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Austria’s fantastical factory of ‘raw art’

Nestled in the hills of Austria sits Gugging, an artists' colony with a difference where the worlds of psychiatry and art collide -- with spectacular success.

Published: 6 June 2017 09:40 CEST
Austria's fantastical factory of 'raw art'
Erich Tressler works on his drawings at Art Brut Centre Gugging. Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP
Over the past 50 years, mentally ill patients here have churned out an astounding 75,000 recognised artworks, some selling for over 100,000 euros ($110,000).
 
In particular, it is a wellspring for “Art Brut”, producing some of the giants in the popular genre like August Walla, Oswald Tschirtner and Johann Hauser.
 
“Raw art” or “outsider art”, as it is known in English, is art by those untrained in — and untainted by — artistic conventions.
 
To the Frenchman who coined the term, Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), it is found in the works of “primitive societies”, of children — and of the mentally ill.
 
 
Until July 2, Dubuffet's sensation-causing 1949 “L'Art Brut” exhibition in Paris that started it all is being staged again at the Gugging Museum.
 
Gugging Art Brut Centre
The Art Brut Centre Gugging. Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP
 
Featured are works by those Dubuffet met while scouring Europe's care homes for people with mental illnesses, like Adolf Woelfli, a Swiss suffering from psychosis and hallucinations.
 
Others include schizophrenic Aloise Corbaz who would use, at first in secret, juice from petals and toothpaste to create colourful and fantastical images, often of lovers.
 
“Up until then (1949), what they produced was seen, at best, as a kind of curiosity, certainly not as works of art,” Johann Feilacher, director of the Gugging Art Brut Centre, told AFP.
 
Nazis to Bowie
 
The early history of the Gugging psychiatric hospital, in the forested hills north of Vienna, is dark. During World War II, the Nazis killed hundreds of its patients.
 
 
In the 1950s though, its new director, Leo Navratil, began to diagnose his patients by getting them to draw.
 
Amazed by the results, Navratil began a correspondence with Dubuffet and as the output of its patients grew, so did Gugging's fame as a mecca for art brut.
 
In 1981, Navratil founded at Gugging an art and psychotherapy centre, later renamed the House of Artists.
 
A commercial gallery and museum followed, drawing a growing stream of visitors. One was David Bowie, who bought several works for his art collection.
 
The psychiatric clinic itself closed around a decade ago, but the artists' colony remains.
 
Karl Vondal
Karl Vondal working on a painting. Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP
 
“For us, the residents are first and foremost artists with special needs, not patients,” said Feilacher, who took over from Navratil in 1986.
 
Walla, Tschirtner and Hauser are dead now but half a dozen Gugging artists still generate works today bought by galleries and collectors the world over.
 
They include Franz Kernbeis, who, when first admitted in 1955, would remain immobile for hours, Karl Vondal, who specialises in erotic works, and Johann Garber.
 
 
“Along with the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland (California), Gugging is one of the rare places in the world to have produced so many great artists,” said Sarah Lombardi, director of the Art Brut Collection in Lausanne, Switzerland, home to Dubuffet's legacy.
 
'Beautiful to paint'
 
The artists split the proceeds from sales 50:50 with the gallery, in which they are also shareholders.
 
Garber, whose busy surrealistic designs adorn Gugging's walls and whose technicolour ear sculpture is a Vienna landmark, also has an exhibition on.
 
Johann Garber
Artist Johann Garber shows his creations. Photo: Joe Klamar/AFP
 
“I am an artist and a genius,” Garber told AFP. “It is beautiful to draw and paint. We are happy that we have a place where we can live and draw.”
 
Just being part of Gugging is no guarantee of success, however.
 
Not all of the 15 residents produce work “particular enough to be recognised artworks,” said Feilacher.
 
“Some of them develop late, some of them never.”
 
By Philippe Schwab/AFP

ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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