"A Certain Fantastical Verisimilitude." The
Life and Art of the Elusive Stefan Eggeler
by Fiona Piccolo
Introduction.
This essay was originally published in the Side Real Press edition of Kokain
(Side Real Press 2022) which was in itself a collection of translations
(by Joe Bandel) of the original rare 1925 magazine for which Eggeler
was the art editor. It
has been slightly tweaked to enhance its appearance online, a few corrections made to the text and extra illustrations added.
Please note this essay it is strictly the © of Fiona Piccolo.
Although there is some overlap, for those seeking a biography of the artist, the essay 'The Shadowy World Of Stefan Eggeler' by John Hirschhorn-Smith (also from the Side Real Press Kokain volume) is HERE.
"A Certain Fantastical Verisimilitude." The
Life and Art of the Elusive Stefan Eggeler
by Fiona Piccolo
“Stefan Eggeler: not Dr. Stephan Eggeler (sic)”. Opening one of his notebooks with this evocative sentence, Eggeler explicitly drew a line between his parallel artistic and legal careers. The artist was born in 1894, and raised in Vienna where, except for a few years in Upper Austria, he would pursue his entire education and spend most of his life. He was trained both as a painter and an engraver at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts and other major art schools, while simultaneously following a law curriculum at the University of Vienna. He concluded both his courses in 1917 now bearing two names: Stefan Eggeler, artist, and Stephan Eggeler, Doctor of Law. Like him, many artists of the period had a secondary professional occupation which, being generally more practical, ensured some form of financial security in the increasingly difficult Austrian interwar economic context. In the contemporary art world, however, the question of legitimacy in relation to the artist’s status was often at the centre of debates differentiating between a professional, academically trained type and what was considered its amateur or dilettante counterpart. Whilst many many so-called professional artists often had an occupation parallel to their practice that was deemed acceptable such as art teacher or restorer, other artists were relegated to the category of the Auch-Künstler or “also-artist”, as coined by the contemporary German critic Curt Glaser. Eggeler’s case is particular in the sense that, although his parallel legal career had no connection to art, he was still an academically trained artist and would therefore enjoy a certain amount of recognition. Nevertheless, Eggeler’s need to reaffirm, in a notebook already exclusively dedicated to documenting his artistic production, the distinction between his practical and creative occupations tends to indicate that he was himself intent on asserting his legitimacy as an artist.
Alongside such considerations, what these notebooks and other archival documents show is the creation by Eggeler of his own artistic persona. In an undated autobiographical piece entitled “chronological overview” the artist recorded moments of his life between 1894, the date of his birth, and 1922. In the first few entries, Eggeler describes a solitary childhood spent in imperial palaces, due to his father’s position as a court official, surrounded by Biedermeier furniture in enormous rooms with metre-thick walls, walking along alleyways lined with age old trees and roaming among ruins of mythical statues and ancient monuments. Such Gothic accents help set the stage and establish a close correspondence with the dark thematic and stylistic vein that was meant, we are to understand, to develop in his art. Indeed, Eggeler’s works most often correspond to the phantastisch or fantastic genre, with incursions into the comedic and romantic register, yet always darkened by a grotesque, absurd streak and elements of horror. Thus, later, when he wrote the first part of his unpublished autobiography entitled Die Geschichte meines Lebens (The Story of my Life), Eggeler used similar atmospheric literary devices to merge life and art. The opening chapter recounts his arrival in Gmünd in 1918, described as a dark, muddy, medieval-like ancient town, where, on his way to his new job, he passes by a funeral parlour and other such gloomy scenes and meets with sombrely grotesque characters. He even makes overt references to popular tales and stories like that of Die Schildbürger (The Citizens of Schilda) which he illustrated in a cycle in 1919. Hence, Eggeler becomes a character of sorts in his creations, incarnating a persona of the dark, strange and estranged artist type. This is a recurring process in his printed oeuvre, where recurring characters like the musician or Pierrot represent artistic emanations of Eggeler himself.
Although largely devoted to his research in preparation for print cycles, Eggeler’s notebook also reveals a self-awareness and engagement with matters related to his public image. On the first few pages he recorded the occurrencies of his name in the contemporary press, the text of which he generally simply copied by hand or sometimes kept as newspaper clippings. Other pages contain short texts describing his practice, indicating what Kunstrichtung or artistic current he associated with, what his Darstellungsform or formal style was, what his Stoffe or favoured subjects and themes were and finally, which printing techniques he used. Parts of this were then incorporated into what seems to be the handwritten draft for either an advertisement, a feature in the press or perhaps an exhibition catalogue. Regardless, it shows Eggeler’s involvement in the contemporary discourse divulging information about himself as an artist and his art in general.
