Night work 1998

Christian Attersee made this painting called 'Night Work' with oil. It seems to be a dreamscape, full of ambiguous forms. Is it a boat? Is it a face? Attersee is an Austrian artist, but his work has a more international context. His interest in the subconscious links him to the Surrealists, who embraced dream imagery as a means of psychological liberation. Attersee was born in 1940, and his career took off in the late 60's and 70's, a time when institutions of art were increasingly challenged by artists working in new media. Attersee stuck to painting, but his interest in popular culture, combined with his free, almost childlike style, was a radical stance at the time. As historians, we can look at the social conditions that make it possible for artists to break with convention and explore the unconscious in the way that Attersee does.