Object #38

Arnold Schönberg
Gaze
ca. 1910
Oil on board
Catalogue raisonné 68

Belmont Music Publishers, Pacific Palisades

“With the artist, the external is not only defined by the internal but it is also created by the internal, as in any other creation, even that of the cosmos. Seen from this vantage point, the artworks of Schönberg permit us to recognize his emotional complex beneath the imprint of his form. First of all, we see immediately that Schönberg paints not in order to paint something ‘beautiful’ or ‘engaging,’ but that he paints without even thinking about the picture itself. Renouncing the objective result, he seeks to affix only his subjective ‘feelings,’ and uses for that purpose only the means which seem to him indispensable at that moment.”
(Wassily Kandinsky: Die Bilder, in: Arnold Schönberg. Mit Beiträgen von Alban Berg et al. Munich 1912)