It seems it took Eggeler a few years to fully commit to the artistic medium of the print. Since he received a substantial academic training as a painter, he had developed a network of commissioners and experimented with various formats such as canvas, ivory and wood and genres such as landscape, portraiture or scenes of everyday life, he could have chosen to pursue a career in this medium. Nevertheless, it is the art of the print that Eggeler elected as his main means of expression. In view of the contemporary artistic context, this was not merely a choice dictated by personal preferences, but one which aligned with current artistic trends. Eggeler decided in 1920 that he would abandon his painting and pastel commissions to focus solely on the composition of prints. In German-speaking countries the 1920s mark the peak of a momentum experienced by that medium since the turn of the century. While it had long been associated with the “lesser” arts and simple reproduction processes, the artistic quality of the print was somewhat rediscovered at the end of the nineteenth century. By then, the difference was made between the “original” print, created and signed by an artist, and the reproductive print as used in newspapers and other mass media. It thus gradually gained approval in artistic circles to the point of being re-elevated to the rank of fine art and becoming a very popular means of expression. In parallel, the Buchkunst, or art of the book which focused on design, typography and overall aesthetic matters including illustration, was going through its own revival period. The original print was thus pushed forward in the centre of artistic creation and critical debate.
In this, Austria was an early representative, if not exactly a precursor, of innovation and experimentation within the graphic arts leading to their re-emergence. Founded in 1871, the Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst (Society for Reproducible Art) was looking to foster the development and survival of graphic arts such as engraving, etching or woodcut which were then considered to be threatened by relatively new mechanical technologies like photography. The society published and distributed portfolios containing prints in various techniques and by various artists to its members, alongside a newsletter itself featuring some critical commentary on the similar works by contemporary art historians. Those portfolios would notably inspire the creation and ethos of famous periodicals such as Pan and Jugend in Germany, and of course Ver Sacrum, the official magazine of the Viennese Secession, in Austria.
A selection of issues of Ver Sacrum
Starting in 1892 in Munich and quickly followed by other larger European cities, artists who wished to break away from convention and the restrictive influence of the academy organised into groups where new, modern practices and views on art could flourish. These groups called themselves “Secessions” in order to claim and symbolise their independence from the old and somewhat authoritarian academic model. Of the many burgeoning secessionist art groups in the early twentieth century, the Vienna Secession was known for the particular emphasis it put on graphic arts. Similarly, as Eggeler’s artistic education shows, many institutions in Austria and more particularly Vienna provided training in the graphic arts, as well as platforms for its exhibition and circulation. From the independent and innovative such as the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), to the more conventional and traditional like the Academy, their interest in the print medium demonstrated the importance of its artistic status.
Eggeler was never part of what has come to be called the “avant-garde”. From the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, a myriad of avant-gardist groups arose in the wake of Secessionist movements, subscribing to the martial symbolism of their predecessors. However, whereas Secessionist groups can be described rather as reformists, since their independence did not require a complete dissociation from of tradition, the avant-garde was a clearly radical artistic current looking to overthrow the conventional academic rule, thus making way for new, innovative, cutting-edge art. Neither a secessionist or an avant-gardist, Eggeler can rather be thought of as “modern”, in the sense of his being of his own time – neither a traditionalist, nor a forward-looking innovator. His printed work indeed demonstrates an interesting stylistic combination of a somewhat nostalgic, belated fin-de-siècle aesthetic and a more modern streak inspired by current artistic trends such as the unavoidable “Expressionism”.
Such illustration cycles as he created for Hanns Heinz Ewers’ (1871-1943) short story ‘Die Herzen der Könige’ (The Hearts of Kings, 1922) or Arthur Schnitzler’s (1862-1931) ‘Der Schleier der Pierrette’ (The Veil of Pierrette, 1922) are great examples of this. In it, Eggeler makes clear stylistic references to the late nineteenth century’s dark and so-called “decadent” phase of Jugendstil, or Art Nouveau, with his sinuous figures and intricate, quasi ornamental detailed drawing. Yet to the distinctive swirling, hypnotic arabesques of clear-cut, continuous lines in Jugendstil, Eggeler opposes the typically expressionist jagged line, organised in a teeming weave of countless scratches. Similarly, rather than using the representative highly contrasted, solid blocks of black and white that may be found in such archetypal works such as those by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), he rather builds volumes and masses with densely crafted cross-hatching. In this Eggeler is to be related to contemporary artistic figures such as the fellow Austrian Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) or the German Hugo Steiner-Prag (1880-1945), whose oeuvres both notably share the same focus on macabre, grotesque and fantastical themes.
