Tag Archives: Oskar Kokoschka

humor in art: hurt idealism

It would seem that humour and style are inseparable. But humour itself is not-never was-mere jocularity. Humour is a way of feeling about life, and when humour is great it is almost never without one of its opposite moods- tenderness, … Continue reading

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the paranormal: distance to psi and back

…Furthermore, most of us, even if not bored to death by statistics, are apt to look at parapsychology with the prejudices of nineteenth-century mechanistic science. Experimentation in thought transference or precognition is, we assume, a pastime for Victorian parlors, a … Continue reading

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surreal values: spiritually adrift in the value traps

In spite of recounting at length her zealotry for “trash” and “kitsch,” which she famously claimed to prefer over serious minded films, Seligman never calls Kael to task for disingenuously backing away from her clarion call of the 1960s. “When … Continue reading

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collapse of the soul: the flux of the IT

He could never really control what he did or what he wrote. Artaud said these defects of form  were often rescued from complete nothingness. The raw results attributed to ” a collapse of the soul at its center, a kind … Continue reading

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ART AS HELL IN A HAND-CART: The New Objectivity?

“The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.” …”All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.” (Walter Benjamin )…”A work of art carries its defence within itself.” ( Jean Cocteau). Entartete Kunst … Continue reading

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WEIMAR AND THE VIOLENCE OF AMNESIA: Trope of a Troubled Burial

Accusations of elitism, populous slanders of the word as pejorative have been unleashed as aprt of the American cultural landscape in this season of discontent. Can we take lessons form the Weimar Republic? The right wing tone of academia in … Continue reading

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WEIMAR ARCADE: Shoot the Hypnotist First

Or is the hypnotist merely the decoy, the puppet of even greater evil? The Weimar resemblance? Its nervous, alienated, and often brilliant culture can seem uncomfortably like our own. But, is the sickness that killed the German Republic of the … Continue reading

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VIENNA & MISGUIDED GENIUS: Ambiguous Dreams and Joyful Apocalypse

Although scholars agreed that Vienna was not the only place where Modernism achieved sweeping successes, it was still common practice to regard “Vienna as the focal point of European Modernism” . Scholars consider that European Modernism reached its purest and most concentrated expression in Vienna … Continue reading

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GOODNIGHT VIENNA: Vagabonds Exiled to a Dark Void

Early twentieth-century Viennese modernity, obsessed with identity in crisis, was especially preoccupied with the play between external appearances and internal dimensions of the self. How could it not? No doubt, all roads eventually lead to Freud as part of the … Continue reading

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OLD VIENNA OBSCURED BY CLOUDS: Psychic Conflict, Anxiety and Hysteria

In a letter written in 1892 to Wilhelm Fliess,  Freud made a remark, ” No neurasthenia or analogous neurosis exists without a disturbance in the sexual function.” “I am pretty well alone here in tackling the neuroses. They regard me … Continue reading

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