Masterpieces Of Vienna (1 of 38)

Masterpieces Of Vienna

Masterpieces of Vienna (BBC4) is a three-part series on great works of art that came out of the Austrian capital at that moment in the early 1900s when, like Paris before it, and New York after, the city appeared to hold a monopoly on the most exciting creative production of the time. As well as Arnold Schoenberg, Sigmund Freud and Gustav Klimt, it produced Oskar Kokoschka, an expressionist painter of extravagant, provocative temperament.

In the eye of a violent storm, two lovers lie side by side.
Around them a furious sea rages.
The woman sleeps peacefully; the man is awake, but tense.
Nothing really can prepare you for the impact of this painting, it seems to get you in the grip of some extraordinary feeling that seems to overtake you.

This picture is called The Tempest and it was painted by Oskar Kokoschka in Vienna nearly 100 years ago.
Today, it's acknowledged as one of the great expressionist paintings of the 20th century.
Everything, the brushwork, the composition, above all the colours, make you think that this is a picture about highly charged emotion.
It 's about much more than meets the eye.
The story behind this painting is of a passionate, intense, wild and bizarre love affair between the rebellious, impoverished artist who painted it, and a wealthy older woman.
The emotions they felt for each other were the affair's downfall.
They were too strong and too destructive, I think.
It was a very destructive affair on both sides.
the Tempest is one of the prized possessions of the Kunstmuseum in the Swiss city of Basel.
It 's a large painting, nearly two metres high and over two metres wide and it's strategically placed, glimpsed through a long line of open doorways.