In this respect, the subjects chosen by Eggeler also reveal an ambivalent relation to past and present, folklore and modernity. Such print cycles as Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis Night, 1922) and Der Spielmann und der Teufel im Verwunschenen Schloss (The Musician and the Devil in the Enchanted Castle, 1920) are clearly referencing a specifically Germanic folkloric tradition. This interest for old tales and legendary motifs was very popular among artistic circles at the turn of the century, who sought, through re-appropriation and reinterpretation of their cultural heritage, to create a new and specifically “German” kind of art. Expressionist groups such as Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter are most famous examples of this trend. It is concomitant with the print revival previously mentioned, when typically medieval techniques such as woodcut were rediscovered and massively popularised, to the point where it became a symbol of Expressionist graphic art. In this sense, it is no surprise that Eggeler chose this specific method for his interpretation of The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was (to which he gave the title Der Spielmann und der Teufel, which translates as The Musician And The Devil In The Enchanted Castle), originally published in the first volume of the Grimm brothers’ Children’s and Household Tales collection. This way, folklore and tradition are not only referenced to in the direct citation of old tales but also in the use of an “ancient” printing technique. It is accordingly no coincidence that this particular cycle is one of the few of Eggeler’s works where he seems to have adopted more fully the Expressionist stylistic vocabulary.
Illustration by Hugo Steiner-Prag from Gustav Meyrink’s Der Golem (1915)
The print is an artistic form very often associated with the written word. First because of its also being a work on paper and thus a suitable accompaniment, but more importantly because its reproducibility makes it a most practical method of illustration. Regardless of the function and status accorded to illustrations, be it mere decorative ancillary, explanatory complement, or enlightening supplement, they are never simple mirror-like visual translations of what is said in the text. Rather, illustrations are first the result of a selective process, the illustrator choosing which elements of the text are to be depicted or not, and second a materialisation of his own interpretative process. An illustration is thus a reflection of the artist’s individual, personal understanding of the text and in this sense, the illustrator is first and foremost a reader. Eggeler was evidently an avid reader himself and, at least in part, more particularly of works in the fantastic, macabre and grotesque vein. In a short autobiographical handwritten document, as he recorded his move to a different area in Vienna, Eggeler added a note explaining that his new place was adjacent to the (Jewish) ghetto which he found very similar to the environment described in Gustav Meyrink’s (1868-1932) novel The Golem (1915). This anecdote shows the impact and influence not only of literature, but of this particular literary genre even within the artist’s personal life. In a professional context, when Eggeler discusses illustration projects with authors, he occasionally does so by positioning himself as the reader for whom his images are intended. In a letter to Ewers for example, Eggeler voices concerns about illustrating the author’s novel Vampir (1921), since in his opinion, the illustrations might in this particular case disrupt and spoil the elusiveness and strangeness of the vampire motif, ra
ther than enhance it. Here the artist has the reading experience in mind.
Illustration
from an unissued portfolio of Ten Drawings to Hanns Heinz Ewers’ Vampir
(1921) held at the Heinrich Heine Institute, Düsseldorf. (Image
courtesy Heinrich Heine Institute, Düsseldorf).
Another sign of the importance and influence of literature in Eggeler’s work is to be found in what is left today of his correspondence, where most letters are written to or received from contemporary authors. It is thus to a contemporary literary world, rather than to artistic circles, that the artist seems to have been connected. Moreover, even outside the field of illustration proper, when he published print cycles outside the book format and independently of the text, Eggeler’s works often referenced authors of various genres. In Musikalische Miniaturen (Musical Miniatures, 1921) for example, the titles of each print in the series like Pierrot, Lied von der Liebe und vom Tode (Song of Love and Death), Kriegslied (War Song) or Trinkslied (Drinking Song) are most likely direct references to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathoustra (1885) with parts entitled “The Drunken Song”, “The Dance Song” or “The Grave Song”. The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), like those of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), were extremely popular among artistic circles in the early 20th century, an influence to which Eggeler was certainly no stranger.
