00:00 – 00:33
The house of art, Munich. During the Nazi Era it was used to display war propaganda. Nowadays it houses a vast selection of artworks. In October 2004 it hosted an exhibition of what has been until now a hidden, secret form of art, the work of the so-called outsider artists. Known as L’Art Brut.

00:43 – 01:02 Klaus Mecherlein
In order to describe what is happening here, it is legitimate to use the expression “art”. And it is an important prerequisite due to the development of art in the past 100 years.

01:03 – 01:20 Tabatha
Klaus Mecherlein takes an art workshop in Oberschleisheim, Germany. His students are all L’Art Brut artists. Klaus founded the Euward, a prize event for mentally handicapped artists which enables them to exhibit their work before a wider audience.

01:24 – 01:51 Klaus Mecherlein
The intention of the art-workshop in general is to establish a creative space in which everyone, handicapped or not, may develop one’s own artistic abilities in order to discover art all over again, to drive it forward and to experience certain aspects of art in an intensive way.

02:03 – 02:24 Klaus Mecherlein
The human body is an instrument that gathers and stores experiences. These experiences should flow directly and unfiltered by ratio through the hand via a crayon onto paper.

02:26 – 02:41 Klaus Mecherlein talking to student OFF
Well Thomas, a red picture again. Look at that yellow, it really shines through. Look, how the colours shine through. Different colours… tone down the red.


02:59 – 03:12 Klaus Mecherlein talking to student OFF
See how the felt-tip pen shines through the red. It doesn’t disintegrate you can still see it.

03:17 – 03:22 Klaus Mecherlein talking to students OFF
Good, continue. Peter is diligent too. Great.

03:38 – 04:22 Klaus Mecherlein
We want them to develop their personalities and abilities. The activities in the art-workshop are foremost education of art. The students here learn to use the methods of painting, graphic art, drawing and everything in connection with art. They should use art like a language and therefore develop it like a language. One could say that working with art is a therapy but it does not primarily imply therapeutic goals.

04:30 – 04:44 Tabatha
Lebenshilfe art workshop in Austria. Home of award winning L’Art Brut artist Joseph Hofer. Known by his fellow students as Pepi he’s been working with Lebenshilfe for over twenty years.

04:51 – 05:08 Elisabeth Telsnig
The illness of the artist should not be the main focus as it happened so strongly with van Gogh. People only saw the ill, suffering, unrecognised artist.

05:23 – 06:04 Tabatha
Five L’Art Brut artists make up this art group at one of Austrias leading centres for the mentally handicapped. Doctor Elisabeth Telsnig, known as Sissi to her friends and colleagues is an art historian. She heads the art workshop in Ried and first discovered the talents of Joseph Hofer.
Sissi deals with students who are both mentally handicapped and who suffer from mental illness. The varied life experiences of the artists are reflected in the very different skills they bring to their art. Through Sissi’s job as an art teacher she has close contact with her group.

06:05 – 06:14 Elisabeth Telsnig talking to students OFF
Which one would you like? The large one? Would you like it this or that way?

06:18 – 07:43 Elisabeth Telsnig
I think there is an objective truth regarding what is and what is not art. I have several criteria with which to judge the artwork of the students in my group. First, I take my time and observe where their strong points lie: are they better in painting or drawing and what material does the individual prefer. I allow myself five years for that. Then I take into consideration the criteria of art. What I can see then is the individual’s uniqueness, which means: can I recognize some ones picture always and everywhere to a certain extent. Once I recognize a picture by Pepi, Dominik or Andreas I know that he has got his own individual, unique style. This is very important to me. It’s also important for me to see a development in their work. If someone stagnates for years he has to be very good.

08:05 – 08: Elisabeth Telsnig with student Andreas OFF
A layer of colour will come on here and then it stays that way.
Stays like that. And there are several layers of colour on top of each other.
Yes, some red, blue, orange.


08:19 Sissi T., OFF
Beautiful. And what have we tried today that you enjoyed so much? Do you remember?
08:25 Andreas, OFF
Wait. This colour. White
08:30 Sissi T., OFF
And what happened?
08:33 Andreas, OFF
It stays on the surface of the paper.
08:37 Sissi T., OFF
And the colours change a bit. This is really nice.
08:39 Andreas, OFF
Yes.

08:50 – 09:07 Elisabeth Telsnig
I have been working with Josef Hofer, we call him Pepi, since March 1997. I then took over the art group at “Lebenshilfe” in Ried in the county of Inn in which Pepi also worked. I did not notice him in the beginning to be honest.

09:16 – 09:35 Elisabeth Telsnig
Pepi was born on the 17th of March 1945. He wasn’t born in Austria but in neighbouring Bavaria because Linz was heavily bombarded at that time. When he was born one could tell at once that this child was totally disabled.

09:53 – 10:48 Elisabeth Telsnig
Pepi produces his own form of art, and no art trend or pictures that he’s seen have influenced him. I believe Pepi rarely came in contact with art beside his own exhibitions in museums. I have never seen a book on art in his room at the home for handicapped. It is difficult to describe his art because it appears differently to everyone but I would call him an expressionist.

