Red Gaze

“I do not think that one needs to interpret Schönberg’s paintings as among the psychological hypotheses of the ‘Audition colorée,’ that one hypothesis, conveyed most widely by the young Frenchmen (Rimbaud, René Ghil, Suarez de Mendoza), of a direct release of colorimagery through sounds. Rather, he wanted for once to attempt to communicate, through painting as well, the way he sees people and states of mind in a fulgurant clarity, through quickly tossed-off impressions. Without a doubt, this way is very powerful and very original, but equally frightening. Schönberg once said of one of his quartet movements that there was a feeling in it like when a vein bursts in the brain. In more than one of these paintings, one feels a dreadful tension, which perhaps is also intended to express such a physical condition. It is a frightful imagination that invents such things. Deep down to the foundation, into the elemental and enigmatic of existence, sudden, hastily veiled lights seem to fall. No longer paintings, but wild confessions of a tormented, afflicted human soul.” (Elsa Bienenfeld, An Exhibition of Paintings by Arnold Schönberg, in Neues Wiener Journal, 9 October 1910)