Painting Influences (Malerische Einflüsse)

Leonardo

Painting Influences (Malerische Einflüsse)Author(s): Arnold SchoenbergSource: Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1981), p. 58Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574485 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 14, p. 58 Pergamon Press. 1981 Printed in Great Britain.

PAINTING INFLUENCES

(MALERISCHE EINFLUSSE)*

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951 )

It is necessary that I myself clarify a number of inaccuracies which have been spread around about me.

I am starting with the rectification of a lie, which was probably spread by its author in order to take revenge on me. Dr. Paul Stefan for whom I apparently showed my contempt a little too distinctly claims that I was influenced by a painter; and Dr. Wellesz, the other biographer with whom I am blessed, copies it in print, with the modification that I was influenced by Ko- koschka.

Really to recognize these lies as such it is enough: 1. To know that Dr. Stefan, when he wants to tell

the truth still lies, for which reason his biography is teeming with inaccuracies. One could now believe that, if he wants to lie he would have to tell the truth. But the truth is for him unrecognizable and above all, inex- pressible and so he just simply tells another lie.

2. One only needs to look at my pictures that were painted in 1910 (ten) and to realize that, if able to be influenced I would have to be influenced by the pictures of a painter, and indeed as a painter.

3. However, if one compares my pictures with those of Kokoschka one has to recognize forthwith their complete independence. I painted 'Gazes,' which I have already painted elsewhere. This is something which only I could have done, for it is out of my own nature and is completely contrary to the nature of a real painter. I never saw faces but, because I looked into peoples' eyes, only their 'gazes.' This is the reason why I can imitate the gaze of a person. A painter, however, grasps with one look the whole person-I, only his soul.

4. However, if one thinks of this certain Mr. Gerstl then the matter stands thus. When this person invaded my house he was a student of Keffler for whom he supposedly painted too radically. But it was not quite so radical, for at that time his ideal, his model, was Liebermann. In many conversations about art, music and sundry things I wasted many thoughts on him as on everbody else who wanted to listen. Probably this had confirmed him in his, at that time, rather tame radical- ism to such a degree, that when he saw some quite miscarried attempts of mine, he took their miserable appearance to be intentional and exclaimed: 'Now I have learned from you how one has to paint.' I believe that Webern will be able to confirm this. Immediately afterwards he started to paint 'Modern.' I have today no judgment if these pictures are of any value. I never was very enthusiastic about them.

*These texts by the composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874 -1951), translated from German by Gertrud Zeisl, appeared in the Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 2, 233 (1978). Reprinted with permission.

I am not surprised that these lies are so readily believed. For lies possess much more power of persua- sion than the truth. Moreover, it fits so well into the fuzziness, which is so characteristic for the thinking of the average person.

This is the way their brain works: (1) Schoenberg composed something original (2) therefore it is not by him but (without statement

of reasons) (3) he gets it from somebody else. But: The idiots do not ask: Where does the other person get it?

Arnold Schoenberg, Los Angeles, 11/II 1938

Schoenberg pasted the following 'note' on the margin of Marion Bauer's Twentieth Century Music where the statement is made that '.. . Schoenberg came under the influence of Wassily Kandinsky ...' p. 211. In magenta colored pencil, the name Kandinsky is underlined and the following is written in the margin: wohl eher umgekehrt, meaning-'rather the other way around.'- Ellen Kravitz, Ed.

My acquaintance with Kandinsky, whom previously I did not even know by name, was started with a letter, which he addressed to me to Vienna, after a concert in Munich (arranged by Emil Gutman) had aroused his attention. In this concert, however, my two quartets (1 and 2) and several songs were performed (Gutheil Schoder and Rose). Kandinsky sent me with this letter (1911) photos of his paintings and later his book Das Geistige in der Kunst for which I thanked him soon afterwards by sending him my Harmonielehre. At that time these compositions were ready: 3 Piano Pieces, 5 Orchestra Pieces, George-Lieder and Erwartung as well as all the pictures, which I had painted from 1906-1911. Kandinsky, when he saw them, called them 'Visions,' while I had named them 'Gazes.' Pierrot, in which certainly no Kandinsky influence could be claimed, as well as the small piano pieces and the Opus 22 Orches- tra Pieces, I wrote partly before the war and since 1914 I was out of contact with Kandinsky.

This is as much nonsense as my being supposedly influenced by Kokoschka. Everything important had been done before Kokoschka emerged! I am also not influenced by another painter who, on the contrary, claimed to have learned painting through me (which I really never understood) as my 'Gazes' prove which are unique in their way.

True, I am presumably in some way connected with contemporaries but hardly with these.

Arnold Schoenberg Chautauqua 5/VIII 1934

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