the pictures is just like their position. The figure of a
sumptuously decorated saviour, equipped with the insignia of power
and of Mars, the god of war, and in addition with a conspicuous armour-plating
of his sexual organ – this figure triumphs over the naked
bodies of his enemies. The potentates proudly demonstrate their
potency, the generations that will succeed to the throne point out the
seat of matter that legitimizes them. Kapfer, who never leaves out allusions
to male sexuality, focuses on the main areas of well-endowed
males by particularly concentrating on details this time. Knowledgeably
he captures the play of forms and the subtle way in which
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the Baroque artists work out the contrast between the raw gesture
of the losers and the perfect spherical shape or egg-shape form of the
victors with which these cover their private parts shamelessly and in such
a way that it is visible over a long distance. A mathematical contrast is
crucial for form and morals. Whoever has his geometrical focus outside
himself and shows it eccentrically is evil and contemptible, whoever
has his geometrical focus inside himself and egocentrically refers it to
himself is good. The defeated besiegers writhe and distort themselves,
but the only distortion of the geometrical form that is perfect is the one
that is victorious over them. According to Baroque understanding it is in
fact only the form of the ellipse that is unsurpassed; it recurs in the fashion
details below the belt, but also, to a great extent, in the surrounding
architecture. In both palaces, Prince Eugene, nobleman and supreme
commander, receives and accepts people’s tributes in pictures of oval
shape. He is portrayed as Apoll and Alexander. The victorious hero is
the successor of invented stories and true history, god of the arts and
brilliant general at the same time.
Martino Altomonte, the painter of this fresco, does not only paint Eugene,
but also adds an adoring banderole which Kapfer cites in his
installation: Great genius, graciously accept these presents and be favourably
disposed towards Rome. The text alludes to the victory at Peterwardein
in 1716. Numerous figures float round the Prince; they
symbolise the Prince’s virtues and the heroic deeds of Greek mythology.
However, the assistant figures and the great deal of sayings which
they comment on show even more. The primary medium of Austrian
self-defence is not really the picture, at least it does not seem to be so,
but the theatrical scene which precedes it and which determines it.
Austria’s special kind of sense of belonging together is not based on
a common language, in contrast to the German variety. Absolutist
Austria does not come into existence due to a national agreement according
to which it is those thatgrow together that understand each
other without the slightest problem, but through collective excitement

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and dramatic play as a means of communication. Thus the pictures of
identity are not linguistic or cognitive, but passionate and performative.
Its root is the theological programme, its form follows the main medium
of this programme, namely the persuasive power of the rousing
sermon. In contrast to the written speech of the Enlightenment, Austria’s
identity is based on a community of listeners to a theological speech.
Kapfer takes Father Aviano as his example; he could also have chosen
Abraham a Santa Clara or other names from his extensive notes. It is
not the single case that is important, but the topic. From Kapfer’s perspective
and the way he analyzes history the preachers seem to be those
who are responsible for conveying that hostility against the enemies.
They represent the unity of church and state and, in addition to that,
smash the social boundaries between authorities and the people that
serves them. The parallels to today’s political practices are definitely
intended. It is characteristic that the preachers who serve in the interests
of politics use language that can be understood by anyone, as it
says in the brochure Prayer-Apostle-Saviour of Vienna about Aviano.
Unlike German and French intellectuals – just think of Heine’s Speech
to the Germans in this respect – who try to speak written language in a
refined style, these preachers speak the vernacular language close to
the people. About Aviano it appreciatively says: ‚Never did he blather
on cleverly, never did he make any concessions to vanity. He wanted to
be understood by everybody and wanted to achieve everything for
everyone.’ (Marco d’Aviano. Prayer-Apostle-Saviour of Vienna, edited
by the provincial of the Capuchin friars, Linz n.d., p.11.) This primer
lists the blessed Father’s theatrical merits. As he is such an exemplary
figure, he is given a monument near the Imperial Burial Vault during
the time between the two world wars: ‚Dramatic facial expressions,
the voice, and above all […] tears show the extraordinary excitement.’
(Ibid, p.12.) The 20 th century bronze sculpture portrays the preacher
in this sense. He is raising the cross heavenwards, giving a warning like
a flag, keeping away evil spirits like a light-producing torch. The focus
of his gestures is really outside his body and nevertheless he is allowed

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that, because he is not naked and is pointing heavenwards with the
cross and because he is pointing against the enemies. Moreover, the
Baroque period, with its portrayal of opposites is a thing of the past.
In Austria there is no longer a fight between Ottomans and Christians,
but a fight within the country itself, so to speak, a civil war between workers
and Christians. For the rulers it is the same evil, and is thus symbolised
in identical gestures.
It is in the pictures that show humiliated Turks and in the attitude
and behaviour of preachers who still defend themselves against
them emotionally and melodramatically till the 20 th century that
we find the psychological soundbox that is used to make a people
that - never was a single nation - call for action and get it on a particular
ideological track. It was the rhetoric of the sermon, the Levits
and their lessons that determined the pictures, too, and roused the
patriotic pride, at the same time the dependence and enslavement
that are necessary to defend the country against the unwelcome
and against intruders. Franz Kapfer shows them. We owe it to him
that he attempts to point out the supposed harmlessness; we also
owe it to him that he tries to break through the historical chain of
its continuation by criticising it and by artistically employing his
extensive knowledge to do so.
Thomas Trummer, born in 1967 at Bruck/Mur, Styria. Studied Music, History of
Art and Philosophy. 1990–1996 Assistant and Lecturer at Karl-Franzens-University,
Graz, 1994–1999 Curator at Grazer Kunstverein, since 1996 Curator
for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere,
2006–2007 1 st Curatorial Fellow at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art,
Ridgefield, CT; numerous publications on the history of aesthetics and contemporary
art, most recent: Trauer, Vienna: Passagen, 2003; Panamarenko: Multiples,
Frankfurt/Main: revolver 2004; Ulysses, Vienna: Brandstätter 2004; Valie Export:
Serien, Frankfurt/Main: revolver 2004; StimmenBilder, Frankfurt/Main: revolver
2004; 22 interviews, Frankfurt/Main 2005; Déjà-vu, Vienna: Schlebrügge 2005;
Kurt Kren: Das Unbehagen am Film, Vienna: Sonderzahl 2006; Egon Schiele. Die
Tafelrunde, together with Tobias G. Natter, Cologne: DuMont 2006.