Similarly, Eggeler’s seeming obsession with puppet theatre and Commedia dell’arte characters, who keep reappearing throughout his oeuvre, is one he shared with a great numbers of contemporary Austrian artists like Egon Schiele (1890-1918), Rudolf Wacker (1893-1939) or Franz Sedlacek (1891-1945), but also writers like Arthur Schnitzler and Gustav Meyrink, as well as composers like Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951). The inclusion in his print cycle Amine, eine Liebesgeschichte (Amine, a Love Story, 1920) of the Kaffeehaus or Coffee House motif, which was the idiosyncratic Viennese meeting place of both literary and artistic circles, seems like an apt reference to the contemporary intellectual milieu in which Eggeler evolved.
Eggeler may thus be characterised as a “literary” artist, not only with regards to his personal interests and professional relations, but more importantly because of his continuous artistic exploration of the image’s narrative possibilities. Indeed, even his passionate interest in classical music corresponds to forms of storytelling which in turn fed into his graphic compositions. For example, one of Eggeler’s favourite composers was Robert Schumann (1810-1856), who was himself greatly inspired by and often referenced the fantastic tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). Following the famous example of Max Klinger (1857-1920) who, from the 1880s onwards, produced print cycles bearing titles such as Opus, Intermezzi or Brahms Fantasy, many graphic artists used music as a way to enhance the narrative properties of their works. Print cycles were thus put in parallel with musical partitions, implying their similar status as readable objects, regardless of their non-textual identity. Eggeler himself experimented with this relation between the musical and the visual in his cycle Der Spielmann und der Teufel. In it, as he explains in his notes, line and colour are meant to express various musical intensities and atmospheres referenced in terms such as “majestoso”, “pomposo” and “furioso”. The artist was not only a great connoisseur of music but also a multi-talented player of instruments like the organ, the accordion and the harmonium, amongst others. As such, he perfectly understood the expressive qualities of the musical medium which he then tried to infuse in his graphic compositions.
Eggeler was also a collector of rare and ancient books and in conjunction with his aforementioned literary connections, it comes as no surprise that the ex libris was another print format that he experimented. Placed on the inside of a book’s front cover, these small prints serve to indicate to whom it belongs and correspond in their own way to a form of narrative. They generally mention the name of the owner and sometimes their profession. The most elaborate ones, such as those created by Eggeler, can be described as small interpretative portraits. These “portraits” are not necessarily figurative and do not always represent the person themselves, but can refer to them by way of symbolic associations: the scale of justice for a judge, for example, or a particular building, animal, object, etc., which helps reveal the person’s identity. As a parallel to the practice of illustrating, the person to be portrayed can be viewed here as the text to be illustrated; Eggeler first “read” his commissioners, in a sense, to be able to represent them. In the short text of an advert Eggeler explains that the ex libris “should relate most intimately to the owner of the book; it is, as it were, the emblem of their mind”. Accordingly, although a single, individual image, the ex libris contains and tells the story of the owner. The narrative strategy here is based on a metaphorical combination of ideas whereby the object or subject represented carries multiple meanings.
There are two sides to Eggeler’s activity as a print artist: that which relates to the medium of the book with his practice of illustration and production of ex libris, and the other associated with the portfolio containing independent cycle compositions. As the first side was previously related to his position of creator as “reader”, so the second may be here assimilated to that of the artist as “writer”. As an artistic form, the portfolio lies in between the book and the album, containing stories told not by way of a written text, but by that of an image series. Although a portfolio may also contain some text, like the book, it is most often limited to a short piece such as a preface, a foreword or a dedication. In Eggeler’s oeuvre where portfolios feature prominently, they generally follow this formal pattern. As he describes them himself in a notebook, his “Zyklen” or cycles which he published in portfolios were “etched short stories, dramas, pantomimes, poems”. Eggeler significantly uses literary terms to qualify his artistic compositions thus attributing to himself the role and capacity of a writer, telling stories in images rather than words. Indeed, while most of his cycles can be described as “etched short stories”, it seems that other literary forms are also recognisable. In Die Drei Freier (The Three Suitors) for example, where three suitors take turns in wooing a young bourgeoise, the visual narrative seems to emulate the structure of a counting rhyme. Similarly in Musikalische Miniaturen, Eggeler’s only cycle which isn’t overtly narrative, the structure is rather reminiscent of a poem, where the images of the series would as it were, correspond to stanzas, each developing on a given theme.