10:51 – 11:48 Elisabeth Telsnig
He paints the pictures that are in his head. These could be landscapes, his surroundings, construction sites with excavators and implements. In winter when he can’t play outside he concentrates strongly on his own sexuality. His clothes are his intimacy. He has fewer impressions of the outside world than we have. We travel around more in the town and in the countryside. We are more independent. He is very limited and has fewer impressions than us, and fewer possessions than we have. And for example, when he gets a new pull-over, a t-shirt or new shoes this is something special to him and he draws them.

11:58 – 12:15 Elisabeth Telsnig
Pepi’s way of working is freedom of art as far as that’s possible because he works unintentionally. He gets very excited when he finishes a drawing and I praise him. He demands that.

12:27 - 12:51 Elisabeth Telsnig
Also in his room it’s his own world. For years he has been collecting Playmobil figures, excavators and tractors and his fantasy lies within. And when he is here for a whole day, for example, he comes home and picks up again from where he was.

12:55 – 13:49 Elisabeth Telsnig
Years ago I noticed that Pepi was drawing erotic subjects. There was a four-cornered brown frame to be seen in his drawings and often with winged doors that looked similar to Cowboy style saloon doors. Sometimes they were closed, sometimes one wing was open and sometimes both were open. At the time he was doing horse-therapy. I always thought that these winged doors resembled the entrance to the riding-stable. And then I asked myself: why does he put together eroticism and this door? Then, three or four years ago, I was allowed to visit him in his room and what did I see, a mirror leaning on the floor which had a dark brown wooden frame and winged doors just like a winged altar.

13:52 – 14:35 Elisabeth Telsnig
With this mirror he corresponds. He has a big problem opening up to an addressee and this mirror has become his friend. For him he provokes himself and prostitutes himself in front of it I have to say. This mirror appeared in his pictures very often and that explained the picture framing to me. Very often the legs were cut off, at the knees or just under the knees or it was cut off at the neck. He is very proud of his potency and really has no problem or shame with himself and his body.

15:13 – 15:42 Elisabeth Telsnig
He’s got a huge sandbox with logs around it, which contains his caterpillars, excavators and cement mixers. He never climbs in it but always leans against it. He walks around all four sides, he drives along all the paths, piles up sand hills, makes roads and levels them. He collects toilet paper rolls and kitchen paper rolls, which he builds in. really great.

15:53 – 16:02 Elisabeth Telsnig
There are so many people and inhabitants at the home where he lives. But everybody knows that the sandbox belongs to Pepi and they respect this.

16:38 – 16:48 Tabatha
Occasionally Pepi is taken out on a day trip. Today he’s visiting his cousin, Mrs. Sager who cared for him for ten years after his father died.

16:54 – 17:00 Tabatha
Pepi’s brother walther who is also mentally handicapped still lives with Mrs. Sager.

16:54 – 17:00 Pepi’s brother Walther OFF
We haven’t seen each other for a long time.

17:19 – 17:57 Tabatha
Hartheim castle near Linz. It’s not far from where Pepi was born. An estimated thirty thousand mentally and physically handicapped people were killed here by the Nazi’s as part of their program of euthanasia designed to eliminate racial impurities. It was a merciless project. Even extending to one of Hitler’s cousins who suffered from mental illness and who is believed to have met her death here. Fear that Pepi and his brother Walther could meet a similar fait drove their parents to conceal the children at a remote farmhouse for thirty-six years.



17:59 - 18:29 Elisabeth Telsnig
This was a systematic killing of handicapped people in order to cleanse the genetic make-up. The people living in the immediate vicinity saw busses driving in with drawn curtains, taped-up windows arriving at the castle and leaving again. They noticed that people left these busses, that they disappeared and that they never came out again.

18:39 – 18:52 Mrs Sager
So that this handicap wouldn’t be discovered they fled into this isolation. This was a necessity for them in those days.

18:54 – 19:24 Elisabeth Telsnig
Of course, Pepi’s father knew what was going on in Hartheim Castle. It was general knowledge, no one dared to talk about it because that could have been life threatening, but everyone knew exactly what was happening. It must have been a hard decision to give up his skilled trade as a wood pipe turner and then he bought the farmhouse in Saint Johann in order to look after his two boys.

19:27 – 19:38 Tabatha
For the first time since he left his old home Pepi is taken back to the farmhouse where he spent almost half his life isolated from the world and from normal society.

19:41 – 19:52 Mrs Sager
He never played with other children because no one should notice that he was so severely handicapped.

19:54 – 20:37 Mrs Sager
When he was older he stayed at home by himself very often. There he played with matadors and tin toys, which he tied together with thread and cord. Very strange creations. Even when something was in tact he tied it together. This was his very special method that he had developed but that’s the way he wanted it to be. He was always very - well, how to put it?
Stubborn.

