Talk:Wolfgang Paalen
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Describing monarchy as "moribund" is POV. Furthermore, "fumages" should not be capitalised. --Daniel C. Boyer 19:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Glaring Errors
Wolfgang Paalen's father Gustav was never grand master of ceremonies for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (never mind it being called "moribund"). This was a myth initiated by Frederick Kiesler in his autobiography The Owl of Minerva, who misidentified an Austrian nobleman named von Pahlen with Paalen's father. Gustav was Jewish, and never had a title, even though offered one by the Emperor for "service" to the monarchy in the form of vaccuum thermos bottles used on the front in WWI--which he declined. This myth is perpetuated in the work of Neufert, who also makes glaring errors in many facts, misreading (in English, not his native tongue)and also selectively choosing what he wishes to put forward as "fact," based on his opinions and desires.
If the work of Christian Kloyber (der Nachlass), now cited at the end of this entry, is consulted, the real story of Paalen's heritage, as told in correspondence between Kloyber and Paalen's brother Michael, exiled in Sweden from WWII to the 1990s, can be found.
Additional corrections to artist incluences, dates of affiliation of the artist with art movements, dates of artworks, descriptions of the artist's stylistic periods, etc. have been made in the entry.
Moreover, it should be noted that the so-called paalen-archiv.com of Neufert is not an official archive, not authorized in any sense by the Paalen estate, and merely a collection of documents and photos collected by Neufert, now an art dealer in Berlin, who wrote his dissertation based on the work of Kloyber and Winter--while taking liberties with it--and whose "scholarship" is primarily self-promoting. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 149.4.113.155 (talk) 19:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC).
[edit] Glaring Jealousy?
Frederick Kiesler never wrote a book called "The Owl of the Minerva", this was Gustav Regler, Paalens first biographer. The correct reference would be Kieslers autobiographical book Inside the endless House —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.160.207.10 (talk) 20:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I like the new version with seperated chapters - life, work, theory, literature - better, more facts and less confusion. Also for corrctions, it's clearer and easier to handle. Would be glad if it could stay...
Seems right that Gustav Robert Paalen was not the master of ceremonies of emperor Franz Josef (who ever looked into the files of the Zentralbibliothek Wien?), but, as Neufert recently found out, with his company "Zentralkauf" in Vienna operated as what was called at the time "Generalkaufmann", organizing the statal supply for the German-Austrian armee allies during WWI, such as horsefood and thermos bottles. He got a civil decoration for this, and had received Franz Josef also in his "Kurhotel" in Tobelbad, where the emperor liked to hunt. But I personally think this rather small difference has little effect on the history of Paalen's ideas, Neufert has worked out in his biography. The important fact to take into consideration is maybe that he certainly was conservative-monarchist in his political attitude (and thought as grossdeutsch as other famous fathers (Wittgenstein's f.e.) and tried to live as aristocratic as he could. I personally think that Wolfgangs difficulties as an artist have a lot to do with his heritage in this sense...
An article about this most interesting jewish merchant, who converted to Protestantism in 1900, will soon be published on Wikipedia.
Kloybers work Der Nachlass unfortunately is hard to find for the public and also quite old by now (as it is full of unnecessary errors and mistakes). Unfortunately Michael Paalens memories, he had begun to write to his daughters Michaela and Lenore, stop before WWI, so right there when it get's to be interesting. He died in 1990 from a hard attack and already was in a rather bad shape, when he started to write this, and as he was born only 1919 his own memories from the time before most probably were rather dim.... f.e. he meant to know, that his father had had the name Gideon before he converted, which is as untrue as the idea, that he was forced to convert because of his marriage with a German lady (coversion 1900, marriage 1905), or brought up the myth of Wolfgangs birthtown Baden, equally untrue. He even mixed up the date of the death of his father (1942), who actually died in 1945, and Kloyber (as well as Winter and Neufert, who relied on Kloybers seriousness) escaped the fact, that he didn´t die from suicide in berlin, but was cured by his son in Sweden until 1945. Not to understand, that Kloyber, who even visited Michael Paalen, missed this point. Baden: I live near Baden and never could find any traces, apart that the parents of Wolfgang came to Baden to have health treatments a couple of times, but they always stayed in a hotel. The Baden myth has been taken for granted since then by all historians, working on Paalen, Winter, Kloyber and Neufert. Kloyber also brought in the myth that Paalen had been circumcised, and refers to documents in the Jewish Gemeinde in Vienna, which never were found by other researchers. This would be also pretty strange for a child, which has been baptized in the protestant church of Vienna...
If you want to offend someone, who studied Paalen's life and work more than 20 years, you have to come with better arguments. Neufert's archive, as far as I know, has never claimed to be official. It's a Privatarchiv in every sense of the word. Is there an organized archive of the heirs or Paalen Estate, as you call it, who does similar work? The Foundation in Mexico was recently dissolved, due to the lack of intrest of the heirs, I heard. Documents and paintings float around out there, being sold or dispersed in other ways. Some papers are in the Meyer Museum, but tell me a person there, who would know about or answer questions....
Neufert, as far as I know, is a freelance curator, art historian and writer in Berlin, and reserves great respect for what he did and is ongoing to do with his research and archive on Paalen. Maybe the fact that he worked as consultant for an art broker company between 1998 and 2001 led to the midleading idea, that he is an art dealer. He wrote is M.A. on Paalen in 1986 and has an ever growing knowledge on this subject since then, which he shares with any interested person. He organized various shows on this artist, gave many lectures and published an extensive monography with a catalogue raisonne of his works and a translation of all of Paalen's essays on art in 1999, A.Neufert, W.P. Im Inneren des Wals, Vienna/New York (Springer), certainly not an easy and fast thing to do for a single researcher with wife and three children. As all c.r.s it's not without mistakes, but again here, the archive, as I experience it, serves as an open source for all further knowledged, aquired since then. This is at least how I experienced it.
Certainly Mrs. Winter and Mr. Kloyber have contributed a great deal for the understanding of various facets of Paalen's mysterious life and work, but they're not unfallible either, as we can see here (I recently looked through Winter´s book again, and counted like 5 to 10 mistakes and misleading errors per page), and the assertion, that Neufert's book is merely written on the results of their research, is not only megalomany, it is respectless and clearly falls back to its origin.
Ralph Lasinski, Berndorf Austria (ralfi1789(at)mac.com)
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ralfi1789 (talk • contribs) 00:35, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thank's ralph, sorry about the fault with Gustav, but I had only recently the time to go through the files. I'll be back to this later. Andreas —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreasneufert (talk • contribs) 14:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the Tobelbad story is as strange (as probably unimportant), why did the Paalens go for cure to Baden, if they had an own wellness center at home? Probably they didn't want to mix with their guests, or try new things. Good idea to make an article about Gustav, he deserves it. You should try to convince Amy Winter to collaborate, as she's seems to be still mad at me for my review of her book. I know a lot of new things about him, especialy his activities in Berlin, his exile in Sweden etc.. A.
