Child abuse: Otto Muehl’s perpetrator artwork ought to be examined | EUROtoday

It started in its place idea of society. In the Seventies, Otto Muehl based the so-called “Muehl Commune”, which at occasions included greater than 600 individuals at varied areas in Europe. One might have imagined it as a communal coexistence far-off from middle-class nuclear households. But Muehl established a hierarchy based mostly on him, which he used to reside out his pedophilia. At Friedrichshof in Burgenland, Austria, the place the sect had its middle, he abused kids and younger individuals for years. In 1991, a court docket sentenced Muehl to seven years in jail for, amongst different issues, “fornication with minors”.

This didn’t diminish the admiration for his inventive work. Muehl remains to be celebrated at present as one of many key figures of Viennese actionism, influenced by American Fluxus and the happenings of the Nineteen Sixties; his work and drawings are fashionable on the artwork market. But 13 years after his loss of life, there’s new criticism of Muehl and the therapy of his works in Austria. Maria Windhager is a lawyer in Vienna and an professional in private legislation. On behalf of former cult members, she has been campaigning for years to take away nude photos of victims from the artwork world and public notion – with success.

At an occasion about Otto Muehl in the course of the Vienna Festival 2025, she teamed up with three different ladies: Marie-Therese Hochwartner, the gathering supervisor of the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation (Mumok), Hedwig Wölfl, the pinnacle of the “Möwe” little one safety middle, and Ulrike Schiesser from the Federal Office for Sect Issues. “Everyone knew something. So we thought we’d exchange ideas,” says Windhager.

Together, the 4 of them are actually additionally dedicated to politically coming to phrases with the sect period. “It’s completely crazy that this hasn’t happened long ago,” says Windhager. There was a personal faculty on Friedrichshof, however one thing ought to have been observed throughout state inspections: “How could this failure by the authorities come about?” After his imprisonment, Muehl moved to Portugal with former cult members. There have been clear indications that he continued to abuse kids there. “How could this happen? Who was involved? This needs to be investigated urgently,” says the lawyer. An interdisciplinary analysis proposal has already been drawn up and the ladies are at the moment searching for funding.

The in depth picture materials that’s nonetheless within the Friedrichshof archive can also be central to the processing. “Everything was constantly filmed, these recordings must be digitized as quickly as possible and made available to research,” says Windhager. However, something legally actionable is hardly to be anticipated; Even if crimes have been documented, they’d most likely be statute-barred at present.

In addition to social reappraisal, the query arises as to how Otto Muehl’s inventive work ought to be handled. In Germany, each the Städel Museum Frankfurt and the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe personal particular person works by him. Due to the small dimension of their holdings, each homes will not be at the moment coping with the problem in additional element and will not be planning to exhibit the works, as they introduced upon request. In Austria the state of affairs is completely different. The Mumok has the world’s largest assortment of Viennese Actionism, together with quite a few works by Otto Muehl. Fatima Hellberg, director of the home since autumn 2025, factors to the artwork historic significance of the motion: “They tried to make visible the suppressed perversion of society after the abyss of the Second World War. In their art you can feel the unresolved traumas of this time. Otto Muehl was part of this history, but not the only voice.”

While college students demonstrated on the streets in Germany within the Nineteen Sixties, efforts to return to phrases with National Socialism have been fewer in Austria. The Viennese Actionists have been among the many exceptions. In addition to Günter Brus, Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl additionally performed a central function. The group provoked individuals with so-called “material actions”: animals have been slaughtered on stage and their blood was poured over them, and folks urinated on one another.

Despite Muehl’s significance, the connection with him should at all times stay ambivalent, says Fatima Hellberg from Mumok: “We have to ask ourselves which structures helped make Otto Muehl’s actions possible. Dealing responsibly with the estate requires an updated critical examination of the works, but also with a broader context that includes questions about gender and power,” says Hellberg.

Even earlier than she took workplace, a state-funded inner undertaking started at Mumok that offers with the digitization and contextualization of the archive holdings of Viennese Actionism. At the identical time, additionally they wish to handle the query of how the museum ought to cope with Muehl’s work sooner or later. “Many of his works were created collaboratively. We want to find a way to show actionism without ignoring his work,” says Hellberg. But we’re nonetheless on the very starting of the method.

