Arty Farty Friday ~ Oskar Kokoschka

Born this day, 1 March, in 1886 was expressionist artist, poet and playwright Oskar Kokoschka - trips off the tongue rather well! He was born in Pöchlarn on the Danube in Austria, another artist who fought in World War 1, and had to flee from Europe to Britain at the start of World War 2.

Kokoschka was seriously wounded in the First World War, and taken prisoner. He suffered a head injury and a bayonet wound to the lung, spent a period of convalescence in Vienna, but was then sent to the Isonzo Front, where his health, mental and physical, broke down. He went to Stockholm to consult a brain specialist and then to Dresden to try to recover his health.

Events before his military service probably fed into the deterioration from physical injuries. He had carried on a tempestuous love affair with Alma, widow of Gustav Mahler. The affair had ended, but his obsession led him to commission a life-sized doll to replace Alma - complete and life-like in all details, which he treated like a living companion - it has even been said that he escorted it to the opera.

After the end of the war the political situation in Dresden was unstable. Kokoschka formed part of a small, left-wing bohemian group. In the liberal climate of 1919 he was officially appointed Professor at the Dresden Academy.

After teaching at the art academy in Dresden (1919-24), Kokoschka travelled extensively in Europe and N Africa. In 1937 his works were removed from German galleries by the Nazis, who considered his work degenerate. He moved to London in 1938, but wasn't happy there. Subject matter of his paintings at this time became political and often critical of his host country, Britain. After World War II he moved to Switzerland, established an international summer school in Salzburg.
He died in 1980.





The Bride of the Wind or The Tempest (Windsbraut)1913-1914. Kokoschka's best known work, an allegorical picture featuring a self-portrait by the artist, lying alongside his lover Alma Mahler. Kokoschka met Mahler, then recently widowed from Gustav Mahler, in 1912. A passionate romance ensued, with the artist producing numerous drawings and paintings of Mahler. The painting depicts Mahler in a peaceful sleep beside Kokoschka, who is awake and stares into space. The couple's break-up in 1914 had a profound effect on Kokoschka, whose expressive brushwork grew more turbulent.
(See HERE)





Knight Errant In the Vienna of 1914, a woman having an abortion was cause for scandal, even within the confines of the relatively open-minded art world. When such a woman was the widow of a famous composer, unwed, and carrying on two love affairs simultaneously, her decision would alarm even the most sympathetic souls. Thus it is that the agonized knight errant of Oskar Kokoschka’s painting is to this day read as an expression of the artist’s pain over the death of an unborn child and the crumbling of his relationship with the fascinating, and quite unrepentant, Alma Mahler.

The central figure appears to be a self-portrait of Kokoschka, clad in the armor of a medieval knight. He lies errant, or lost, in a stormy landscape, his two attributes—a winged bird-man and a sphinxlike woman—in close proximity. The bird-man has been interpreted either as the figure of death or another self-portrait, while the sphinx-woman has been seen as a stand-in for Mahler. A funereal sky bears the letters “E S,” which probably refer to Christ’s lament, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani” (“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”) As if the self-equivalence with chivalry and the martyred Christ were not enough, the agitated brushwork and disturbing composition convince us of Kokoschka’s spiritual discomfort.
Cornelia Lauf (See HERE)


The Duomo, Florence.







The Loreley (1941/2) title refers to a mythical Rhine maiden, who lured sailors to their death. Kokoschka explained that his painting mocks British claims to maritime supremacy: "Britannia no longer rules the waves; inaction has lasted too long; an octopus swims away with a trident, the emblem of marine power. Queen Victoria, who built up the British fleet into a dominant position, rides a shark and stuffs white, brown and black sailors into its mouth. Only the frog on her hand refuses to accept the same fate: it represents Ireland, where there are no reptiles except frogs". (See HERE)





Marianne-Maquis: 1942 was a year of deadlock during the Second World War. Whilst the Soviet Union was battling the Nazis in the East, there were repeated calls for British and American governments to launch a Second Front in Western Europe. In Marianne-Maquis, Kokoschka vents his criticism of the allies’ delay by showing British war leaders Winston Churchill and General Montgomery drinking tea in the Café de Paris in Soho. The central figure is Marianne, the traditional personification of France, now linked to the ‘Maquis’, the French Resistance. (See HERE)





Anschluss - Alice in Wonderland (1942) addresses the German annexation of Austria; the painting also contains symbolic elements suggested by the second part of the title. In the background, Kokoschka’s former city, Vienna, is engulfed in flames. Wien is inscribed on a building. People are running rampant through the city streets, suggesting that the cultural capital of the former Austrian Empire might soon be reduced to this sort of social destruction. In the right foreground of the painting, a youthful nude with plaited blond hair stands erect. She symbolizes Austria and serves as a visual contrapposto to Hitler’s Aryan ideal. This is not the healthy, robust model seen so often in Nazi propaganda—her figure is disproportionate and her pose is awkward. This is, perhaps, another attempt at satirizing a contemporary, political event. In an attempt at modesty, she reaches with her left arm to cover herself with a fig leaf, alluding to classical statuary and humanist traditions. Kokoschka has placed her inside a pen of barbed wire, separating her from the chaos on the streets. Her right arm is extended outward and she points with one finger directly at the viewer, a warning to Kokoschka’s British audience that this sort of thing could happen to them, as well, if not more careful about their policy-making. (Information from pdf HERE)





What We Are Fighting For : (1943) According to Kokoschka, of all the political allegories completed during his time in London this one was the one he “meant most seriously.” He discusses the iconography of the composition:    A bishop is blessing the troops, and with his free hand is dropping a penny into the Red Cross collecting-box; an endless procession of prisoners file along with hands raised; in a rickshaw pulled by Gandhi sit the Governor of the Bank of England, the President of the Reichsbank, and a Marshal of France; in the foreground lies a starving mother holding an emaciated child who is playing with a rat. The prospering American munitions industry appears as a globe-like monster with two levers for arms, one pulling out a blue rabbit, signifying peace, as an emblem of hope for the future, while the other crams human bones into the armaments machine which turns them into cartridges. In the right foreground stands a bust of Voltaire with the inscription CANDIDE, i.e., ‘the best of all possible worlds’....... we can assume that simply creating something interesting to look at was not Kokoschka’s intent. His goal was to teach.

More paintings HERE and via Google Image.


ASTROLOGY

(12 noon chart shown as no time of birth is available.)
I noticed, somewhere in my searches, a reference to the artist as a "Sensitive Titan", his Sun and Mercury in Pisces reflects sensitivity, but in general he seems to have experienced discomfort rather than joy from his sensitive nature.
I see this discomfort represented by the opposition of Mars to Sun/Mercury; Mars possibly representing "The Titan"? Venus in Aquarius, and Uranus conjunct Jupiter both link to Kokoschka's non-establishment politcally-aware side, and perhaps his rather unruly Aquarian Venus led him into the affair with Alma Mahler which eventually cost him much pain. Moon would have been in Capricorn, whatever his birth time, and it probably is in line to form a Grand Trine in Earth with Neptune and Mars - connecting to both his creativity and "The Titan" in him. It's rather strange he has no planet in a Fire sign.