Although there is a part of invention in the illustration process previously described, here, the artist is a true inventor not only of the images’ contents and the interpretation they carry, but first and foremost of the content and form of the story itself. Whereas the ex libris told a story by way of the single image, the series relies on its intrinsic multiplicity and thus uses sequence as its main narrative strategy. The term “cycle” specially chosen by Eggeler to designate his serial works already suggests a time-pattern based on succession, with a circumscribed beginning and end. Numbering each print of his series similarly allowed him to make clear their primordial function as narrative works, rather than as an assemblage, selection or even collection of a few individual pieces.
Most of Eggeler’s printed oeuvre was published in luxurious and limited bibliophilic editions of illustrated books and print portfolios. His targeted audience was therefore one of means, and more importantly, one representative of “high” culture in relation to such categories as “fine” arts, as opposed to “low” or “popular” culture associated with mass media and large scale distribution. In 1925, however, after approximately ten years of publishing and distributing his art via such elitist editorial circuits, Eggeler elected the magazine as the platform for his new creative experiments. In association with a certain Fritz Bauer, he thus became co-editor and illustrator of the literary and artistic magazine Kokain. Eine moderne Revue. On the covers and pages of Kokain, Eggeler adopts a decisively expressionistic stylistic vocabulary with garish colours and thick, black jagged lines. However, by the mid-twenties when Kokain came out “Expressionism” had long since left the ranks of the avant-garde to join those of widely popular, democratised artistic trends. The two early and major representative groups of the movement, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, had already dissolved before World War I. Expressionism continued to develop during the war nevertheless and reached its peak right after it when legions of artistic groups emerged in cities throughout Germany resulting in the creation of ever rising numbers of magazines defending and promoting such credo, those publications helping to foster and increase their public visibility and acceptance. Following the fall of the monarchy in 1918, Expressionism was largely politicised and defended revolutionary ideals. The Expressionist aesthetic thus flooded the urban landscape through the diffusion of prints, posters and manifestos directed at the masses, the interests of which the movement wished to defend. Nevertheless, in parallel with such radical political engagements, Expressionism, which had already been adopted by the bourgeois collector, was now being gradually institutionalised. Museums were buying, collecting and exhibiting works such as those by the once considered radical artists of Die Brücke and Expressionism's stylistic properties became an integral part of the German-speaking world’s larger visual culture.
Thus, by appropriating a clearer Expressionist visual language in the more widely circulated format of the magazine, Eggeler made apparent his move towards popular imagery while maintaining ties to higher visual categories of modern fine art. In the particular context of the magazine accordingly, Pamphlet literature or Pamphlet-fiction, a straightforward product of popular culture, should not be overlooked as a visual source of inspiration. From the 1870s, pamphlet publishers were already using the shock-factor of bright multiple colours and daring illustrations to sell their small story-booklets, leading to the later development of pulp fiction. In one of his notebooks, Eggeler himself references one of these Volks broschüren (folk booklets) as a specific source of inspiration.
This slight stylistic redirection was a means of assimilation into an entertainment culture to which Kokain was proudly subscribing, as demonstrated in the works published in its first issue. The deliberately provocative title of the magazine serves in this sense to indicate the particular boldness of Eggeler’s and Bauer’s vision. They did not hesitate to publish stories dealing with subjects such as lesbian love, which was then considered extremely scandalous. Kokain is of course also a direct reference to the contemporary “Goldenen Zwanziger” or Roaring Twenties, a fleeting moment of artistic and cultural flourishing and prosperity during the interwar years. On an artistic level, Eggeler thus clearly engaged himself in a new, to him, relationship with “popular culture”.
From the early days of his career Eggeler had developed a strong network of relations to the contemporary literary world. Long before he came to the magazine format, his focus on the fantastic genre already demonstrated his affinities with the “popular” side of artistic tendencies. Indeed, when the fantastic short story sparked renewed interests in German-speaking countries at the beginning of the 20th century, it expanded beyond elite intellectual circles and spread to the masses making it a newly popular genre. Authors that Eggeler befriended like Meyrink, Ewers or Strobl were famous representatives of this new hybrid literary trend straddling both the “high” and “low” cultural spheres. In terms of the magazine, Eggeler’s relation to Karl Hans Strobl (1877-1946) may have been more particularly influential. As well as a renowned novelist and writer of short stories, Strobl was previously editor of the magazine Der Orchideengarten (The Orchid Garden) whose focus on fantastic, occult and erotic literature is occasionally reminiscent of the thematic direction in Kokain. In what remains of Eggeler’s correspondence, are two letters from Strobl dating from the 1920s; although neither mentions the magazine, they show that author and artist were in contact when Kokain was underway. Eggeler’s associate, Fritz Bauer, was himself rather well connected to the contemporary press since he was also the editor of a daily newspaper called Wiener Zeitung am Abend (Vienna’s Evening Paper).
