Renate Bertlmann
Butterblumendame (Buttercup Lady, 2000) / Rubbel-Los (Scratch Card, 2000)
Rubbel-Los, ©️ Renate Bertlmann / Bildrecht, Vienna
At first glance, Renate Bertlmann’s Butterblumendame looks like the religious folk art one might find in Graz’s ethnographic museum and all over Austria. Combining Catholic references and phallic figures, she appropriates this kitschy-campy aesthetic and unlocks a field of possibilities, questioning traditional concepts of gender in a way that is unique among the Austrian feminist avant-garde.
In Rubbel-Los, seven condoms hang in a bouquet of roses. The colorful latex pieces become decorative elements; the phallic order they represent is frustrated, impotent, and threatened. Bertlmann’s work reflects on desire and pleasure, but also on the deeply Catholic sentiments of shame and guilt and their political function: they can either be mobilized to control and repress sexuality or exorcized to generate an emancipated, feminist subject. It is in this spirit that her work reclaims kitsch, usually dismissed as a lower-class subproduct. Kitsch both attracts and repulses, stimulating tactility and disgust; it makes us consider our voyeurism and the taboos related to our bodies and sexuality.
Renate Bertlmann (1943, Vienna, Austria) is an artist who deals with roles and body images. She provocatively and ironically questions gender contexts by discussing topics such as pornography, sexuality, violence, and Eros. Her diverse practice spans painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, performance, and text. She first proclaimed her artistic maxim “AMO ERGO SUM” (I love, therefore I am) in 1978, which later evolved into a three-part publication of the same name. Bertlmann represented Austria with a solo show at the Venice Biennale in 2019. She lives in Vienna.
Courtesy of Silvia Steinek Galerie, Vienna
Butterblumendame (2000)
Clay, wax, scalpel knife, dildo, plastic, plexiglass, 71 × 71 × 70 cm
Rubbel-Los (2000)
Condoms, scalpel knife, cardboard, wood, plexiglass, 52 × 48 × 48 cm
Courtesy of Silvia Steinek Galerie, Vienna