Valie Export: A look at unexpected variety of art

Valie Export: A quiet star in the art world?

Valie Export is very important, if only because your artist name is also a protected logo that consists of Versalia. Valie Export is also very important in the world rankings of art; Around 100th place around the year 2000, she blew up the 50s brand in 2008/2009 and has been determining the 1st third of the world's most famous artists (with small lulls, especially in July 2016 it slipped to 48th place).

At the beginning of Valie exports career, 50 years and at least as many scandals, not even partially, that Valie Export would end up at the top of the world (and linger very calmly, without the Yellow-Press sales stand. Get to know one/one of them.

Valie Export makes art for specialists

The works of Valie Export are sometimes rather known to specialists:

Film enthusiasts with existence and memory roots in the 1968s know "Expanded Cinema" , know the Tapp-and-Tastkino with the smallest cinema hall in the world and the curtain, which was excluded for two hands in front of the artist's breasts, which was opened on the occasion of the 1st European meeting of the independent filmmakers in Munich in 1968 ... "" Expanded Cinema Aktion ” , performance.

Film enthusiasts and feminist middle-aged feminists know Valie Export Feature film "The Practice of Love" was then nominated Golden Bear of the International Film Festival Berlin in the "Book and Director" category

For all the proud young women of today who have "overcome feminism" (because they like to earn a fifth less than men in exactly the same job or because pride plus repression are enough to complete the reality): urgently look at why "the thing with man makes women" has not rose to civilizational heights, but in 50 shades of gray descent ...

Every admirer of "Viennese actionism" and his sometimes males reports Valie Export in direct context with Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl or Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Although, apart from their membership in the Vienna Institute for Direct Art, founded by Günter Brus and Otto Mühl in 1966, she was in contact with the "Viennese actionists", especially about her partner, artist and media theorist Peter Weibel (who had at least missed the actionists).

Although she also wanted to know her work as an action and performance artist aesthetically, in terms of content and formally cleanly; Although her work as a media artist and filmmaker blew up the restriction of the "Viennese actionists" anyway.

The “travelers in terms of art” know Valie Export from Documenta (Versalien meet common ...), No. 6 1977 and No. 12 2007. Or from the Biennale in Venice, 1980 (Export equipped with Maria Lassnig the Austrian Pavilion), 2007 and 2009 (Export is a co - commissioner of the Austrian Pavilion).

Valie exports know wider masses, for example, from the double scissors in the Schlosspark Belvedere/Vienna (installation "Die doppelgän" , 2010, see the following illustration), the monument to Nazi displaced persons on the city lake in Allensteig/Lower Austria or as a designer of the Austrian film award (see illustration below).

If you only know the parts so far, you could win over the entire work that offers a real abundance of completely different art of a head and a hand ...

Valie Exports consistent path to art

Valie Export was born in Linz as Waltraud Lehner in 1940, while her father was making his life available to the war for the fatherland. The mother pulled Waltraud and her two sisters alone next to her work as a teacher, with the support of the local monastery school who attended the sisters.

Where the little Waltraud suggestion to deal with art has not been handed down; In a city like Linz, however, a simple walk is enough.

In any case, she wanted to "do something with art" and started training at the Linz School of Art from 1955 to 1958, and the first painted works and photographic self -portraits "metamorphoses of identity"

At the age of 18 (1958) she first married a Mr. Höllinger and became the mother of a daughter in the same year, but already separated from her husband in 1960, went to Vienna and studied at the higher federal teaching and experimental institution for textile industry until 1964.

After completing her degree (diploma in the field of design), Valie Export opened the film industry , where she worked as a script girl, film editor, cutterin and comparsin in 1964 and 1965; In 1966 her first script was finished : "Old does not make new - an attempt to senselessness. Metaphorical image association, project" .

In 1967 Waltraud Lehner Höllinger Valie Export, in Versalia, as an artist name, artistic concept, logo - and the meaning of being artistically active under its own name in the future, did not become the name of a deceased (National Socialist) father, not the name of a long ago.

