It was in the nineties when Marilyn Manson (born in 1969) became well known as a shock rocker combining brutally hammering industrial sounds with thick theater make-up and controversial texts about serial killers and Satanism to a garish spectacle.
Collector members of ARTKABINETT social network can now view an exhibition of his artworks on display in Vienna.
His extreme personality, which incited the hatred of parent associations and representatives of the religious right, was soon pushing beyond the boundaries of pop music.
Marilyn Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, played numerous minor parts in feature films like David Lynch's "Lost Highway" and became the unofficial mascot of the MTV serial "Celebrity Deathmatch."
The exhibtion opens to the public from 30 June to 25 July at The Kunsthalle Wien project space in Vienna, Austria.
It was less well known that Marilyn Manson had been painting pictures for quite some time. "I just don't think the world is worth putting music into right now," Manson told the Rolling Stone magazine in 2005, "I no longer want to make art that other people - particularly record companies - are turning into a product. I just want to make art."
Marilyn Manson's career as an artist started in 1999 when he produced conceptual five-minute watercolors which he sold to drug dealers.
The 21 watercolors of this exhibition seem to be in accord with his image and the themes that made him a famous/notorious figure: horror, pain, blood, tears, mutilated bodies, wounded souls.
Yet a frequently delicate pastel coloring and blurred contours subtly subvert his worksí ìexplicitî contents, exposing the dichotomy of emotion and toughness, aggression and sensibility as an unresolved ambivalence.
Manson's interest is focused on the analysis of both the extremities and the cavities of the human body, i.e. exactly those parts of it which are most delicate, such as mouth, fingertips, eyes, or genitals, whose injury arouses our primeval fears.
"Outside it was raining cats and barking dogs. Like an egg-born offspring of collective humanity, in sauntered Marilyn Manson," writes David Lynch (born in 1946) in his introduction to Manson's biography of 2000. The exhibition also comprises four of his short films from between 1967 and 1973 as a counterpart to and historical reference for Manson's aesthetics
Marilyn Manson is known for many things: first of all for his music, but also as a scandal figure and thorn in the flesh of Americaís moral custodians.
He is less known for his painting, though, to which he has been devoting himself for many years, sometimes exclusively and over long periods of time and without making music.
His watercolors are very emotional and gentle in a formal way, which stands in sharp contrast to the themes and motifs they deal with: grief, loss, despair, self-alienation enhanced by pain, but also self-discovery through agony.
Marilyn Manson's interest focuses on the analysis of both extremities and cavities of the human body, i.e. exactly those parts of it which are most vulnerable and incessantly arouse primeval fears: mouth, fingertips, eyes, or genitals.
The exhibition also comprises short films by filmmaker David Lynch as a counterpart to and historical reference for Manson's paintings. As suggested by their titles, "Six Men Getting Sick"(1967), "The Grandmother" (1970), and "The Amputee" (1973)..
The Kunsthalle Wien, under the direction of Gerald Matt, is the exhibition institution of the City of Vienna for international contemporary art.
It established itself as one of the most vital facilities for contemporary art in Vienna at two locations in the centre of the city (Karlsplatz and the MuseumsQuartier). In the interest of an expanded understanding of art, the Kunsthalle Wien emphasizes cross-genre, cross-border trends in the arts.
Program highlights range from photography, video, film, and installations to new media. Large, subject-specific exhibitions present developments and correlations from Modernism to the present-day art world.
Other program elements are dedicated to retrospectives of important contemporary artists and significant contributions in Austrian art after 1945.
The Kunsthalle Wien considers itself a workshop, a lab, a forum for contemporary aesthetic and social positions and as a hot zone of communicative transfer.
And as a bridge between classical modernity and the visions of the future that redefine the strategies, venues, and materials of present-day art.
Curators: Gerald Matt, Cathèrine Hug