Eggeler’s keen interest for so-called “entertainment” culture largely predates the co-creation of Kokain. This is particularly remarkable through his early association with Hanns Heinz Ewers whose literary oeuvre was often associated with the terms “Trivialliteratur” and “Hintertreppe Literatur” descriptions often used in relation to Ewers’ scandalously thrilling vein of fantastical horror. Both terms, which roughly translated mean “trivial literature” and “behind the staircase” literature, simultaneously denote the supposed lightness or frivolity of popular culture and its associated literature and the thrill of forbidden, taboo horror to be read hidden from others. Indeed Ewers himself made reference to such entertainment in his preface to Eggeler’s portfolio series Musikalische Miniaturen, where he describes readers of such magazines dreaming themselves away in imaginary worlds. Appropriately, the first issue of Kokain was dedicated to Ewers, clearly announcing its thematic and artistic dispositions and inclinations.
Besides his purely illustrative work, which was created specifically to accompany the stories in the magazine, Eggeler also republished some of his print cycles that had previously been distributed in limited bibliophilic book and portfolio editions. His selection thematically revolves around the (in)famous figure of the femme fatale, a favourite subject of art in German-speaking countries from fin-de-siècle decadent aestheticism, through Expressionism, to later currents like New Objectivity. In Amine, she is a beautiful woman with whom the naïve Pierrot falls instantly in love and who soon breaks his heart when he discovers she is not the innocent Eve-like being he imagined in his reveries. In his interpretation of Schnitzler’s Der Schleier der Pierrette (The Veil of Pierrette), another credulous Pierrot is betrayed by the eponymous heroine, who, breaking the promises they just made to each other, does not drink the poison she and Pierrot decided to ingest in order to preserve their love, thus letting him die alone. In the cycle Die Serenade (The Serenade) lastly, yet another deceitful Pierrette cheats on Pantalon as she lets Pierrot, this time cunning rather than naïve, court and seduce her.
During the 19th century, the traditionally comical nature of characters from the Commedia dell’arte shifted towards a more sombre and violent identity. It is particularly evident in interpretations of Pierrot such as Paul Margueritte’s pantomime Pierrot - Assassin De Sa Femme (Pierrot - Murderer of his Wife, 1888), Richard Beer-Hoffmann’s Pierrot Hypnotiseur (Pierrot Hypnotiser, 1892) or Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting Suites d’un bal Masqué (The Duel after the Masquerade, 1857), tendencies which endure into the 20th century in works like Arnold Schönberg Pierrot Lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot, 1912) or Max Beckmann’s Karneval (Carnival, 1942-43) triptych. This specifically dark and uncanny side of Pierrot and his companions is particularly well suited to the macabre romanticism and eroticism of Eggeler’s oeuvre. Accordingly, the artist’s selection of carnivalesque series for Kokain relevantly reflects the magazine’s ethos, with its professed aim to entertain readers with wide-ranging themes delving into “the confused states of human existence”.
In terms of formal presentation, Eggeler retained the display system of his portfolios with one image per page. This simultaneously ensured a greater readability of each image and allowed that reader to clearly differentiate the independent narrative cycles from the illustrations meant to accompany texts. Whereas in the portfolio the titles appeared as legends, just under the print, here Eggeler accentuates the distinction between text and image by relocating the titles further down on the page. This way, the artist reaffirmed the functional autonomy of the purely visual narrative. This is particularly evident in the arrangement of the cycle The Veil of Pierrette in the fifth issue. Originally this series of prints was published in a book to accompany Schnitzler’s pantomime, the prints dispersed within the text. In Kokain, Schnitzler’s text is replaced by a short summary written by Fritz Bauer and placed before the cycle, as a sort of preface. Doing so allowed Eggeler to present his print in a newly uninterrupted series, thus creating a purely autonomous and coherent visual narrative.
