At the age of twenty-two, Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) became famous overnight for his appearance in the seminal Vienna Kunstschau of 1908. Gustav Klimt, then president of the Vienna Secession, described Kokoschka as "the outstanding talent among the younger generation." Critics were more divided; one, referring to the artist's agitated Expressionist style, called Kokoschka the "Oberwilding [super savage] of Vienna"
Oskar Kokoschka: Early Portraits from Vienna and Berlin, 1909-1914 focuses on Kokoschka and his early portraiture, perhaps the best-known and most esteemed part of the artist's wide-ranging oeuvre. By showing more than thirty oil portraits painted in Vienna and Berlin on the eve of World War I, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue survey Kokoschka's art of this period and the intellectual milieu in which the artist worked. Among the key works are portraits of Peter Altenberg, Adolf Loos, and Alma Mahler, and the Self-Portrait as Knight Errant. The point of departure is the seven early portraits in the collections of Neue Galerie New York and its founders.
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Preface
UWE M. SCHNEEDE
Foreword
Lenders to the Exhibition
Acknowledgements
UWE M. SCHNEEDE
"More Like One Than One Is": Modernist Portraits
GREGOR STREIM
Vienna-Berlin Circa 1910: Avant-Garde and Metropolitan Culture
PATRICK WERKNER
Gestures in Oskar Kokoschka's Early Portraits
THOMAS TRUMMER
"A Sea Ringed About with Visions":
On Cryptotheology and Philosophy of Life in Kokoschka's Early Portraits
CLAUDE CERNUSCHI
Anatomical Dissection and Religious Identification:
A Wittgensteinian Response to Kokoschka's Alternative Paradigms
for Truth in His Self-Portraiture Prior to World War I
ELANA SHAPIRA
The Pioneers: Loos, Kokoschka and Their Shared Clients
WERNER J. SCHWEIGER
"Your Love Affair with My Paintings":
Oskar Kokoschka and his Early Viennese Collectors
PETER A. KNIZE
Growing Up with Art: Kokoschka in My Life
TOBIAS G. NATTER
"Could One Paint the President of the United States?"
Kokoschka's Reception in the U.S.A.
OIL PORTRAITS
TOBIAS G. NATTER
"Portraits of Characters, Not Portraits of Faces":
An Introduction to Kokoschka's Early Portraits
Portraits
PORTRAIT DRAWINGS
MONIKA PESSLER
The Dramatic and the Drastic
in Kokoschka's Early Portrait Drawings
Drawings
WIENER WE RKSTATTE
MARKUS NEUWIRTH
Oskar Kokoschka: From Jugendstil, "Style of Youth."
to Unmediated Expression
Postcards
The Dreaming Youths
Fans
Posters
DOCUMENTS
OSKAR KOKOSCHKA
Three Texts on Portraiture
Chronology
Checklist
Bibliography
Index
Photograph and Copyright Credits
Imprint