Brutal Art History: Modern Artists--Ritualistic & Dark Practices in Art Making
Dark, ritualistic art involves artists using extreme, often taboo materials and ceremonies to provoke spiritual catharsis, social critique or personal transformation. This deep dive will explore three artists whose work incorporated blood, self-harm, occult motifs or sexual rituals (1, 2).
TRIGGER WARNING: ADULT CONTENT!
Otto Muehl
Otto Muehl (1925–2013) was a founder of Viennese Actionism and later a cult leader. In the 1960s his art broke every taboo: nude bodies smeared with paint/gore and communal orgies onstage. In 1970 he formed the Friedrichshof Commune (Friedenshof), intended as a utopian collective. There he instituted ritualized free love and painting ceremonies (painters’ nudes covering canvases with bodily fluids). In 48th Action (1974 Munich), a slaughtered lamb was disemboweled on stage, its blood poured over a nude man, reflecting Nitsch’s influence (21).
Early Actions used actors, animals and giant canvases. Later, as commune leader, Muehl held daily “Gancehtakt” rituals (erotic mass participation) and published an “Art Sermon” daily. He also created large abstract “tissue paintings” by repeatedly repainting the community floor with red paint (like human blood) and plastering bodies into it.
By 1966 Muehl and fellow Actionists were convicted under obscenity laws for a public Action. In the 1970s his commune became notorious: 600 followers lived under strict discipline (no private property, mandatory orgies, children raised communally). After journalists exposed underage sex at Friedrichshof, Muehl was arrested. In 1991 he received seven years for rape and abuse of minors. His sentencing sparked debates on separating art from criminality. His victims later held an exhibition in 2010 where Muehl’s apology was read aloud. After prison, he continued painting abstract works for galleries (raising ethical questions about exhibiting a convicted pedophile’s art) (19).
In the 1960s and 70s, Viennese Actionism outraged the public but fascinated the avant-garde. Austrian galleries often refused to show it. By the 2000s, Actionist paintings (paint-splattered canvases) became collectible art. Muehl’s personal reputation is irredeemable due to his crimes.
Ron Athey
Ron Athey is an American body artist whose ritualized performances are a fusion of Christian martyr imagery mixed with S&M and AIDS activism. Raised Pentecostal, he uses nails, bards, and needles on his skin and the bodies of co-performers as liturgical paraphernalia (6, 7). In the 1990s, he staged bloody rituals such as Four Scenes in a Harsh Life (1993) referencing Revelation. He saw his body of work as identity politics creating a commentary on the "cloud of death" of the AIDS epidemic. He was turning his body into a public spectacle of survival (7).
Athey’s stage is minimal: he appears near a small altar or table. He pierces his hands and shoulders with long gold nails in St. Sebastian tableaux, and smears blood on altar-like assemblages. His collaborator Juliana Snapper has also been hoisted upside-down, with Athey pressing shards against her flesh (Judas Cradle). He often recites liturgy or spoken word while enduring pain. No routine law enforcement involvement is recorded beyond that 1994 media panic (which was based on misunderstanding). His work occasionally falls under health codes or event venue restrictions, but performers take precautions (use of hospital blood).
Athey’s work is both celebrated and contested. Early reviews marveled at its “transgressive honesty,” while conservative critics labeled it pornography or masochism (23). In art scholarship he is read through affect theory or Barthesian abjection. He also curates anthologies (e.g. Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey). Tate Modern has presented his work, indicating institutional acceptance of this formerly banned artist.
Bob Flanagan
Bob Flanagan (1952–1996) was a Los Angeles writer and performance artist whose life and art centered on pain: both the agony of his cystic fibrosis and consensual masochism. Flanagan used extreme physical theater to explore illness and endurance. His notable works include “Nailed” (1989), where he hammered nails through his genitals, and “Visiting Hours” (1992), an immersive installation recreating a hospital ward. In “Visiting Hours” he lay tethered in an infant’s bed surrounded by toys, IV tubes and monitors, inviting visitors to both care for and abuse him (13).
Flanagan’s primary “instrument” was his own body and illness equipment. He often lay in a respirator, hooked to a hospital bed; harnesses were used for suspension (as in Nailed). He collaborated with partner Sheree Rose, who recorded and sometimes participated in his performances. His vocabulary included medical devices, syringes, whips and even humor. He appeared in the Nine Inch Nails music video “Happiness in Slavery” (1992), in which he rigs himself to a torture machine.
