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The artist – easily recognisable by the typical head shape with high cheekbones – is being attacked by two men. One of them, snarling, is making a grab at her, and the other – an armoured robot or warrior – is poking around in her head like a devil with his pitchfork, while simultaneously reaching deep into her throat. Nonetheless, their victim fights back and bites – a “Zornbild” (“picture of rage”), as the title suggests. The surge of emotion is directed at the scheming “Süsse Wiener Herzerln” (“Sweet Viennese Hearts”), depicted – as so often in Lassnig’s work – in intense pink and orange shades against a turquoise background and with her own unique brand of black humour: the men have heart-shaped buttocks, and the artist herself a heart-shaped pelvis. It’s interesting that she self-critically ranks herself among the Viennese hearts.

Among the snake pits that caused Lassnig particular suffering were the art market and the competitive relationships in the art scene. She experienced the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she held a professorship from 1980 to 1989, as a macho world full of top dogs. And as much as she loved her students, she found teaching and the accompanying “Sprechzwang” (“compulsion to talk”) exhausting: this is the title of another painting from those years. As in that work, here too she depicts a stressful situation as a physical experience: she is being harassed, her mind is under attack and people are trying to tear the words out of her body. Quite independently of the biographical background, the painting portrays a cycle of violence. Incidentally, "Gewaltsamkeit” (“Violence") originally formed part of the title but is today only faintly visible and crossed out.

(Natalie Lettner)