310308: Belvedere: Kokoschka - Träumender Knabe

Belvedere: Kokoschka – Träumender Knabe – Enfant Terrible Shaved and talented One can’t incessantly rant and rave. Not even about the Österreichische Galerie and its administration, which has been installed last year. I visited the Belvedere, the lower Belvedere. And I must admit that the exhibit on Kokoschka’s early works “Träumender Knabe – Enfant Terrible” (Dreaming lad – Enfant Terrible), is really well done. Kokoschka is a neat character. And so is the show. People enjoy playing around with the word Expressionism when they talk about classic Modernism. The members of the artist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) were supposedly Expressionists, and so was Henri Matisse. But if someone should truly be considered an Expressionist, then it should be that boy from Pöchlarn, the one who shaved his head, that’s how talented he was. It is self-explanatory that these kinds of presentations teem with confessions made in the first tense. But the media supporting the ego is new. And this media is not so much the body but its shrinkage. The bearer of these ecstasies is the flesh - the naked, exposed, unveiled, gaping flesh. And this is how it presents itself – with a wound in its side or without any epidermis at all. The Wiener Aktionismus (Vienna Actionism) in a kind of personal union. In this atmosphere of realism no intention is able to subsist. However, if it does subsist, then the artist’s brain is confused. In this case the outcome of his confusion was the production of a substitute for Alma, in the form of a puppet. The puppet was redone for this exhibit and she really resembles Mrs. Mahler-Gropius-Werfel. I repeat: well done. Nothing to rage about? Well, yes: only the curator Alfred Weidlinger wrote the catalogue. You can check that by carefully examining the imprint. But he did not write the entire catalogue by himself – the introduction was written by Mrs. Husslein. Two pages against 280. Puppet against potential. What is there left to be said. Belvedere 1030 Wien, Prinz-Eugen-Strasse 27, until 12.05.08 www.belvedere.at

Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville

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310308

Unteres Belvedere
1030 Wien, Rennweg 6
Tel: +43 1 795 57-200, Fax: +43 1 795 57-121
Email: info@belvedere.at
http://www.belvedere.at
Öffnungszeiten: Täglich 10 bis 18 Uhr, Mittwoch 10 bis 21 Uhr

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