Das Meisterspiel
Documentary film about a spectacular case of iconoclasm in which numerous paintings by the prominent avant-garde artist Arnulf Rainer were painted over in 1994.
In 1994, 27 paintings by the Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer were painted over with black paint by unknown persons at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. On one painting, the assassins painted "and then he decided to be an actionist", a variation on a quote by Adolf Hitler. At the same time, Austria is shaken by a series of bomb attacks. A Bavarian Liberation Army (BBA), which sees Austria's German identity under threat, claims responsibility for the attacks.
Is there a connection between the attack at the Vienna Academy and the BBA bombs - as Rainer and those close to him initially suspect? Or is it all just a game, a hallucination, a confused dream provoked by Vienna, the "laboratory for the end of the world"? (Lutz Dammbeck)