Letter from Hans Elias to Oskar Kokoschka, written on by Kokoschka and forwarded to J.P. Hodin

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[Translation/transcription]

6 May 1958

Dear Mr Kokoschka!

I am currently writing a little book about modern painting, so I would like to ask you for some information about your own development. Your career is perhaps one of the most interesting phenomena of our century.

If I remember rightly, as a young man you painted wonderful impressionist landscapes.

After that you came into a period when many people classified you as an expressionist, and as an expressionist (regardless of whether that designation was right or wrong) you became famous.

Well, some time ago I saw a book about Venice, published by Skira, which illustrated two wonderful pictures by you, one of Santa Maria della Salute, the other of the Dogana and the laguna. This came as a very pleasant surprise to me, and I said to myself: that Kokoschka has finally come back to really good painting.

Then at an art gallery in New York last year I saw a large original painting of yours depicting a bridge. This really fired my enthusiasm. This is what I thought as looked at it: I now have just one goal in life: to paint as well as Kokoschka. Last week I was at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington where I saw a wonderful portrait of lady that you had painted.

And I thought to myself, my memory must be deceiving me. Someone who paints such wonderful pictures cannot possibly have done those wild daubings I saw in Hamburg. Then this week an issue of Time magazine comes out and it reproduces two of your bad paintings (and praises them as good).

Which begs the following question: 'Why would an artist, perhaps the greatest artist of our time, have to put himself through a period of wild daubings?' Did you do it to stand out?

And why, in 1958, a year when you had such wonderful work to show - works that put all your contemporaries in the shade - why then would you allow anyone to exhibit those ham-fisted old daubings? You were painting badly on purpose back then, were you not? So why not burn and renounce that stuff and go down in history as a really great artist?

Could you please explain this to me?

With thanks and kind regards.

Yours sincerely,


Dr Hans Elias

Professor of Anatomy



8 July 1958

Dear Master Hodinus,

Is this professor of anatomy not a breath of fresh air? If you happen to have the time, perhaps you could write to tell him that he scarcely has enough time left to achieve his life's goal of painting as well as OK.

If you've published anything else, please send it. It was so lovely to have you here, only the time was too short! Pam is my favourite model. It'll happen one day! Chatinus painted himself very well. It's a shame he can't get to Vienna. Eternal storms here. I'm stuck on a landscape and we're supposed to be leaving in just three days. This time I'm dreading Salzburg, students and above all not being allowed to stay at home. Fischer sent catalogues and photos. The image in question was of course painted in my Dresden period, around 1920. Hamburger's translation is fantastically good and inspired. It's a shame he can't find time to translate my 'Spur im Treibsand' [A Sea Ringed with Visions] and prefers to do Hofmannsthal instead. It would have been so nice for our dear Pam to be able to read my lovely stories again without a dictionary. Everything one wants in life tends to drift away with the clouds.

All my love once again to Kathleen, Chatin, Elisabeth, Fischer's wife (Isolde?) or [illegible] to you my good man, and to my heart's sunshine,

Yours,

OK



[Note on envelope:]

Pinthus should come to Salzburg

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