(Vienna 1914–1995)
“Adam Selbstdarsteller”, 1976, signed Rudolf Hausner, label at the bottom: Stand No2 1976 “Adam” alias Rudolf Hausner SELBSTDARSTELLER, acrylic, gouache, pen drawing, wax varnish on paper on hardboard, image size 64 x 64 cm, with coloured edge (passe-partout) 83 x 83 cm, framed

Full-page colour illustration and small black/white image in the catalogue raisonné:
Hans Holländer, Rudolf Hausner, Werkmonographie, Edition Volker Huber, 1985, p. 163, cat. rais. no. 77

Exhibited and full-page colour ill.:
Rudolf Hausner, Künstlerhaus Wien, 1980, cat. no. 53

Provenance:
Private Collection, Salzburg

The square is enclosed. Colourful flags fly from four flagpoles. The experience is international, possibly a kind of ‘documenta’. The artists as a representative of himself: not displaying works, but rather displaying himself, is an occurrence that was not wholly uncommon in the seventies. It is somewhat obvious that practices of this nature can be related to the leading figures that can be influenced by the zeitgeist, the figures that partake in the order of the day with their usual solemnity. The sign shows that this is an exhibition area, saying “Stand no. 2”, followed by the title, date, signature, and, at the bottom, “self-representative”. This can now again be traced back to the name of Rudolf Hausner, who is just depicting himself as Adam. However, this is a trap: Hausner is explicitly not Adam, and the person who is responding to the zeitgeist is Adam, not Hausner. Or, he does it only to the extent that he can task his representative in the image (for example) with using a striking event as a ‘self-representative’ to meet the requirements of the artistic scene. With this, Hausner naturally reacts to things that he perceives attentively and mockingly, and that he then ironically evades. The number of the stand is not at all a coincidence. No. 2 can only mean that there is a no. 1 in this, as well as a number 3 and 4 – but they are all at the top of the scale of self-representation. Of course, the low number could also mean that the number of true self-representatives cannot be all that large. That remains unanswered. However, there can be no doubt as to the enormous size of Adam compared to the ladder. In reality, only a huge artist, an enormous artist, can manage to display himself alone and to reveal himself to tiny visitors to the exhibition…
... From great depths of the earth and the darkness that surrounds him, he protrudes out of his square like a statue whose head and chest are the only parts that are exposed. This story does not reveal how far the ladder keeps going underground. In turn, this has got something to do with the real Adam. In the same series he bursts out of the sea, and in an homage to Freud, the sea is a person’s own sea, the depths of the unconscious. The shaft into the depths of the earth may well represent this here because the ground is indeed earth-coloured. And, in addition to the clearly ironic, contemporary allusions of this image, there is again an image of Adam, the larger part, the man himself hidden, lying in the darkness.
From the monograph cited below