Danube Monarchy/ oedipal - Prussia/ oedipal
Berlin/ Wien 1993
The drawings are a compilation of figures that address historical, mental, and psychological levels. On the left, there is a horse in a skirt, a tentative entering of the feminine. It is a drawing by Elizabeth II of Austria for her daughter. On the right, an implied horse head can be discerned, drawn by the Prussian king Frederick the Great. In the centre, there is a (female) cat with a hat, drawn by Julia Warhola for her son Andy, and finally a policeman, a symbol of the state, a figure of order, guarding a mother, who carries her son Walther Rathenau to the grave. For a long time, I occupied myself with Walther Rathenau, especially with his writings; the timing of his murder seems to me to be the moment at which an epochal watershed becomes noticeable. These early works were about uncovering the taboos and repressed episodes of history, about the concealed foundations underlying mental manifestations rationalised in retrospect as history and its vicissitudes. The technique is nitro-print behind coloured glass from the pre-war period, which I purchased at an old Berlin glass factory in 1989.