Valie stands for Waltraud and perhaps also for value (Valid, Value), export stands for exported ideas and exported thoughts and the way out of the safe port (ex port) into the wide world of culture that Valie Export is now sustainable:

Valie Export: A welcome anti-star in the media world!

With cinema such as the "Expanded Cinema" , performances such as "cutting" (1968 and 1972, five parts, shear cuts and pubic hairs end in fellatio) and work such as "body sign action" (1970, the body as a canvas and a pouring tape on the thighs) has Valie export in a short time every finely petty-bourgeois thought garden with the strength one Bulldozers plowed through - urgently needed for new growth, but it hurts at first.

The Austrian citizens, which were so painfully smashed, resisted, together and spurred on by a press that was always right to the loudest voice. Or there is, this type of "I-speaking-for-the-die majority press" is the long-existing form of the eternal perpetuum mobile.

Word machine instead of a technical machine that produces defamation and hatred instead of energy, but by definition, from the logic of the creation of such press reports, at least without energy effort for the producing press:

Because diversity particularly frightens the simple -minded, there is always a lot of outrage against innovations or provocations that should lead to innovations. For which a wide variety of considerations/reasons/motives are typically listed at the beginning, interesting thoughts and in a functioning democratic state the entry into a multi -page dialogue ...

Until the "for the majority of the majority" makes the common primeval reason of outrage-mostly motifs from the prehistoric reptile brain of man and thus the "greatest common stupidity"-the (long-compatible) headline.

And so that a new social class at the level creates the greatest common stupidity, which sometimes exists until it threatens democracy and sometimes short -lived, but at least a few of the smarter heads used in the country ...

Collective stupidity and its preliminary stage, the ignorance, are dangerous enemies and become even more dangerous enemies if they are generated as described as described in order to clear up rapid profit.

Valie Export has got the whole hardness that can suddenly pour over a press-used mass impairment of suddenly no more funds ... defamation and persecution, harassment and threats; Even before custody of the daughter, the witch hunt did not stop.

To the imaginary overfinding feminism: If you don't switch on your brain soon, such witch hunts on women with their own opinion could soon be the order of the day ... oh, do not affect you.

What is good prevails, Valie Export

But export has simply continued to do art in all of these confusion, feature films and performances and objects and actions and installations.

In 1966 it started with the exhibitions, in 1992 the first retrospective "Valie Export. Living or Tot. Retrospective" , in the State Gallery Linz at the Upper Austrian State Museum; Since 2001 the "Kubus Export - The Transparent Room" at the Vienna Lerchenfeld Gürtel, a piece of safe urban space for women who want to delight the Viennese citizens with cultural activities.

In total, the artist can look back at almost 40 solo exhibitions and over 500 group exhibitions at almost every place in the world in the summer of 2016, where an art exhibition has already taken place.

Valie Export has succeeded in what her name promises: Valider art export from Austria , down to the most remote corners of the art world.

In the exhibition history of the artist Valie Export, it is striking that she can look back on significantly fewer exhibitions with her art compared to other artists at the top of the art world rankings. This has its reason that an ancient dispute is initially reflected in art science to what extent photography (which has been followed as a technical opportunity to map reality 1 to 1) can be art at all.

The average top artist paints, makes conceptual art, puts together installations, "skin pictures" in stone, wood, bronze; But he does not "just" press the trigger of a camera in order to then claim that the result is art.

No one will deny this today who pursues art events in the world - millions for a "real Gursky", 400,000 for 80 new deductions from Eggleston confirm with hard facts.

photography has been emphasized by the gates of art , but had to fight for the holy halls for a surprisingly long time.

A little struggle at the admission is common: also artists such as Picasso and some comrades of his early days, who rushed far with their avant -garde ideas of their time, failed for so long on the jury of the most important art event of their time - the Salon de Paris, that of King Louis XIV.

