At home with Alfred Kubin

Well…this is exciting. After yesterday’s survey of drawings by Austrian artist Alfred Kubin I did a bit of hunting around. Now, what little I knew about Kubin’s life was that he was essentially a recluse and lived in a castle in the Austrian countryside, dying in 1959. And so the last thing I expected to find was footage of the man himself. But, here we are, with a brief clip from some time in the 1950s. What’s more it shows him in the very space where his nightmarish visions originated, greeting the camera with a grandpaternal smile and flicking through his chilling images as if leafing through old family snapshots.

I don’t usually post video without at least English subtitles, but I thought this was too good not to share. The commentary goes something like this:

For half a century, the demonic images of a visionary art were brought to life in this room. Within them is horror and terror, faces which raced ahead to find horrible affirmation in the experiences of the present age. Kubin discovered the form and forms of his art in brilliant black and white strokes, fascinated by the spectre of a century which he summons as a man and seeks to banish as an artist.

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