front cover of Kokoschka
Kokoschka
The Untimely Modernist
Rüdiger Görner
Haus Publishing, 2020

The Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) achieved global fame with his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes. In this first English-language biography, Rüdiger Görner depicts the artist in all his fascinating and contradictory complexity. He traces Kokoschka’s path from bête noire of the bourgeoisie and “hunger artist” who had to flee the Nazis to a wealthy and cosmopolitan political and critical artist who played a significant role in shaping the European art scene of the twentieth century and whose relevance is undiminished to this day. 

In Kokoschka: A Life in Art, Görner emphasizes the artist’s versatility. Kokoschka, although best known for his expressionistic portraits and landscapes, was more than a mere visual artist: his achievements as a playwright, essayist, and poet bear witness to a remarkable literary talent. Music, too, played a central role in his work, and a passion for teaching led him to establish in 1953 the School of Seeing, an unconventional art school intended to revive humanist ideals in the horrific aftermath of war.  This biography shows brilliantly how all the pieces of Kokoschka’s disparate interests and achievements cohered in the richly creative life of a singular artist.

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Kurt Baschwitz
A Pioneer of Communication Studies and Social Psychology
Jaap van Ginneken
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
In this accessible, unique study of a forgotten but noteworthy figure, the author tells the story of the life of Kurt Baschwitz (1886—1968), a scholar who fled from the Nazis. He wrote six books, never translated into English, on four related themes: the press, propaganda, politics, and persecution. Baschwitz independently developed concepts that are now seen as key to communication science and socialpsychology, and the author places Baschwitz’s ideas in the wider context of his dramatic life and times.
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Kurt Kren
Structural Films
Edited by Nicky Hamlyn, Simon Payne, and A. L. Rees
Intellect Books, 2016
Kurt Kren was a vital figure in Austrian avant-garde cinema of the postwar period. His structural films—often shot frame-by-frame following elaborately prescored charts and diagrams—have influenced filmmakers for decades, even as Kren himself remained a nomadic and obscure public figure. Kurt Kren, edited by Nicky Hamlyn, Simon Payne, and A. L. Rees, brings together interviews with Kren, film scores, and classic, out-of-print essays, alongside the reflections of contemporary academics and filmmakers, to add much-needed critical discussion of Kren’s legacy. Taken together, the collection challenges the canonical view of Kren that ignores his underground lineage and powerful, lyrical imagery.
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