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