Oskar Kokoschka 1886-1980
By Lori Stranger
Oskar Kokoschka, Self Portrait of a Degenerate Artist, 1937, oil on canvas, 110 x 85cm, National Gallery of Scotland.
Scandal, heartbreak and exile, this is the life of Oskar Kokoschka. Born on the 1st of March 1886 in Pochlarn, Austria-Hungary, Kokoschka’s life would span artistic movements, affairs and countries.
Kokoschka’s innovative artistic style was nurtured from an early age during his training in Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule University of Applied Arts. The university uniquely employed numerous teachers of the Vienna Secession movement. The emphasis on Art Nouveau and Jugendstil style came to inform his first major artwork, The Dreaming Youths (1907-08). Kokoschka employed his bookbinding and lithographic skills to create the illustrated book that contained eight photolithographs. The fairytale poems and accompanying images tell the story of an unnamed boy lusting after a naive heroine. The scandalous tale was originally commissioned by Wiener Werkstätte for his children but can be read as an autobiographical account of Kokoschka’s first love. The themes of repressed desire and identity crisis throughout the tale are appropriate to early twentieth-century Vienna, currently in the thrall of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and interpretation of dreams. The book’s bright colour palette and flat, decorative style reflect his conflation of Japanese prints and German Art Nouveau style Jugendstil. However, the exaggerated gestures and angular forms anticipate the Expressionistic artworks which would come to dominate his career.
His talent was soon noticed by the Secessionist leader, Gustav Klimt, who admired the young artist and included him in the 1908 Kunstchau exhibition, displaying The Dreaming Youths. Despite this early recognition, Kokoschka soon incurred scandal for his provocative works. His disturbingly violent play Murderer, the Hope of Women details violent gender relations of women consumed by the male gaze, branded, assaulted and eventually murdered. He was subsequently expelled in 1909, only saved from destitution by his friend, the Viennese architect Adolf Loos who would be a formidable supporter of his work.
His expressionist style would continue to grow, culminating in his break with Jugendstijl in, for example, the 1909 Self-Portrait as Warrior. The traditional bust form is transformed into a distorted, suffering mould. The face’s twisted features evoke the visceral quality of flesh, juxtaposing the ‘warrior’ title. Kokoschka would continue to gain notoriety throughout Vienna, infamous for his exotic lifestyle, paintings of nude women and scandalous themes. His torrid affair with Alma Malher would inspire many of his later works including his famous 1913-14 double portrait, The Tempest (or The Bride of the Wind). Amidst a sea of chaos and darkness, the lovers embrace while Malher appears completely reliant on the tense Kokoschka to calm the waves. Her half nude form and serene expression contrast to the bold, expressive brushwork and undefined background.
The inevitable end of their wild affair devastated the young artist and has been cited as crucial to his 1915 army enlistment. Miraculously surviving the war but with severe injuries, including a bullet through the head, he suffered immense pain and hallucinations for the rest of his life.
After a self-imposed depressed exile, by 1937, Kokoschka’s home of Vienna was increasingly becoming a dangerous place. The rise of Nazism drastically affected the art world, attacking any art not in line with Hitler’s conception of ‘true’ German Neoclassical art. Kokoschka was labelled a degenerate artist, his painting, The Tempest was included in the infamous 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition as exemplary of bad art (ironically becoming the most attended exhibition of modern artists up to this point). His response to this label was a Portrait of a Degenerate Artist (1937). The insightful self-portrait depicts Kokoschka amidst a blurred landscape background depicted in vigorous brushstrokes. His unrelenting direct gaze unsettles the viewer, as implicit in his labelling. His strong stance and folded arms represent his resilience and strength despite uncertain times. Subsequently declared an enemy of the Germans, Kokoschka sought refuge in Czechoslovakia where he would meet his future wife.
The invasion of Czechoslovakia necessitated another place of refuge, now England. The accompanying years were perhaps more peaceful than his scandals in Vienna. His settlement in Cornwall, however, didn't prevent his continued barrage against the Nazis by which many of his landscape paintings depicted the suffering of refugees and the inability to return home.
Kokoschka would remain in England until moving to Switzerland in 1953. In 1960, Oxford University assigned him an honorary doctorate while the Tate gallery’s first British retrospective on the artist in 1962 ensured his continued legacy in England. His psychologically powerful artworks would inspire artists for generations while his expressive brushwork and raw paint handling influenced the American Abstract Expressionists and later Neo-Expressionists. Kokoschka died on the 22nd of February 1980 in Montreux, Switzerland yet his legacy endures.
Bibliography
“Oskar Kokoschka - Biography and Legacy.” The Art Story. Accessed 23rd February 2020. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kokoschka-oskar/life-and-legacy/#na.
“Oskar Kokoschka.” Guggenheim. Accessed 23rd February 2020. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/oskar-kokoschka.