In 1667 regular art exhibition, which was still the focus of the "traditional" French art company in the 19th century - until 1884 the "Société of the Artiste Indépendants" (union independent artist) was founded and presented a counter -draft with the "Salon des Indépendant".

The art default of photography also formulated in the second half of the 19th century: The “Pictorial Photography” aimed to symbolically map not only the reality, but also states or fundamental values.

In “early art photography”, photographic means are explicitly used to express content or formal concerns.

For a long time without any chance that the majority of the artists, which were usually actively active as "visual artists in the narrower sense" (concept art, installation, performance, etc.) - and the majority of art critics anyway - denied the "photographs" created by camera anyway.

It was only at the end of the last century that “Die Kunst” (which at the time was not really good due to the shocks and drastic losses to Jewish artists' personal personalities through World War II) did not take it in their ranks; Not without after -effects, as Valie Exports show exhibition numbers.

However, the number of solo exhibitions-38 solo shows at an artist who has been in business for half a century and is one of the 50 best known artists in the world-shows the women-typical opposite tendency to a really frightening extent.

Male colleagues with a similar long career were able to do their work on average 20! Sometimes presented exclusively, male colleagues with the topics of "photography and media art", which are still slightly beaten in the art business, bring it average to five times the number of solo exhibitions; And even the "double errors" (wife and photographer/media artist) were able to present themselves in their own exhibitions, at least in the United States.

For a woman in the German -speaking art, this double error is a death sentence, apart from Valie Export, Rosemarie Trockel to penetrate only one other woman from the German -speaking area up to the top 100 ranks of the world's best list of art.

However, since women are only represented in the absolute heights of art only in fractions (15 %, some of them in persistent traditional companies that are stubborn in neoliberalism has a better quota for women).

Only the young women of today with the overcome feminism would fall out of all clouds, but they rather not deal with art, at most on their fingernail.

The representatives of democratic states and the employees of non-state organizations such as foundations etc.- let's just say that all people who (also) work for something other than maximum profit usually have fewer problems with the achievements of women as listed companies that are still organized at the level of hunter and collector's companies.

Valie Export has therefore also received a lot of awards

• 1969 Promotion Prize for Film Art of the municipality of Vienna
• 1974 State Scholarship for Literature of the Mayor of Vienna
• 1977 Special mention for "Outanding" at the 21st International London Film Festival
• 1977 Feature film “Invisible opponents” by Jury for Austrian State Prize for film selected, the minister responsible refuses to consent.
• 1978 Special Price of the Jury XXI Mostra Internazionale DEL Film d'Autore, San Remo
• 1985 International Jury Prize of the 31st West German short film days in Oberhausen
• 1985 Premio Especiale del Jurado, 27th International Festival of Documentary and Short Film, Bilbao, Spain
• 1985 Special Prize at the 8th Tyneside Film Festival, Newcastle, Great Britain
• 1988 Festival Prize at 7th Annual Daniel Wadsworth Memorial Video Festival, Hartfort
• 1988 Prize Festival at the San Francisco International Video Festival
• 1990 Prize of the City of Vienna for Fine Art
• 1991 Cultural Prize of the State of Upper Austria for Art and Science, Film and Video
• 1992 Award for computer graphics on the Ars Electronica, Linz
• 1993 Austrian appreciation award for video and media art
• 1995 6. International Drawing Triennal Prize, Wroclaw
• 1995 Sculpture Prize of the EA Generali Foundation, Vienna
• 1997 Gabriele Münter Prize `97 of the German Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth
• 1998 1. CD-ROM Price of the video Bonn
• 1998 Gustav - Klimt - Prize in the City of Vienna City of City
• 1998 Austrian appreciation award for artistic photography, Vienna
• 2000 Alfred Kubin Prize of the State of Upper Austria
• 2000 Oskar Kokoschka Prize Austria, State Prize of the Austrian Federal Government
• 2002 Art Gnight Prize of the City of Linz
• 2003 Golden Honor for Services around the Land of Vienna
• 2004 International Prize for Art and Culture of the City of Salzburg City
• 2005 Austrian honor for science and art
• 2005 election as a member of the Austrian Curia for Science and Art
• 2009 honorary doctorate from the University of Artistic and Industrial Design Linz
• 2010 Great Golden Honor of the City of Linz for services to the Republic of Austria
• 2011 Vienna Women's Prize (together with Ina Wagner)
• 2014 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Awards for the Arts (together with Laurie Anderson, Marianne Faithfull, Gustav Metzger)
• 2015 Great Golden Honor of the City of Linz for Services for Culture
• 2015 Lebenswerk Prize of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Women

