The subversive radicalism of Oskar Kokoschka

About the exhibition "Oska Kokoschka, a Fauve in Vienna", which runs until 12 February 2023 at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris.

The article published this month in Connaissance des arts about Oskar Kokoschka, to whom the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris is devoting an exhibition until 12 February, describes him in the title as a "troublemaker". Indeed, in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, this painter, writer, poet and playwright was very quickly considered to be clearly offensive to morality. Both in his writings and in his paintings. And this reputation did not displease him, as he liked nothing better than to provoke reactions, both through his art, which he wanted to be an intense expression of the moods of his time, and through his appearance, even if it meant taking care of his dandy look with a shaved head. "He is the one through whom the scandal arrives", writes Valérie Bougault to begin her article.

Born in Austria-Hungary in 1886, he lived in Vienna, Dresden, Prague, London... Oskar Kokoschka died in 1980 in Switzerland, the only country that finally offered him peace, thanks to a "fair distance from the convulsions of the world", as the journalist writes to conclude her article. It is easy to imagine that between these two dates, in almost a century, the artist will have lived through many adventures! And it is fascinating to discover them on the occasion of this first Parisian retrospective devoted to this committed painter, anti-Nazi militant, convinced European, tenacious but tested humanist, who became a reference figure in the cultural reconstruction of a devastated world. Tracing seven decades of pictorial creation, the exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne gives a good account of the originality shown by Oskar Kokoschka throughout his artistic life. It offers the visitor the opportunity to travel through the 20th century in Europe with the enfant terrible of Vienna.

Oskar Kokoschka decided very early on that he would not do anything like the others, and from 1905 to 1909 he preferred to study at the School of Applied Arts rather than at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Strangely enough, he did not see himself as an artist. At least not yet. Nevertheless, he made the right choice. It was at the School of Applied Arts that he found himself with masters such as Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) and Carl Otto Czeschka (1874-1960). "The School is full of teachers from the famous Secession, which spearheaded the avant-garde of decorative arts in Europe, founded by Klimt, Moser, Hoffman, etc.," Valérie Bougault points out. And the School's motto on its pediment is a programme in itself: "To each age its art, to each art its freedom".

The young Kokoschka began by painting fans and postcards for the Vienna Workshops, a sort of "factory" of the School of Decorative Arts. But his wise discretion was not to last. In 1907, he began producing a personal graphic work entitled Les Garçons rêveurs, a long poem about naked and androgynous adolescents in crude sexual verse, illustrated with eight colour lithographs. "The journalist from Connaissance des Arts explains: "Unease is guaranteed for the uninformed reader. The following year, he caused a scandal at his first exhibition by presenting The Warrior to the Viennese public. A clay bust, a sort of self-portrait with a screaming mouth, which made a lasting impression. And began to panic Austrian society. The machine was launched. Kokoschka would never stop it.

Especially as the artist was immediately supported by his peers. Finally rejecting the Secession, within which he had benefited from the benevolent attention of Gustav Klimt, he embarked on the ship of Adolf Loos (1870-1933). The Austrian architect and art theorist, a fervent supporter of the eradication of ornament, "a scourge from which he intended to deliver humanity", was to complete Kokoschka's Viennese artistic education by taking him away from all forms of decorative work for the Workshops. So much so that the painter and writer caused another scandal, but this time on the theatrical stage. In 1909, he wrote and had performed the play Assassin, espoir des femmes. "A sort of wild choreography of naked and painted actors, interpreting the eternal combat of the masculine and feminine doomed to destruction and death, under the rule of a raging libido. Chairs fly around the auditorium and the police have to intervene to separate the screaming audience.  "A storm that exceeded my expectations and fears", said the artist.

He made a decisive work of art out of the poster with which he announced his play. Death is represented by an all-white woman, clutching a blood-red man. "A sort of fierce, bloodthirsty Pieta that critics were quick to describe as expressionist," says Valérie Bougault. "Rightly or wrongly, this fundamentally unclassifiable painter was henceforth identified with this movement. Yet he went far beyond its boundaries, believing solely and firmly in the subversive power of painting as a vehicle for emancipation and education. It was only a short step from there to inspiring the young Egon Schiele, who was only four years younger than him. But if the latter, with his powerfully erotic paintings and drawings, also panicked the Austrian bourgeoisie, he would remain "the child prodigy, the divine surprise of a precocious talent, Kokoshka having resolutely donned the clothes of the enfant terrible, a radical nourished by classicism whom no one knew where to fit in, in the end. The fact that Egon Schiele was struck down by the Spanish flu at the age of 28 is no doubt also a factor in his reputation as a child prodigy. By dying at 93, Oskar Kokoschka will have had more time to be frowned upon.

Notably in the 1930s, with the rise of Nazism, when the man whom some critics nicknamed "God's scourge" at the time of his 1912 exhibition in Berlin, where thirty-four of his works had been presented at the invitation of Herwarth Walden, the founder of the avant-garde magazine Der Sturm, also became a "degenerate artist". His paintings were removed from German museums, and eight of them were included in the famous and ill-fated Munich exhibition of 1937. Many of Kokoschka's works of art were destroyed, but some were sold in Switzerland to finance the war effort. One of these was perhaps his most famous painting, The Wind Bride, painted in 1913 during his passionate love affair with Alma Mahler, the composer's widow. Following their break-up, Kokoshka enlisted in the First World War, where he was seriously wounded on two occasions.

The interwar period saw him financially weak, his works of art for sale being exclusively so-called psychological portraits, painted in broad strokes, with which the artist wanted to reveal a powerful form of interiority. But the effects of the abundant material did not bring him commercial success, even though he was inspired by the old masters such as El Greco and Goya, or by the contemporary art of his time, represented by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Munch, etc. Kokoschka also claimed, more strangely, to be a descendant of George Minne (1866-1941), the Belgian symbolist sculptor. His subjects "may be posed motionless, seated and in bust form most of the time, but one feels a vibration emerging, as if the models, similar to actors, were suddenly going to gesticulate", notes the journalist from Connaissance des arts. "His painting is fundamentally theatrical and even cinematographic.

The proof today in Paris in 150 works that have been brought together thanks to the support of important European and American collections, constituting an exceptional art gallery.