Kokoschka: The Untimely Modernist

by Rüdiger Görner, Debra Marmor (Translator), Herbert Danner (Translator)

Overview

The Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) achieved global fame with his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes. In this first English-language biography, Rüdiger Görner depicts the artist in all his fascinating and contradictory complexity. He traces Kokoschka’s path from bête noire of the bourgeoisie and “hunger artist” who had to flee the Nazis to a wealthy and cosmopolitan political and critical artist who played a significant role in shaping the European art scene of the twentieth century and whose relevance is undiminished to this day. 

In Kokoschka: A Life in Art, Görner emphasizes the artist’s versatility. Kokoschka, although best known for his expressionistic portraits and landscapes, was more than a mere visual artist: his achievements as a playwright, essayist, and poet bear witness to a remarkable literary talent. Music, too, played a central role in his work, and a passion for teaching led him to establish in 1953 the School of Seeing, an unconventional art school intended to revive humanist ideals in the horrific aftermath of war.  This biography shows brilliantly how all the pieces of Kokoschka’s disparate interests and achievements cohered in the richly creative life of a singular artist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781914979149
Publisher:	Haus Publishing
Publication date:	09/08/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Rüdiger Görner was professor of German and comparative literature at Queen Mary, University of London. The founding director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, his books include biographies of Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, and Oskar Kokoschka. He has been the recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.


Debbie Marmor is a translator based in London.


Herb Danner is a translator based in London.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition xi
Foundations, or the Journey to an Achievement of the Century 1
1: The Journey 11
En Route to a Life’s Beginning 11
En Route to Scandal: In the Name of Art 22
2: Determination and Confusion 30
Additional Contours: An Anticipatory Image with a Rigid Pen 30
Unique Berlin 37
In the Throes of Love 46
Eyewitness to Art: Georg Trakl 57
Alma: Finale without End? 61
3: Wartime Art 67
Injuries and Rilke in the Gap 67
Berlin, Dresden and Stockholm Interludes 74
Once to Hades and Back, or Orpheus and Eurydice as
Mystagogues 87
The Doll Transformation, or Dollyfication of
Alma Mahler-Gropius 92
4: Pre-Schooling Vision 101
Between Times in the Florence on the Elbe 101
A Dream Picture and Travel Pictures, Euro-African 109
Kokoschka Ante Portas 126
Back in an Increasingly Alien Europe: Political Optics in the
Century of Deceptions 134
Vagaries of Understanding: Thomas Mann and Oskar
Kokoschka 142
Views from Prague’s Windows 151
Interim Status 160
5: Exile in England 162
London Calling 162
Escapes to Cornwall and Scotland, or Solace of the Countryside 170
Political Worries of an Exiled Artist-Activist 178
The Maisky Episode 179
Education Above All Else 184
Suffer the Little Children… 189
Where to Turn? 191
6: The Portrait as a Form of Representation 195
The (Self-)Portrait as Biography, Along with a Few
Retrospective Views 195
News from the Ego and More ‘Images of People’ 204
Musicians in the Picture 213
A Glimpse of Animals 221
Art as Power Symbol: Portraits of Politicians 223
Portrait of a Myth: The Thermopylae 228
Minor Digression: When Graham Sutherland Painted
Winston Churchill in 1954 234
7: Portrait of the Older Artist as Educator, or Schools of Seeing 238
Progressive Restoration, or in the Middle of the Loss 239
A School of Seeing 249
Seeing Literature 264
Austria as Pars Pro Toto for Seeing and a Friend’s Painful Letter 275
In Comenius’ Name: An Afterlife During a Lifetime 288
Hindsight 302
Notes 307
Bibliography 334
Acknowledgements: A Word of Thanks 351

Editorial Reviews

"Kokoschka was a leading figure in the Central European expressionist movement. . . . Gӧrner presents a serviceable narrative that captures the 'inner tension, excitement and drama' of Kokoschka’s career."

CHOICE

With appropriately rhapsodic descriptions, Görner shows how incredibly . . . worldly this petty bourgeois from Pöchlarn has been.

Die Welt

"An unconventional but long expected approach to Kokoschka’s rich oeuvre: Rüdiger Görner does not restrict his considerations to the painter and his formal characteristics, but rather situates Kokoschka’s singular character against a social, literary and political background in a turmoiled Europe. As rarely so meticulously before him, Görner shows with concrete examples the evident importance that Kokoschka’s affinity to literature and politics have played in his creative process. Görner brings light into how contemporaries such as Thomas Mann and Karl Kraus looked at Kokoschka’s oeuvre. This new biography adequately enables a holistic look at Kokoschka as a whole person, with his paintings, writings, enemies and lovers, agonies and hopes."

Catherine Hug

Görner narrates  . . . in a compelling way.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"[Görner] paints a multifaceted image of Kokoschka as a person who was always en route and hardly ever arriving, traveling and 'schooling his vision' around the world."

New Art Examiner

"This biography is an enjoyable reading experience. Görner does not separate art from life. The artist was a driven man, always trying to cross any given border, be it moral, political or social. It is part of the veracity of his pieces of art that they hide none of these frictions. The book is fully convincing as the author pursues the same principle. Görner presents the entire Oskar Kokoschka, perhaps for the first time - and thus makes an unforgettable impression on the reader."

Johann Konrad Eberlein