Page 15 - Studio International - January 1971

OK Herwarth Walden never interfered in what title Columbus Bound have a symbolic signifi­ disturbing effect he had on the pleasure­
I was doing. We had more or less equal rights cance? loving and comfortable society of the Vienna
on the Sturm, we shared its fortunes and an OK The difference in style comes from the of that period ....
enthusiasm for Jugendstil, which had the technique I adopted in each series. I made 1963 Lo yo that
Sturm as its platform. For part of the time I preparatory drawings with a very fine pen for Leo played
was in Berlin I shared a small, shabby attic the Murder, The Hope of Women illustrations, you the Bach cantata, 'O Eternity, thou fear­
with an actor called RudolfBliimner. Walden and the result was a sharp, incisive line. The ful word', on the piano, and that this had
had put the room at our disposal. We were all contours of the figures consequently stand out inspired this cycle of lithographs. The playing
as poor as church-mice and the room con­ against the white of the paper. In the later was the immediate stimulus, but the general
tained little more than a bed, table and wash­ series I used lithographic chalks which permit significance was the battle between hope and
basin. We couldn't afford a hot meal even a more painterly treatment of the theme. With fear, or also perhaps between male and female
once a day. On Sundays we celebrated. Then this technique more depends on the contrasts principle. Had you made up your mind about
we treated ourselves to a hot sausage-a between black and white and on the various the theme before you heard Kesten berg play?
Wiirstchen-at Aschinger's, the cheapest eat­ intermediate tones which you can achieve OK Not at all. The theme developed while I
ing place in Berlin. I wrote a story about it all when you work in chalk. It is possible to get was working. I don't draw and paint accord­
-how Bliimner and I dreamed all the week of the various tones between black and white ing to a predetermined logical pattern. The
the most marvellous food. Of course there was even without using colour. These 'colour paint the
a girl in it as well, and we brought her up and values' are enormously important for me, of of my work. Every­
gave her expensive presents. It was a pity, but course, for they are vital to my conception of thing else is after the event. It
we later fell in love with Virginia at exactly space: the advancing and becoming clearer, was the text rather than the score of the Bach
the same moment. That was a tragedy even the adual disappearance, turning to yellow, cant which m starting-point.
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though Virginia never even existed. turning to white .... The text suggested a certain train of thought
WF The front page of the Sturm for 14 July WF And you can achieve this without colour, and
1910 reproduces an illustration to your drama precisely with black and white contrasts. and ex pictures,
Murder, The Hope of Women. The two fore­ OK Yes exactly. It was for this reason that I Certainly it's hope and fear that I'm depicting,
ground figures look as if they're tattooed, and took up lithography, because it permitted me wasn' down
the three heads in the background" combine to draw colourfully what I felt, without beforehand.
front and profile views, a device which was using colour-just with black and tonal WF Were your war experiences the inspiration
very important for Picasso, too, and which values. litho The
appears in your posters of 1912 and 1923. Columbus Bound is me again of course, and in Passion, which later appeared in the almanack,
Was there a particular source for these things? this sense the title is symbolic-bound by a Der Bildermann?
OK The tattooing, the way you describe the woman, whose features I have depicted on OK No, not in the exact sense of the word, but
drawing within the contours of the figures, is the title-page. My Columbus ventures out horr by as of the human
easy to explain. At the premiere of the play­ not to discover America but to recognize a made hun­
in the Vienna Kunstschau Theatre-the woman who binds him in chains. At the end dreds and thousands of men to stick bayonets
actors wore skin-tight, flesh-coloured costumes, she appears to him as a love-ghost, moon si couldn't
and I painted nerves and veins on them in woman. it sho profound
vivid colours. I wanted, in_ fact, to turn the WF Have you got any first-hand personal o my
figures inside out, to make the inner man memories of Karl Kraus, the author of The fellow hu experience
visible, and did exactly the same thing in the Great Wall of China? which the back to the Passion.
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illustrations to the play. OK I always sat at his table in the cafe fre­ sen c that
I am very proud of the combination of profile quented by all the literary people in Vienna, the various themes, the crowning with thorns,
and full face in the three heads which you and that was a great honour-certainly not Christ on the Mount of Olives and so on, are
noticed on the Sturm front page. This juxta­ everyone was allowed to. We made up a small connected with the profound I experi­
position is not a stylistic affectation, but an circle-Peter Altenberg, Adolf Loos, Georg enced badly
important contribution to the development of Trakl. Arnold Schoenberg came less fre­ wounded course.
seeing in our century. quently. For Karl Kraus correct mastery of Your o not
WF And about thirty years later this same the German language was proof that you written,
device can be seen on a monumental scale in belonged to the human race-his Bible was in yo designs the
Picasso's Guernica ! the grammar book. He tested his friends like numerous h painted of pro­
OK Yes, you're right. But I didn't conceive an Apostle tests his disciples. Only I had the duc actors. painted actresses
this device intellectually. I really saw those sort of freedom given to the court jester. He Kathe R d you
heads like that. Perhaps it has something to allowed me to paint him. I portrayed him at not?
do with my gift of second sight. As you know, this table in the cafe; what impressed me was OK Kathe Richter was a good and dear person
in my youth and long before I was wounded his caustic irony and wit, evident in the way who came from a very ordinary back ound.
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in the First World War, I saw myself in a kind he spoke and moved, apparent in every copy father i a
of hallucination, stretched out and wounded, of the Fackel-his paper-as though powerful friend she was like a mother to me and helped
trembling in the air. Perhaps the juxtaposition acid was being poured on soil. I always had me a eat deal wh I was in Dresden. I've
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in the heads has something to do with this this feeling whenever I saw him. In the first got her partly thank for my convalescence
ability-or sickness, if you want to call it that. picture I ever did of him-lost unfortunately after I was wounded in the Russian campaign.
WF There is a space of five years between the in the war-I painted a sun in this acid p Burning
illustrations for Murder, The Hope of Women yellow. He had a yellowish face. I saw this to her. Later she went a eat deal of
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(1908) and the litho aphs you did for yellow even in his eyes-I mostly get the idea trou to help those being
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Columbus Bound in 1913. The hard, sharp, of colour from the eyes-and it was because of Nazis for reason
cutting line in the earlier series gives way to a Karl Kraus that yellow has such powerful t pe he Durieux
softer and more painterly technique. How associations for me even to this day: because of
did this change come about, and does the of Karl Kraus, his approach to life, and the Cassirer, the art de 0
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