The feminist artist is celebrating a milestone birthday on Tuesday.
“Why doesn’t she paint flowers?” That was the title of a pamphlet published by Renate Bertlmann in 1973, a feminist pamphlet. She probably had to be asked that question quite often in Vienna at the time. But she didn’t paint flowers, if at all she only placed them as a prickly glass army in the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
That was in 2019. Bertlmann was the first woman ever to stage a solo exhibition at this historic site. Many can still remember how the media-versatile artist was officially introduced as the representative of Austria, how she stepped out of the door in the Semperdepot in front of the journalists with her hand pressed over her mouth out of nervousness and joy. A “late triumph” – that’s also the name of the film portrait that ORF2 is dedicating to her today, Monday evening, at 11:15 p.m. The occasion is her 80th birthday the day following, on February 28th.
For decades, the Viennese had mainly worked for herself. After initial successes in the 1970s, like many other feminist-activist colleagues of her generation, she was no longer able to get a foothold in the exhibition scene. After all, the eighties belonged above all to painting (by men). It is thanks to the Verbund collection, which began focusing on the “feminist avant-garde” in the mid-2000s, that Bertlmann and other female artists are once once more receiving the attention they deserve; In 2017 she was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize.
“Amo Ergo Sum” – as if women only matter when they love – is the ironic motto that Bertlmann places above her work. It is characterized by the courage to be ugly (as a pregnant bride with a pacifier face), to be kitsch and pornography. We wish: No flowers. But a bouquet of exhibitions. (alm)