Since its May 1960 premiere in Vienna, Arnulf Rainer has become known as a fundamental work for structural film.

Interplay between the audio and visual components can make it challenging to distinguish which patterns are being seen and which are heard.

[3] After his clients' negative response to Adebar and Schwechater, Kubelka moved from Vienna, Austria to Stockholm, Sweden.

[8] Kubelka named the film after Rainer as thanks for sponsoring the project and as a "compromise" in the event that he was disillusioned with the result.

[6] Since its release, Arnulf Rainer has become Kubelka's best known work, embodying his adoption of the frame as the basic unit of cinema instead of the shot.

Critic P. Adams Sitney identified it as one of "only three flicker films of importance", alongside Tony Conrad's The Flicker and Paul Sharits's N:O:T:H:I:N:G.[10] Arnulf Rainer is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection.

Antiphon is a "negative" of Arnulf Rainer which switches black for white and silence for sound.