Flanagan insisted his work was autobiographical and personal, not intended merely to shock. He framed his masochism as a form of coping: “not about bizarre sadomasochistic rituals, but about the possibility of affirming life without denying its dark contradictions,” as curator Laura Trippi put it. In interviews he said the aim was exploration and record-keeping, not shock for shock’s sake (14, 24).
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Citations:
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The Sacrificial Aesthetic: Blood Rituals from Art to Murder — Anthropoetics V, no. 2 Fall 1999/Winter 2000of Sigmund Freud, Karl Jung, and Wilhelm Reich.(2) Hermann Nitsch did a series of performances titled “Orgies-Mysteries-Theater” that frequently entailed the dismemberment of animals, large quantities of blood and traditional religious symbolism. [exhibition review “Bloody Man: The Ritual Art of Hermann Nitsch” http://www.zhurnal.ru:8080/staff/gorny/english/nitsch.htm/] A 1974 performance entitled 48th Action at the Munich Modernes Theater involved the disembowelment of a slaughtered lamb whose entrails and blood were poured over a nude man, while the drained animal was strung up over his head. Art Historian RoseLee Goldberg describes Nitsch’s performance in terms of ritual:
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The Sacrificial Aesthetic: Blood Rituals from Art to Murder — Anthropoetics V, no. 2 Fall 1999/Winter 2000Nitsch” http://www.zhurnal.ru:8080/staff/gorny/english/nitsch.htm/] A 1974 performance entitled 48th Action at the Munich Modernes Theater involved the disembowelment of a slaughtered lamb whose entrails and blood were poured over a nude man, while the drained animal was strung up over his head. Art Historian RoseLee Goldberg describes Nitsch’s performance in terms of ritual:
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The Sacrificial Aesthetic: Blood Rituals from Art to Murder — Anthropoetics V, no. 2 Fall 1999/Winter 2000> Such activities sprang from Nitsch’s belief that humankind’s aggressive instincts had been repressed and muted through the media. Even the ritual of killing animals, so natural to primitive man, had been removed from modern day-
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THE TOTAL ART WORK OF THE Orgies Mysteries Theatre AND ITS DISCIPLINES - Nitsch Foundationdeath, rebirth. Myth and ritual are his tools. Hermann Nitsch takes up the theme of rituals of sacrifice and re-enacts them. In the abreaction play, the dilaceration of the lamb as a substitute sacrificial act leads to an immediate association of mythical cult with Christian religion. In this context, the artist and the participants assume the role of suffering humanity, which is to be saved through the retrieval of what is repressed. The sensuous experience curve goes from sensual orgy, to orgiastic excess, to ecstasy, right up to meditation and leads to emotional realisation and catharsis. Form is essential here. “Form has a deep metaphysical moral and ethic quality.” Trough form,
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Tempting Failure 2013 - Total Theatreabused. To the left were a series of implements Edwards invited the audience to use upon her: knives, sex toys and condoms. As I entered, two people were knelt before her, slowly tickling her skin with butcher’s knives. The suspense at this point was quite high; a little slip of the hand would bring blood oozing to the surface, seeping out of the audience inflicted wound. It was at this point that an audience member entered and declared ‘I’m performing an intervention’, took off her coat and covered Edwards’ naked body. The performance changed at this point, and it was never able to bring back that sense of tension, fear or immediate danger. Audience members entering the space now chose to nurture the
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Ron Athey Literally Bleeds for His ArtYour parents were quite devout Pentecostals-how did you move away from that into what was essentially a queer performance environment? Did you speak to them again after you left home? Not those ones, no. I just waited for them to die, one at a time. My first boyfriend, Ros, had a rock band called Christian Death. That was kind of my entry into that scene-taking acid, reading Patti Smith… Imagine being a teenager in a pre-internet era, locked in a house in suburbia; you have a very small idea of the history of the world. I needed to read backwards through Jean Genet and Charles Baudelaire, and Patti Smith points the way over and over again in different songs.
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Ron Athey Literally Bleeds for His ArtHow did the AIDS epidemic shape your work back in the 1980s? I always refer back to AIDS because I had a cloud of death over me from 1985, until I trusted that the drug cocktail was working. I’m an outwardly very expressive person, and with the intense conditions of the time-real scenes, real activism, real death, real loss-I effortlessly made all of that into work because of the way the pressure was. I wasn’t performing therapy or catharsis with my work, but I was just completely observing and trying things out while I had a fire under my ass because there was this black cloud over my head.
