The Master Game (Das Meisterspiel)

Streaming video - 1998

At the Vienna Art Academy in 1994, an unidentified person painted over 27 works by Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer in black. Rainer had become world-famous for his abstract art and, in particular, for his over-layering of photographs and overpainting of his own and other artists’ works. But who painted over the “overpainter”? Speculation rages: Did he attack his works himself? A year later, an unsigned letter surfaces claiming responsibility for the act directed against Rainer—and modern art in general—and accuses the artist of being part of complicity with “destructive modernism.” At the same time, Austria is shaken by a series of mail bombs by the Bajuwarian Liberation Army, which sees Austria’s “German identity” threat...ened. Are there connections between the overpainting event and the mail bombs? Or is this all just a game? A dream? Or perhaps a hallucination? more