(Grodnau 1925–2013 Moncarapacho, Portugal)
Untitled (Head), dated 83.8.VI, oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm, framed, (K)

Provenance:
From an Austrian Collection

Is Schiele not significantly better than Klimt? Klimt I find too decorative. Klimt is older, but the beautiful and decorative is, after all, wonderful too.
This was the time, the 19th century, it’s like Marcel Proust, whom I’m currently reading. I hope I’ll be doing time until I’ve finished the 5,000 pages. But he’s fantastic. I consider him the greatest, I like him better than James Joyce. Proust is not as formal as other Frenchmen, he’s enough of a psychopath to start out from experience, and he conceived something that is equal to Joyce. He no longer has a plot in the usual sense, with a beginning and an end, but stretches out like dough. When he describes how he ensnared his girlfriend – he speaks very badly about himself, and I think he never really did that, only imagined it. Art is imagination after all. He’s a first-person narrator, but in fact that’s not him. What I paint is not me either, but I think of how this will frighten the Austrians and feel pleased. Marcel Duchamp also says: ‘If art is lacking the shock, you’d better leave it.’
Otto Muehl, Aus dem Gefängnis, 1991–1997, published by Ritter, 1997