33 impressive prices , whose allocation people take care of people who understand something about art, compared to a very reserved presence as a single artist ... If you want to speculate with art, you should probably take a closer look at the artists.

Valie Export today, just, now

Valie Export is currently being exhibited eagerly than ever, from almost a dozen exhibitions in the 1970s, 1980s over a good three dozen in the 1990s, she has already brought it to over 400 exhibitions , of which is currently running:

• until 04.09.2016: "The artist and his ego. The abstracted self -portrait in photography from 1960 to 2000", Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
• to 04.09.2016: "Body & Soul", Essl Museum - Art of the Present, Klosterneuburg
• to 11.09.2016: "1957-1975", Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC), Sevilla
• to September 18, 2016: "Invisible Adversaries: Marieluise Hessel Collection", Hessel Museum of Art & Center for Curatorial Studies Galleries at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY
• to 25.09.2016: "Punk - ITS Traces in Contemporary Art", Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
• until 02.10.2016: "Medicine in Art", Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków
• to October 9, 2016: "Poetry of Change", Museum of Modernity, Salzburg
• to November 6th, 2016: "Solo Walks - a gallery of walking", Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur

On the artist's website, Valieexport.at , you can find out everything about Valie Export Center , an international research center for media and performance art, which is also managed and is building Valie Export Archive

The page is already very well positioned, you can browse in fabulous 222 works of art, each with illustration and your own page explanations, e.g. B. a press report on the work of art.

In these public collections you can watch works by Valie Export live:

• Austria : customs office in Bad Radkersburg, new gallery Graz, Essl Museum Art of the Present Klosterneuburg, Landesgalerie at the Upper Austrian State Museum + Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Gallery Fotohof + Museum of Modern Salzburg, Bank Austria Art Forum + Museum Modern Art Foundation Ludwig Vienna
• France : Frac des Pay de la Loire Carquefou
• Germany : Julia Stoschek Collection Düsseldorf
• Italy : Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Bolzano, Studio Stefania Miscetti Rome
• Spain : Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, ​​Arco Collection Madrid, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo Sevilla
• Switzerland : Mamco Musée D´Art Moderne et Contemporain Geneva, photo museum Winterthur
• USA : Moca Grand Avenue Los Angeles CA, Museum of Modern Art New York City NY
• United Kingdom : Tate Britain London

Valie exports legacy to the future

From 1989 to 1992, Valie Export had a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Fine Arts, taught from 1991 to 1995 as a professor in the Visuelle Communication Department at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences and was a professor of multimedia performance from 1995/1996 to 2005. So there are many students who came into contact with their work and will develop it further.

Other creative spirits do not need to look for suggestions long in Valie Export. In a work full of ideas, with signs of brilliant research spirit and an irrepressible desire for thinking, which produces the calculated and intellectual-logically clean results up to detail, some treasures can be lifted-a path leads through the artist just mentioned.

The most important legacy affects every person: Valie Export's work is currently a valid call to every citizen, to become a trouble-up piano, revolutionary and provocateur in the face of immense developments, to prove that the effort of the democracy fighters living in front of us does not have a pretty short half-life.

It is a call to all people to take care of their democracies, because otherwise there is a great risk that even contemporary history could be repeated without learning the slightest.