Last yr, Mumok gave “Mathilda” the chance to design her personal exhibition. The group of activists has been engaged on a brand new perspective on Otto Muehl since 2019; Many of its members grew up on the Friedrichshof within the Nineteen Eighties, together with Zarah Gutsch and Paul Robert. It is essential to them to make it clear that they will solely communicate for a part of the kids’s era; there are completely different experiences and attitudes in the direction of Muehl. In their opinion, he occupies a particular function inside the Viennese Actionists.

From the start, he “practiced access to other bodies,” says Zarah Gutsch, in full distinction to Günter Brus or Rudolf Schwarzkogler, who primarily injured themselves. At Friedrichshof, Muehl’s violent assaults solely modified their kind. “We don’t view his works as art, but as artifacts,” explains Gutsch. After all, each was created in an asymmetrical system of energy – with Muehl on the helm. Painting was a performative act and at all times befell in massive teams. “He used art as an instrument of power,” says Robert, “like a substitute for religion.”

In truth, Muehl blurs the boundaries between artwork and artist. When the primary investigations in opposition to him started on the finish of the Nineteen Eighties, he had kids’s and adults’ diaries burned for worry that their contents may incriminate him. He created the so-called “ash pictures” from the remaining stays. Many of his works additionally characteristic little one fashions in sexually interpreted poses, together with victims of abuse, for instance within the collection “Accidents in the Household”.

The Vienna Actionism Museum (WAM) is planning an exhibition with photos from this collection for the autumn. They ought to be understood as “an ironic commentary on the shift in perception of danger in times of nuclear threat,” says Klaus Albrecht Schröder, the director of the museum. Opened in 2024, the personal museum is at the moment present process renovations and is scheduled to start operations once more within the spring.

Schröder had initially deliberate a complete retrospective for Otto Muehl’s one hundred and first birthday, however in view of the brand new debate he determined in opposition to it. Instead of depicting Muehl’s life, he now desires to light up particular person artistic intervals in a number of exhibitions. He wished to “show the quality of the work without absolving the artist of his guilt,” says Schröder. “I have a deep dislike for the man Otto Muehl and understand every victim who doesn’t want to see his art.” Nevertheless, from his viewpoint there’s nothing in opposition to exhibiting Muehl’s work publicly; he sees them as autonomous artistic endeavors, indifferent from the artist’s biography.

Where no clear separation is feasible, Schröder sees a restrict being crossed. “I definitely will not exhibit depictions of abuse victims,” he says. The state of affairs is analogous with the photographs that Muehl constituted of the burned diaries. “The destruction of evidence is directly reflected in the work here,” says Schröder: “Not a single flake of ash will blow around in the WAM under my leadership.” However, Schröder refuses to totally consider Muehl’s artwork within the context of his abuse of energy. “To equate every picture with its actions, regardless of the subject, is too simplistic for me. That doesn’t do the work justice.”

Maria Windhager and the activist group Mathilda, nonetheless, suspect that there are primarily monetary motives for the Viennese Actionism Museum to stay with Muehl. In 2022, the Viennese gallery proprietor Philipp Konzett and a number of other companions acquired round 800 oil work and over 10,000 graphic works from the Friedrichshof assortment for an undisclosed quantity of thousands and thousands, thus laying the inspiration for the WAM. “They want to enhance the images in order to bring them onto the market profitably,” says Windhager. WAM chief Klaus Albrecht Schröder, who was beforehand director of the Albertina in Vienna for a very long time, rejects these allegations. “A museum is not in a position to influence the art market to this extent.”

“I experience again and again that human dignity has to take a back seat for sacred art,” says Windhager. No matter how a lot you wish to separate between the work and the particular person. The truth is that Muehl used artwork to reside out his pedophile tendencies. She now hopes to set one thing in movement with the scientific fee.

The goal is to disclose the dynamics that promote abuse and violent assaults. To take precautions, she says: “So that something like this never happens again in the future.”