20:51 – 21:11 Mrs Sager
I believe that he is trapped in his own world but I do not believe that he is unhappy in it. I think he just doesn’t allow any outside influence in.

21:20 – 21:30 Tabatha
One of Austrias most highly regarded artists Arnulf Rainer collects L’Art Brut. He’s followed its recent comeback with interest and enthusiasm.

21:37 – 21:56 Arnulf Rainer
Outsider art is of course a form of art. Naturally, no great pieces of art are produced there, the handicap does not technically allow this but I have seen a lot of it and it is simply wonderful.

21:58 – 22:45 Arnulf Rainer
Every kind of painting and art is a mixture between consciousness, sub-consciousness and semi-consciousness. Naturally, one has to develop a technique, an art of drawing that is conscious because one selects everything and has experience in this. Sub-consciousness is the theme and also what we call repetitive. They very often have to repeat themselves because they cannot escape their relatively small imagination. But this imagination is very subjective, very individual.

22:56 – 23:06 Tabatha
He’s a regular visitor to Sissi’s workshop in Ried. He likes to see at first hand the production of the latest works of art and to watch the artists at work.

23:52 – 24:36 Arnulf Rainer
L’Art Brut always existed but it had not been acknowledged. Slowly L’Art Brut artist of the 19th century have been discovered though their art has rarely been kept. L’Art Brut flourished in the twenties in the background of the psychiatrist Prinzhorn. The reason was that ill people were not treated with medicine then and therefore had a freer and wilder imagination.

24:38 – 24:44 Tabatha
Together they go through the latest completed works. These are Pepi’s.


25:07 – 25:18 Elisabeth Telsnig OFF
He is an independent artist. I come here twice a week and they do industrial work in here but his table remains untouched.

25:21 – 25:41 Arnulf Rainer
Hofer is classed as an outsider. Outsiders are artistic people with a handicap. This could be a lack of social contact skills or a spastic, mental or psychotic handicap and surely he is one of them.

25:47 – 26:09 Arnulf Rainer
I would say that with Hofer the graphic sensitivity, his strokes, how he joins them together and the way he arranges his drawings have a certain intensity and independence.

26:17 – 26:27 Tabatha
Final preparations are underway for the big night, the Euward prize event. Klaus Mecherlein goes through last minute preparations with his colleagues.

26:28 – 26:46 Klaus Mecherlein OFF
From here everything else develops… if Hofer was here. I would create a corner for Hofer too. The main focus is his erotic pictures. All right.

26:54 – 28:20 Klaus Mecherlein
What the art workshop has achieved are different points. First of all, it has changed the view about handicapped people here in the workshop at the remedial educational centre “Augustinum”. It made visible that they are creative people who have abilities and make progress in their artistic work. Within this institution, the workshop functions as a cultural centre. With the help of public relations, exhibitions, and the famous European project Euward the art workshop brought its work to the public on a regional and national level. It made the work more popular as a phenomenon with its own history and relevance through current productions and has something really interesting to offer.


28:27 – 28:44 Tabatha
L’Art Brut artist Thomas who rarely communicates with anyone explains his latest drawing to his friend Peter. For many years Thomas has only painted circus pictures. He reveals the inspiration behind his latest picture.

28:38 – 29:21 Thomas OFF
Man. Head. Jaws. Put in.
28:52 Bite. Cuddle
28:59 Claw there. Claw. Splay out claw there. Splay out.
29:14 Goes. Entrance goes in there. In.

29:26 – 29:42 Tabatha
September the 30th. The big day for Euward and the three prize winners of the bi-annual event. It’s a chance for the public and the press to see at first hand the collective works of 26 of Europe’s best L’Art Brut artists.

29:49 – 29:54 Tabatha
Klaus proudly takes the press on a tour of this year’s collection.

30:12 – 30:18 Tabatha
This year’s runner-up Robert Burda soon wins an admirer and is keen to show off his work.

30:54 – 31:08 Tabatha
Pepi’s collection takes pride of place in the main hall, much to his delight, and that of Sissi. Pepi loves to see his pictures framed and displayed, especially in such a grand way.

31:45 – 31:51 Tabatha
The House Of Art director Chris Dercon makes a speech to an appreciative gathering.

32:19 – 32:53 Museum director Chris Dercon
The differences between outside art and conventional art seem to have gradually decreased over the past 20 years. And that is good. Maybe it makes sense to talk of categories like world art, spontaneous art or artists who are mentally handicapped. We are all handicapped in some way.

32:54 – 33:17 Museum director Chris Dercon
And if we do see art this way and as a kind of bio-political phenomenon then the so-called outsider art must be re-integrated into our lives and actions.

33:30 – 33:33 Tabatha
Robert Burda proudly receives second prize.

33:39 – 34:12 Klaus Mecherlein
Josef Hofer studies himself in front of the mirror and examines his experiences. The body and all its possibilities, which he comprehends as his very own, are equalled with the entirety of existence. Mr Hofer, I am very happy for you and congratulate you to the first price of the EUWARD 2004.