ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the manifestation of expressive gestures of the Viennese modern body in figural paintings, modern dramatic performances, puppet theater, and through their theoretical explication in emerging medical research on hysteria. It examines how Kokoschka's novel conceptualization of artistic vision diverged or converged with contemporaneous theories of expressionistic sight offered by his interlocutors such as Hermann Bahr, Paul Fechter, Wassily Kandinsky, Egon Schiele, and Wilhelm Worringer. The chapter investigates the tension between inner and optical vision within the wider context of visuality in Viennese modern art. Although the well-known Austrian Secession and symbolist artist Gustav Klimt was not an expressionist, his infamous Fakultätsbilder were nevertheless caught in the Viennese discourse on modern vision and the body. Diverging notions of artistic vision in the early twentieth century helped to create the dichotomy that undeniably exists between Kokoschka's understanding of the formative tenets of expressionistic sight and the other prevailing theories of artistic vision.
