Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer, born in 1929 in Baden, near Vienna, is one of the most important European artists to have emerged after 1945. He is best known for his gestural style and overpaintings of works of his own and others, including some photographs, but for the past three years, Rainer has been taking photographs of his own. "Arnulf Rainer: Photographs" is the first publication to present these little-known works, all 79 that exist to date. Instead of "depicting" something, each photograph—or each "non-photo full of question marks"—presents riddles. Set up like paintings, but created using "estranged photographic means," as Robert Fleck has written, these are formal references to Rainer's abstract painting: by blurring areas of the image, using indeterminate spatial coordinates, and partially covering the aperture, Rainer creates photographs that seem unintentional and autonomous, and then superimposes them with his trademark iconoclastic gestures.