Remarkably, this re-edition of his work was an opportunity for the artist to somewhat reinterpret them through the medium of colour. If colour is an obvious major component of the visual universe of Kokain, it was very seldom encountered in Eggeler’s printed oeuvre until then. From what is known of his production, only his cycle The Musician and the Devil was created and published in colour, which testifies to the importance of its later addition here. First, it seems that colour allowed him to reveal more explicitly the latent narrative stages of his visual stories – in the cycle The Veil of Pierrette in the fifth issue for example, moments of strong emotional intensity such as the poison-drinking scene and that featuring the death of Pierrot are accentuated through the addition of a dark red colour. Similarly, the cycle Serenade (in the third and fourth issues) is printed in green, a yellowish brown and blue. It seems colour was used here to delimit spheres of actions, such as private and public, interior and exterior, and to indicate variations in atmosphere, emotion and tone. For example the green colour used in the first print may help accentuate the expression of Pantalon’s possessiveness and jealousy towards Pierrette, who, as we discover later, will give him reason via her affair with Pierrot.
Serenade (plate 1)
Such handling of colour, as a monochrome, overall tone for each image, is reminiscent of its use in early silent cinema. One of the most famous expressionist films of this era, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) by Robert Wiene (1873-1938), is a perfect example of the colour code developed by this new mass media to palliate its muteness. Daylight and exterior scenes are tinted with a yellowish hue, night scenes with blue, interior private ones with variations of pink, etc. It is this exact “code” that Eggeler appears to have used here for his reinterpretation of his cycles. This was most likely another device elaborated for the greater assimilation of his work with the specific visual vocabulary of popular culture, within the magazine which itself is a medium already directed at that particular audience. Even before this slight reinterpretation of Eggeler’s print cycles in Kokain, the art historian and critic Gustav Glück (1871-1952) had recognised what he termed a kinoromantischor (cine-romantic) quality in Eggeler’s works. Although this was a clear attack of Eggeler’s art on the part of Glück who certainly did not view the medium of film as having any artistic qualities, it is interesting to note that contemporaries did see this affinity between the artist’s narrative print series and the cinema which in part inspired him.
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Moreover, it is a known fact that Eggeler showed keen interest in cinema, since he co-signed a contract with Hanns Heinz Ewers which reserved him the exclusive rights for the cinematographic adaptation and artistic direction of the author’s short stories “The Last Will of Stanislawa d’Asp” and “The Tophar Bride”, as well as an option on the filming rights for the remainder of his then, present and future works. Ewers had for his part already created his first film d’auteur in 1913 with The Student Of Prag directed by Paul Wegener (1874-1948) and later created his own cinematographic firm, Hanns Heinz Ewers Produktion, in 1928. Since his partiality to Eggeler’s artistic work was evident from the early stages of their collaboration, and further proven by their many common projects and long correspondence, it seems only natural that the author would have wished to share this new common interest with the artist.
As a plastic artist, Eggeler’s attraction to this relatively new and highly popular media was understandable, especially considering the involvement of many contemporary artists’ in the creation of set designs. As Viennese press clippings from the late 1920s and early 1930s indicate, Eggeler regularly took part in similar activities at the Künstlerhaus where he was in charge of decorating rooms for annual balls and other festivities according to specific themes such as: ‘Spielzeug für Große Kinder’ (Toys for Big Children) with representations of Heaven and Hell in 1927, ‘Venusberg’, Hexenküche (Witches’ Kitchen) and Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis Night) in 1929 or Traumland (Dreamland) in 1930. Eggeler was thus familiar with forms of the Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art involving larger spaces and would have accordingly had a proper understanding of what this aspect of film production required. Eggeler’s interest in cinema is concomitant with the rapid expansion and development of the medium in Vienna during the years directly following World War I. The fields of film production and cinema then experienced a virtual boom which contemporary descriptions of Vienna as the “Film-Mecca” appropriately illustrate. Eggeler who signed his contract with Ewers in 1922 thus most likely primarily intended to take advantage of this situation. The fact that none of the projects mentioned in the contract appear to have been realised may be due in part to the decline in film production caused by the general economic collapse of the late 1920s.
