United States or Canada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He portrays mounds of corpses, the fruit of war, which revolt the spectator, both on account of the folly and crime suggested and the morbid taste of the artist. Kubin's Salome is the last word in the interpretation of that mellifluous damsel. It is a frank caricature of Beardsley, partially nude, the peculiar quality of the plate being the bestial expression of the face.
He, too, like Breughel, is fond of trussing up a human as if he were a pig and then sticking him with a big knife. Every form of torture from boiling oil to retelling a stale anecdote is shown. The elder Teniers, Hieronymus Bosch, Breughel, Goya, and among later artists, Rops, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Aubrey Beardsley, are apparent everywhere in Kubin's work. Neither is Rembrandt missing.
Kubin's favourite authors for years were Schopenhauer and Mainländer, the latter a disciple of the mighty Arthur and one who put into practice a tenet of his master, for he attained Nirvana by his own hand.
Throughout Kubin's work I detect traces of spleen, hatred of life, delight in hideous cruelty, a predisposition to obscurity and a too-exclusive preoccupation with sex; indeed, sex looms largest in the consciousness of the new art. To burlesque the human figure, to make of it a vile arabesque, a shameful sight, is the besetting temptation of the younger generation.
Word Of The Day