By Jimmy Merris
Clik here to view.
In an ongoing series, frieze invites artists to present a series of images that are important to them
Oskar Kokoschka with outstretched tongue
I went to Vienna a few years ago and saw some Oskar Kokoschka paintings at the Leopold museum. I like his paintings, his self-portraits, especially At the Easel (1922). This is actually a photograph of a postcard that I gave away to somebody, so I don’t know the year it was taken.
‘Oh, he’s a character!’ they say. Kokoschka famously commissioned a life-sized replica of his lost love, Alma Mahler. It features in some of his paintings, but Kokoschka compared it to a polar bear and eventually decided to do away with it.
‘I gave a big champagne Party with chamber music, during which my maid Hulda exhibited the doll in all its beautiful clothes for the last time. When dawn broke – I was quite drunk, as was everyone else – I beheaded it out in the garden and broke a bottle of red wine over its head.’
The second part of Jimmy Merris’s ‘Portfolio’ will be available tomorrow.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
