Otto Hermann Kahn

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Vienna Actionists or Viennese Actionism (Wiener Aktionismus). Names applied to a group of Austrian Performance artists who worked together in the 1960s and who represent the most unsavoury, sadomasochistic trends in the genre. The three main members of the group were Gunter Brus (1938– ), Otto Muehl (1925– ), and Hermann Nitsch (1938– ), who first collaborated in 1961 and in 1966 began calling themselves the Institut für Direkte Kunst (Institute for Immediate Art). Other people associated with them included Brus's wife Anni Brus, the actor Heinz Cibulka, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. The early work of the group had included crude assemblages and Action Paintings, from which they progressed to deliberately extreme and provocative performances, typically involving substances such as blood and excrement and often involving nude performers. The titles of some of Muehl's ‘actions’ give a flavour of their content: ‘Penis Action’ (1963); ‘Christmas Action: A Pig is Slaughtered in Bed’ (1969); and ‘Action with Goose', performed at the Wet Dream Festival, Amsterdam, in 1971. He often submitted himself to degradation and humiliation, as in ‘Libi’ (1969), in which a broken egg was dripped into his mouth from the vagina of a menstruating woman. This kind of performance led to the arrest of the participants on several occasions. Nitsch was the chief spokesman of the group. He described such work as ‘an aesthetic form of praying’ and maintained that it could bring liberation from violence through catharsis: ‘All torment and lust, combined in a single state of unburdened intoxication, will pervade me and therefore YOU. The play-acting will be a means of gaining access to the most “profound” and “holy” symbols through blasphemy and desecration.’

A retrospective exhibition of the group was scheduled to be held in Edinburgh in 1988, but it was cancelled because it was thought likely to prove too shocking.

Vienna Actionists (or Viennese Actionism)(Wiener Aktionismus). Names applied to a group of Austrian Performance artists who worked together in the 1960s and who represent the most unsavoury, sadomasochistic trends in the genre. The three main members of the group were Gunter Brus (1938– ), Otto Muehl (1925– ), and Hermann Nitsch (1938– ), who first collaborated in 1961 and in 1966 began calling themselves the Institut für Direkte Kunst (Institute for Immediate Art). Other people associated with them included Rudolf Schwarzkogler. The early work of the group had included crude assemblages and Action Paintings, from which they progressed to deliberately extreme and provocative performances, typically involving substances such as blood and excrement and often involving nude performers. The titles of some of Muehl's ‘actions’ give a flavour of their content: ‘Penis Action’ (1963); ‘Christmas Action: A Pig is Slaughtered in Bed’ (1969); ‘Action with Goose’ (1971). He often submitted himself to degradation and humiliation, as in ‘Libi’ (1969), in which a broken egg was dripped into his mouth from the vagina of a menstruating woman. This kind of performance led to the arrest of the participants on several occasions. Nitsch was the chief spokesman of the group. He maintained that such work could bring liberation from violence through catharsis.

Garrick Theatre, New York, in West 35th Street. This opened as Harrigan's Theatre in 1890. In 1895 Richard Mansfield took it over and renamed it, opening with Shaw's Arms and the Man, the longest run under his management being that of William Gillette in his own play Secret Service. Gillette also appeared as Sherlock Holmes, a part always associated with him. Among later productions were Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901) with Ethel Barrymore, The Stubbornness of Geraldine (1902), and Her Own Way (1903), all by Clyde Fitch, while 1905 saw a successful run of Shaw's You Never Can Tell. From 1917 to 1919 the theatre was occupied by a French company under Jacques Copeau, who named it after his theatre in Paris, the Vieux-Colombier, and inaugurated his tenancy with a performance of Molière's Les Fourberies de Scapin. In 1919 the Theatre Guild opened at the Garrick, which had reverted to its old name; the Guild's productions were presented there until it opened its own playhouse, now the Virginia Theatre, in 1925. The Provincetown Players made their last appearance at the Garrick in 1929; it was demolished in 1932.

Garrick Theatre (New York). Built as the Harrigan Theatre in 1890 by Edward Harrigan after he had split up with partner Tony Hart, the romanesque‐style house on West 35th Street was designed by Francis H. Kimball and featured an intricate facade. Richard Mansfield bought the theatre in 1895 and, wishing to save money, renamed it the Garrick so that the sign needed only minimal letter changes. Charles Frohman owned the theatre until his death in 1915, and then it fell into derelict condition until millionaire Otto Kahn saved it and refurbished it in 1917. The house was later the first home for the Theatre Guild, but when that group built their own theatre, the Garrick was reduced to a burlesque house and was razed in 1932 after a fire.