“The Early Portraits of Oskar Kokoschka.” Image Narrative, 8:1, September 2007.

 It has long been granted that part of the aesthetic experience of art lies outside the conventional sphere of the maker—that is, a painting also involves the imaginative reconstruction by the viewer. To an extent, this can be designed and guided by a visual artist. If the artifact is merely discursive, it can be approached like logical sequences, "put" there for the viewer to discover analytically. This is particularly true of portraiture, which has served an important social function, whether official or sentimental. However, when a painting is less logical and codified, as is the case of early expressionism, something other than the iconography of rational systems of thought and forms from the natural world comes in. Focusing on capturing movement, psychological effect and transience, Oskar Kokoschka's portraits work within a theory of subjectivity that reveal the sitter's psychology and valorizes artistic imagination.