Discuss the importance of the place of the visual arts in Schoenberg's life and work, including his musical and dramatic works.
I would cite four different aspects of the affect that the visual arts had on Schoenberg: Painting as a mode of self-expression; Incorporation of visual arts into dramatic works (Gesamtkunstwerk); Support and Camaraderie: an aspect of the inter-arts movement in Vienna, and Homogenous Aesthetic Theories between his Expressionistic music and Expressionistic painters. Additionally, I will discuss why Expressionistic painting seemed to hold a limited appeal for him. .
Schoenberg's associations with painters perhaps helped him to formulate his own ideas of the aesthetics of art. Indeed, he had a close relationship with the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Richard Gerstl, and he knew many other artists, such as Kokoschka, Marc and Adolph Loos , the architect. Seeing their works perhaps encouraged him to take up painting himself, and Gerstl taught him for a short period. .
Support and Camaraderie.
In turn-of the century Vienna, artists of all disciplines mingled with each other, both socially and intellectually. For example, Gustav Mahler married Alma Schindler, daughter of the painter Email Jacob Schindler, in 1902. Adolph Loos, the noted architect, befriended the young painter Oskar Kokoschka in 1908, and through him, demonstrated his own avant-garde theories (which shall be discussed later) Richard Gerstl was a close friend of the Schoenberg family, in the years 1905-1908 (he committed suicide in 1908).
The audiences in Vienna were the most conservative in the world; many new works were received with utter disgust. The premiere of Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande provoked the audience to walk out en masse. One critic said that his Verklãrte Nacht sounded "as though someone had smeared the score of Tristan while it was still wet." Oh Mahler's 2nd Symphony, the critic Edward Hanslick wrote, "One of us must be mad, and it isn't I.