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Ron Athey Literally Bleeds for His ArtIn 1994 a newspaper claimed that audience members had been put at risk of contact with HIV-infected blood at one of your performances, and although it wasn’t your blood, there was a media outcry. What happened? It was a really enthusiastic audience somewhere small, so the performance sold out a month ahead of time and everyone had waited for it and everything went fine. And then it was this front-page story that blood was spilling and people were running around knocking over chairs. It was very carefully written, attributing everything to a quote from a different audience person so it wasn’t actually libelous. It was a front-page news story and went on the wire to, like, 200 newspapers, the Weekly World News, and even chat shows. I have to admit it
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Ron Athey Literally Bleeds for His ArtYou’ve been described as a “masochist” by the media. How do you feel about that? I worked for LA Weekly and Village Voice for a long time, so I’m not un-savvy-I do understand how the long table works: exploitative headlines, or being assigned to write a headline that’s an attention-grabber, even though sometimes it makes you cringe or you wouldn’t have used it. So even serious journalists- you know, people I respect-they’ll talk about the physical action [in the work], but I think over time you can begin to see the other layers.
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Ron Athey - WikipediaAthey made light cuts in co-performer Darryl Carlton 's (stage name Divinity Fudge) back, placed strips of absorbent paper towel on the cuts and then, using a pulley, hoisted the blood-stained cloths into the air. Local art critic/reporter Mary Abbe (who had not witnessed the performance) wrote a news account of complaints concerning the performance; this story appeared on the front page of the 117.[ 22 ] The report quoted the Walker's director Kathy Halbreich and performing arts director John Killacky, audience members, and Minnesota state health officials. The supervisor of the AIDS epidemiology unit in Minnesota's state health department said that "it did
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Ron Athey - Wikipediaup by the Associated Press and quickly made national headlines. The then- widespread anxiety about 119 combined with a shocked reaction from those unfamiliar with S&M-related art: some critics and lawmakers, including Jesse Helms , falsely described his performances as exposing audience members to 121-infected blood.[ 23 ]
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Ron Athey - Wikipediawork.[ 4 ] In a 2015 Artist Op-Ed for the Walker Art Center, the artist writes that he was "more or less blacklisted" from U.S. arts venues until 2005, when he and Snapper staged Judas Cradle at REDCAT in Los Angeles.[ 24 ] His 2014 performance of Sebastiane at the 124 in Los Angeles was his first performance inside an American museum.[ 25 ]
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Ron Athey - Wikipedia1. ^ Tate. "Pleading in the Blood: the Art and Performances of Ron Athey | Tate Modern". Tate. Retrieved 2025-10-07. 2. ^ [1] Amelia Abraham, "Ron Athey Literally Bleeds for his Art," Vice 24 September 2014 3. ^ [2] Archived 2016-06-04 at the Wayback Machine Mary Richards, "Ronald Athey, AIDS and the Politics of Pain" from Body, Space and Technology, 3.2 (2003)
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Bob Flanagan; Artist's Works Explored Pain - Los Angeles Times“Bob’s work was not about bizarre sadomasochistic rituals, but about the possibility of affirming life without denying its dark contradictions,” said Laura Trippi, who curated a New York showing of “Visiting Hours” in 1994. “He used art as a healing force in his own struggle with CF, and conveyed this to audiences through poems, performances, installations and sculptures of tremendous dignity and wit.”
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Bob Flanagan; Artist's Works Explored Pain - Los Angeles TimesWhen asked if he ever intentionally set out to shock his audience, he answered: “Not really . . . to explore, to record, to analyze.”
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Viennese artist and convicted paedophile Otto Muehl dies | ReutersLike other participants in the movement - including Guenter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler - Muehl served a short prison sentence in the 1960s for violating decency laws.
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Viennese artist and convicted paedophile Otto Muehl dies | ReutersHe was best known as a co-founder of Viennese Actionism, an avant-garde movement that caused outrage with its graphic images of paint-daubed, naked bodies, blood and violence.
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Images - New Museum Digital ArchiveInstallation view: "Visiting Hours: An Installation by Bob Flanagan in collaboration with Sheree Rose," New Museum, New York, 199
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