Outside of Vienna, where it was distributed by Eggeler’s and Bauer’s own publishing company Verlag, den modernen Revue Kokain, Kokain was also circulated in Germany through Karl Emil Krug’s Diskus-Verlag in Leipzig. The magazine was thus a means for Eggeler not only to promote his work outside of Vienna proper, but also beyond the bounds of Austria in general, allowing the artist to reach a larger public – the German art market being particularly attractive at that time due to its prosperity and its exceptional interest in the graphic arts. In parallel with the boom of popularity experienced by the artistic original print in the 1920s German-speaking world, the country saw the proliferation and equal success of literary and illustrated magazines – a situation of which Eggeler tried to take advantage. The Kokain venture, like many others, unfortunately did not last and production ceased after five issues. One probable reason for this premature end is the difficult contemporary situation of the press in Austria, still subjected to antiquated and extremely restrictive publication laws and the permanent threat of censorship. Indeed, Kokain did not escape that fate since its third issue was censored, confiscated by the authorities and charged with “pornography”. Eggeler himself had already suffered his work to be censored twice, once in 1921 when he published his illustrations of Schnitzler’s play Reigen which itself already enjoyed a particularly scandalous reputation, and the second time when the jury of the Künstlerhaus artists society refused to exhibit his work on account of its “erotic” contents. But the most evident reason for Kokain’s short life is the deterioration of Bauer’s and Eggeler’s relationship. In a letter to Ewers dated from the 21st of March 1926, Eggeler describes his former associate’s illegal dealings and informs the author that he has filed a complaint against him, at which occasion he discovered that his was not the first. He concludes : “The devil take him!”
Eggeler’s career as an artist, though short by most standards, is thus a very rich and special example of the circumstances and developments of contemporary artistic currents. With regards to the category of the graphic arts particularly, Eggeler’s oeuvre constitutes an interesting and eloquent expression of the intermediate quality of the print medium. As an art form, the print indeed possesses a particular versatility that other media such as painting or sculpture cannot afford. As previously demonstrated, this multi-functionality of the print is related to the varied formats in which it appears – the book, the portfolio, the magazine, but also completely independently framed on the exhibition wall. Most eloquent in terms of this intermediate nature of the print is the fact that Eggeler not only experimented with different formats, but that he even repurposed some of his previously published works, thus confirming their adaptability to various form, function and related audience. Eggeler thus navigated, like many contemporary graphic artists, within the print medium’s own artistic hierarchy, between the products of a “high” culture and those of its “low” counterpart.
In terms of its thematic emphasis on genres like the fantastic, the macabre, the grotesque and the erotic, Eggeler’s oeuvre is again a great example of such popular tendencies among artistic circles of the time. If Eggeler aligns himself to “Expressionism” as his notebooks and the program of Kokain testifies, it would perhaps more accurately be the Austrian Expressionist tendencies that his oeuvre reflects as exemplified by the art of Alfred Kubin, Egon Schiele or even Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980). In fact, Eggeler was rather part of an unofficial contemporary current pushed to the margins of greater modernist movements, one that has often been called the “andere moderne” or “other moderns”. This alternate modernity drew largely from aspects of the fantastic, the magical and dream worlds and is the direct predecessor of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism developed by Albert Paris Gütersloh (1887-1973) in the late 1940s. However, whereas this later trend corresponds to a majorly plastic interpretation of the fantastic, Eggeler’s approach was idiosyncratically developed in parallel, even in concordance with the contemporary literary form of the genre. Although academically trained, Eggeler chose an artistic path reflecting his personal interests and passions, be that literature, book collecting or music. He thus infused his creation with a distinctive fascination for the strange, the grotesque and the macabre in life and love.
Much is left to uncover about both Eggeler’s life and art. After his death, most of his oeuvre was unfortunately scattered to the four winds, making it difficult to estimate how much may now be lost, or at least hidden, out of the researchers’, collectors’ and amateurs’ reach. His notebook here again offers a captivating insight into what the artist may have achieved; nearly fifty pages filled with preparatory notes for numerous cycles corresponding to broad thematic categories such as lives of saints, popular tales, fantastic stories, Commedia dell’arte pantomimes, etc. If Eggeler may be considered a “minor” or at least lesser known artist, this very particularity makes his oeuvre an essential example in the still little trodden history of a Viennese art circuit belonging to alternate artistic identities such as the aforementioned “also-artist”, amateur and other dilettante. Accordingly, his work offers a rare glimpse into a certain Viennese and more generally German-speaking subcultural milieu of somewhat marginal artistic circles affiliated with literary networks – here notably brought together by the “Phantastisch” genre. All in all, the study of oeuvres such as that of artists like Stefan Eggeler are most important for the comprehension of a still little documented period of Austrian art, even more so with regards to graphic arts, postdating the canonical fin-de-siècle and its figureheads, Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka.
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