Alice Sagar Final Major Project: Arnulf Rainer

His early works, mainly drawings and prints, were inspired by the fantastic vein of *Surrealism, and after a visit to Paris in 1951 he was influenced by *Abstract Expressionist and *Art Informel paintings that he saw there. Although he met André *Breton in Paris, he soon moved away from Surrealism, and in the mid-1950s he began producing Overpaintings, in which he took as a basis a painting, drawing, or photograph (either his own work or someone else's) and partially obliterated the image with monochromatic colour. A similar concern with reworking surfaces occurs in many of his prints, in which he sometimes uses the same plates again and again over a period of many years, during which the plates become more and more scratched. Overpaintings dominated Rainer's work for about a decade, until the mid-1960s, but he also produced a series of cruciform pictures during this period (Black Cross, 1956, Lenbachhaus, Munich). In 1963 he began collecting *Art Brut and the following year he began experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs—indications of his interest in extreme emotional states.

I have decided to re-visit the art-works of Arnulf Rainer because I feel I can produce more work as a result of being influenced by his technique and style.