Kokoschka public and private in Czechoslovakia: new evidence, new insights
Drawing upon newly available letters by and about Oskar Kokoschka from Moscow and Zürich archives, this lecture revises extant interpretations of his art and activities in Czechoslovakia (1934–1938). Kokoschka’s public role as an outspoken advocate for human rights, his pursuit of democracy through educational reform (the Volkshochschule movement), and his role as a critic of fascist governments are related to his less understood, but elaborate, network of supporters, friends and family within and beyond the borders of the Republic. How Kokoschka exploited these relationships to both advance his public career and satisfy his personal desires and needs during this difficult and transitional period is elaborated. Kokoschka’s public/private nexus is examined in relation to his key ‘manifesto’ paintings of these years, namely: Portrait of T. G. Masaryk (1936), Self-Portrait of a ‘Degenerate’ Artist (1937-38), and the large overlooked canvas The Fountain (1938). Considering his public image and private life together, a more adequate reckoning emerges to answer the question of how Czechoslovakia and Kokoschka’s time there altered his self-conception and practice of being a modern artist, while also raising questions of what modernism had become by the 1930s in the West.
středa 12. června 2013 v 15.30 h
Ústav dějin umění Akademie věd ČR Husova 4, Praha 1, sál 117, I. patro