Letter from Oskar Kokoschka to J.P. Hodin

Description

[Translation/transcription]

Royal Hotel, Ullapool then criss-crossing the country and in London around mid-month

2 to 6 October 1945

Tell Mr White he'll receive his letter at the end of October, once I have read it.

Firstly a thousand thanks for sending the wonderful article in New Writing and the shorter one in the Swiss paper. The Chel?ický article will prove to be historic because no-one here in England besides you and me (and in the rest of the world probably no more than you could count on one hand) knows anything about meteors in the 'dark' middle ages. I wish a fraction of this knowledge would open the eyes of the present age!

You've done a particularly good job of drawing out everything that the Nejedly-Rosenbergs in Prague might have been able to showcase today if only they weren't also Nazi rascists, not to mention illiterate. The Czech nation will be the world's salvation - now that the world has invented the atom bomb.

If you republish the O.K. article, please leave Schiele out of it. He gets on my nerves as much as all my other imitators. I'm annoyed that he had the gaul to spoil some of my own drawings by smearing them with paint and foisting them on Honig's bookshop in Vienna for good money as 'watercolours' by me. This mention somewhat spoilt my enjoyment of your fine work.

Send the New Writing article to Dr Wilhelm R. Valentiner via Frau Grete Ring (East Sheen) London, SW14, telephone Prospect 6918, an associate at Paul Cassirer's art dealership. You should mention my name to her and to him. Both of them are friends of mine. He was the director of the Detroit museum for many years but is now thinking about spending more time on his art historical work. Lives in New York, but I don't know his new address. Do I need to send these two articles back to you immediately or can it wait until I'm back in London?

Also, where did you hear about an exhibition of my work at the Metropolitan Museum?
Frau Dr Grete Ring has already been making enquiries and has asked Dr Valentiner, but she didn't know anything about it. She would need to be informed right away because she can help and has a particular interest in really good works being shown there. One also needs to beware of forgeries, which are popping up all over the place again. The first greetings from Prague, for example, was a request for confirmation of the authenticity of four photos, which were all forgeries. While I was living in Bohemia they uncovered loads of such forgeries until I managed to find the factory that was producing them. But apparently it survived the Nazi era quite happily and they're now prospering because I'm not there to keep an eye on them myself. These low-lives are deceiving poor people who often think it's a safe place to invest the only money they have left. I was told of one case, a 'German' Czechoslovak who survived Theresienstadt and is now being expelled, who handed his savings over to one such low-life for a roll of four 'forged' Kokoschkas. What's one supposed to say or do about that? I hear similar stories even from Palestine about people who were cheated in Prague or Brünn when trying to buy something of lasting value that could easily be carried when they fled. In thirty long years my signature was never once dishonoured, not even commercially, unlike the signatures of all the directors of the banknote printing companies of all the countries I lived in for those thirty years. But then came the forgers and destroyed what I was so proud of insofar as it concerns states and goverments. In the age of the economists the states and governments have never had anything to do with the cultural side of this matter. Is it not funny that Sir Keynes should be going to North America to beg for food while here they're running a campaign to increase birth rates! Just like it was under Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. They're the economists, and that's why a hundred million Europeans are now starving!

The first part of our Scottish journey had a lucky star. I was able to work well again from the first to the last day. Not so in Ullapool, where we stayed in a little cottage with some people who really got on my nerves. It was also cold and very wet, with storms like hurricanes. Yesterday we relocated to the good old Royal Hotel to dry out and recover for a few days. We left those people behind and [illegible] sunshine in vain, but I have lost a month of my life when the rest of it already looks like a work calender in November! Cursed Englishmen!
Good health to you both. I look forward to seeing you again. Much love.

Yours,

OK

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