AN AUSTRIAN PHOTOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE IMAGE OF THE HUMAN FIGURE

EPHEMERAL FIGURE,

The topic of the body representation and the illustration of the human figure are a particular matter of the Austrian art for centuries. In this central European area between the Alps, Danube and Bohmerwald, the Gothic representations of the 15th and 16th Century already moved the Physical of the picture of the human being into the foreground>: the Catholic society operates strongly with symbols and associations from a body-referential existence-reality in its religious rituals. In the transcendent transformation, the priest carries out the act of the participation of the believers in the mass-sacrifice, speaking loudly: “This is my flesh, this is my blood – take it and eat all of it”. God is present in this ritualized ritual; its body is passed to the believers in form of bread, its blood in form of wine.

The time of the positive baroque in the 18th Century excitedly takes up the repertoire of the religious motif paintings, and produces the most mature and most abundant artworks of this epoch in the think-glad Austria. In pompous ceiling-paintings, God and the flock of the saints are often portrayed and glorified in very humanly manner, figures from the Bible are carried along in life-size images on processions, whole ensembles of religious scenes are represented by means of dolls and the baroque-art plays homage to the dramatic and powerful body-representation in lavish picture cycles.

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The picture of the human being is no longer intact: it is no longer the goodlike being in its entirely and invulnerability. The present day human being must take refuge to other identification-patters. It is exposed to inner obligatory, must adopt itself to external realities; it defines its roles in the society again and checks its physical situated-ness.

The death of the art and the discovery of the self.

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Margit Zuckriegl