Hell Burns Cold (Die Hölle brennt kalt)

Among Austria’s leading living artists, Arnulf Rainer and Günter Brus are renowned for cutting-edge work. In this collaboration, the artists created an unusual series by making drawings directly on 19th-century nature prints. This work incorporates one from an 1855 botanical treatise representing an anemone. Rainer began by aggressively applying strokes of deep black oil stick to the engraving, obscuring much of the flower’s structure and actually tearing the sheet in several places. He established the rectangular “frame” and created an ominous vortex-like shape—formed partly by the wings of an immense cicada with protruding eyes—which seems to engulf the delicate plant. Brus, for his part, chose strange psychosexual imagery. Using black crayon, he added two prominent figures in the foreground. A demonic, skeletal form wearing a black hood gazes plaintively downward. The gaping crevice in its heart is an allusion to female genitalia. To the right, the disembodied head of a woman floats atop a stalk. The chaos of this disturbing scene is heightened by splattered watercolor in blue, gray, and violet.