MISCELLANEOUS

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000)

Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser, an Austrian artist and architectural creator, known for his eccentric designs, is one of the most important artists to emerge on the international scene since World War II.
Born in Vienna (Austria) on Dec 15th, 1928 as FRIEDRICH STOWASSER,. he attended the Montessori School

During the persecution of the Third Reich he lost all relatives of his Jewish mother in the Nazi concentration camps

In 1949, as a reaction to the state world around him, he changed his name to Friedrich Hundertwasser, derived from a translation of the Slavic "Sto" ( which means one hundred). In 1968 he changed his given name to Friedensreich (abundance of peace) , and since then has added the words "Regentag (Rainy day) and "Dunkelbunt" (Dark multi coloured) to his surname.

Hundertwasser attended only three months of formal art training, having been successfully accepted to the art academy of Vienna, but dropped-out.   He travelled widely from 1949 to 1952.  Morocco, Tunis, Paris and the Toscana shaped both his art and, later, his architectural forms.
He is as famous for his controversial speeches, manifestos and poems as he is for his art and architecture.

The Paradise Destroyed by
the Straight Line

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

80

An ecologist without a conscience is doomed to failure, and the same is true of an artist who does not bow to the laws of nature.

The world has not improved.
The dangers felt have turned into reality.

Nevertheless, today, although
nothing has been done,
my longstanding warnings are at last
being taken seriously.

Yet there are still no lawns on the roofs,
no tree-tenants, no plant-driven water
purification plants, no humus toilets,
no rights to windows, no duties to the trees.
The essential re-afforestation of the town
has not come about.

What we lack is a peace treaty with Nature.

We must restore to Nature the territories
we have unlawfully taken from it.
Everything horizontal
under the sky belongs to Nature.
Everything touched by the rays of the sun,
everywhere where the rain falls is Nature's
sacred and inviolable property.
We men are merely Nature's guests.

In 1952 I spoke of the civilization of
make-believe, the one we must
shake off, myself, the the first of all!
I spoke of columns of gray men on the march
toward sterility and self-destruction.

The same year I used the term
"trans-automation" to show the way beyond
the rationalism of technocrats
toward a new creation
in harmony with the laws of Nature.

In 1953 I realized that the straight line
leads to the downfall of mankind.

But the straight line has become
an absolute tyranny.

The straight line is something cowardly
drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling;
it is a line which does not exist in nature.

And that the line is the rotten foundation
of our doomed civilization.

Even if there are certain places where it is
recognized that this line is rapidly leading to
perdition, its course continues to be plotted.

The straight line is the only sterile line,
the only line which does
not suit man as the image of God.

The straight line is the forbidden fruit.

The straight line is the curse of our civilization.

Any design undertaken with the straight
line will be stillborn.
Today we are witnessing the triumph
of rationalist know-how and yet,
at the same time, we find ourselves
confronted with emptiness. An aesthetic void,
desert of uniformity, criminal sterility,
loss of creative power.

Even creativity is prefabricated.

We have become impotent.
We are no longer able to create.
That is our real illiteracy.

Hundertwasser

It is possible to love an artist's work while hating what they stand for.

'Shit turns into earth which is put on the roof - it becomes lawn, forest, garden - shit becomes gold. The circle is closed, there is no more waste..Shit is our soul ('The Sacred Shit Manifesto').

So wrote Friedrich Stowasser — better known as Hundertwasser (German: hundred water) — in 1979.

Born of a Jewish family in 1928, he survived the Second World War by hiding out in Vienna. After a long-standing career in avant-garde art, where he became more famous on the Continent rather than in Anglo-Saxon countries, he died on board the QE2 this Saturday while sailing from his adopted New Zealand on a trip back to Europe.

Apart from his enthusiasm for human fertilizer, Hundertwasser spent his whole career championing the curve of organic nature against the straight line. From the mid seventies, all his marvellous buildings - such as Hundertwasser House in Vienna (1985) and the hot springs village of Blumau in Styria (1990-97) - were ergonomically curved and ecologically integrated with humus toilets supplying compost to roof gardens.

From engaging in performance art in favour of mass nudity in the sixties, Hundertwasser became more and more involved in ethnic issues in the seventies (especially after he moved to New Zealand in 1973, where he became involved with Maori culture). Unlike most environmentalists, however, Hundertwasser was a fervent supporter of the Christian Democratic right in Europe. His favourite politician was Margaret Thatcher.

Apart from his consistent “a line is a crime” nonsense, Hundertwasser's art was incredibly inventive.

Is it schizoid of me to love an artist's work while hating them as people and as politicians? I think not. The artist has only a tenuous link to his art. An individual's imagination is frequently more interesting than the actual individual. What is fascinating about artists is their visual fantasies, not their often repulsive personalities or their answers to life, the universe and everything

Hundertwasser was a living testimony to the awkward fact that even the worst possible person I could ever meet: a right-wing God-fearing ecologist also into naturalism, could provide the world with some of the best art and architecture in the last decades of the 20th century. It almost makes you hopeful for humanity.