Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art
27. March 2008, 10:58:41 unter: Audio, Austria, Belvedere, German, Interviews, Museums, Podcasts, Vienna“He was discovered at an exhibition. Since then, he has been the outsider who routinely gets slammed by the critics. He is the only “modern” in Vienna. He sees ghosts, secretly suffering souls. He loves to rub salt into wounds. He will end up going mad. These are all compiled from my reviews…” —Oskar Kokoschka to his friend in Berlin, Herwarth Walden, in 1911. He had become acquainted with the publisher of the expressionist magazine, Der Sturm, through the writer and journalist, Karl Kraus. He had been occasionally working with Walden for a year already.
Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 1
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Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 2
| send feedback Alfred Weidinger - Oskar Kokoschka’s Expressive Art, Interview Part 3
| send feedback Kokoschka, who wrote this letter when he was just 25 years old, had already gained success in recent years. He was “expressive”—as a painter and writer, as an up-and-coming artist, as well as as a lover. His unbridled expression, his distancing from art nouveau, his bluntness polarized and provoked the artistic establishment and society in Vienna and elsewhere—often to violent reactions. Die Presse called him the “Oberwildling von Wien” (“The Wild Child of Vienna”); in 1909, the opening of his drama, “Mörder - Hoffnung der Frauen” (“Murderer - Liberator of Women”), led to his expulsion from art school.
However, his genius demanded acknowledgment. Adolf Loos had recognized and encouraged his artistic potential early on and guided him along his first steps into painting. Karl Kraus remained close to him, as did Wolfgang Gurlitt, the Berlin art dealer who later became the director of the Neue Galerie in Linz.
Kokoschka found the inspiration for many of his works through his passionate relationship with Alma Mahler. When she got pregnant by him but refused the artist’s undying devotion, Kokoschka was driven to volunteer as a soldier in the First World War.
Kokoschka eventually recovered from the trauma of lost love and its subsequent war injuries, as reported by Alfred Weidinger, a well- known Kokoschka connoisseur and chief curator of the Austrian Belvedere Museum. We asked Wiedinger for an account of Oskar Kokoschka—the man and the painter—as well as about his background and his development. You can hear the results of our discussion in the following three-part podcast series on Oskar Kokoschka. (wh/jn)
