Page 44 - Studio International - August 1965
P. 44
J.P. Hodin
European Critic by G. S. Whittet
The drawings illustrated here are by Oskar Dog does not eat dog, as the saying goes, but there
Kokoschka, made of Hodin when the latter stayed with can occur a great deal of wounding and snarling
him at Villeneuve, in Switzerland, last year. They between critics proving that, despite professional
association, mutual benevolence is not to be con
were not portraits of Hodin now but a series of sidered a normal attitude. So that the imminent
biographical projections worked in crayon on paper. publication of the book J. P. Hodin European Critic,*
Drawing 1 shows Hodin as a young man, good a symposium edited by Walter Kern with essays by
looking, well-to-do walking with a silver-topped cane various hands and published as a tribute on his
on the Corso in Prague, reading Rilke, Kierkegaard and sixtieth birthday, must be regarded as a unique event.
Who is J. P. Hodin? A name certainly that appears
Hoffmansthal, interested in art, literature and music. above articles and on title pages of books devoted to
The second drawing Kokoschka tore up. He said art, who writes prefaces to catalogues and is known
'It is not you; it is too old, it is too bourgeois'. Drawing by name to many readers in several languages. If we
3 took three hours and, according to Kokoschka's look at Part II of the volume we learn more, for Hodin
comments, 'this is a man of experience in life. He has has several sides to his life and his career and not all of
stood his knocks but he is the man of passion them are known to those who know one side best.
Vladimir Vanek, a friend and a diplomat, tells us the
who takes interest furiously in life, in art, in women early story of Hodin. Names: Joseph Paul, born
but he is already marked by man'. 17th August, 1905 in Prague, son of a photographer.
The fourth drawing and the final one is reproduced Lonely, a reader, enchanted by the melancholy of that
in the book. It bears Kokoschka's inscription in great city, he studies law. After military service. he
German 'This is my last friend Pepi Hodin, writes and takes part in arranging musical concerts.
called Magister Artis, from my great Viennese time '. Dresden was his first resort on leaving his native city.
Berlin was his next stop where he wrote-articles,
In it, it seems to Hodin, he is drawing not only the novels, short stories. But the Nazi danger drove him
sitter but in him traces of people he knew also in Vienna from Germany to Paris, where he stayed for two years.
such as Arnold Schoenberg and an old friend Robert For ten years Scandinavia was to be his home after
Freund who died recently. The photograph is how the 1935 when he came to Sweden with his Swedish wife
camera lens of John Pasmore sees Hodin today. Birgit Akesson, a dancer and an artist. The marriage was
* London: Cory, Adams & Mackay. 50s.
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