Study for ‘Time Gentlemen Please’ c. 1971

Editor: This is Oskar Kokoschka's Study for ‘Time Gentlemen Please’, housed at the Tate. It's a rather frenetic sketch. The lines seem so charged with energy. What formal elements strike you most in this composition? Curator: Note the strategic deployment of line, which articulates form and implies movement. The skeletal structure, visible through the economy of strokes, becomes the very subject. What does the apparent instability of the figures suggest to you? Editor: Perhaps a world on the brink of collapse? The figures look unbalanced and distorted. I now understand how line can become so expressive. Curator: Precisely. The disruption of conventional form allows Kokoschka to convey a deeper emotional reality. An affective charge, would you agree? Editor: Absolutely! It has become clearer to me how expressive line can be.