A true Viennese whirl

AS everyone knows, Austrians are fascinated by dolls. Rilke and Hofmannsthal wrote about them, Arnold Schwarzenegger acts like one.

The painter Oskar Kokoschka went further, living with a life-size female figure he commissioned for the purpose when deserted by his girlfriend. That alone makes him a suitable subject for popular biography these days, so I'm not surprised that Susanne Keegan dwells on the episode.

Mrs Keegan has already written about Alma Mahler, the girlfriend in question, so she is well read in the social and cultural background, which is helpful, even though she races through it unselectively. Like most biographers, she doesn't really know what to do with her hero's childhood, either. Perhaps it doesn't matter. In words which suggest that what he needs is an illustrated catalogue, not a biography, Kokoschka himself said that: "For as long as I can recall, I have lived in space, not time." A characteristically vivid comment and typical of someone whose tongue was as sharp as his eye. Kokoschka belongs to that extraordinary generation of painters and writers who rejected the Austria of Coffee and Cake in favour of Psychoanalysis and Secession. Contemporaries included Freud, Musil, Wittgenstein, Rilke, Kraus, Schiele, Klimt and Loos: men who did more than their share in shaping 20th century culture. But although Vienna must have been a fascinating place before the First World War, he was extremely glad to get out of it when he could. Reacting against the claustrophobia of his homeland, Kokoschka spent most of his adult life wandering the world in search of ideas. Addicted to travel, he needed stimulation and knew how to find it - a talent in itself. Work was fuelled with whisky and tobacco throughout the day, and girls were never in short supply. Handsome, attractive and confident, he made friends and mistresses with ease before settling to married middle-age in Switzerland. As a reward for all this enjoyment he lived to be 94. If his travels were exotic, his career followed a familiar trajectory: early promise succeeded by mature prosperity and elderly esteem. Though Kokoschka was not as successful with the public as he thought he should be, he never starved, he never compromised and he never lacked critical praise. Like other 20th century artists - David Jones, Arnold Schoenberg, DH Lawrence - he was amphibious, producing essays, stories and plays in addition to a huge body of paintings and drawings. He involved himself in good causes and ambitious educational schemes. His life was long, fortunate and fulfilled, marked by a succession of fat prizes and high prices. The trouble with fulfilled lives is that they don't often make very interesting stories. It takes a biographer of genius to do something with them. Once Kokoschka arrived at middle age, the only really interesting thing about him was his work. At this point in Mrs Keegan's book we are less interested in where he took his summer holidays than in what sort of artist he was, and why he is worth writing about. How did his work develop, and what affected it? What is the relationship between his painting and his writing? Is he the great artist he appeared to be? How does his oeuvre relate to 20th century art in general? Will he survive? Mrs Keegan rarely addresses such questions, preferring to confine herself largely to narrative. There are some amusing details in Mrs Keegan's book and she occasionally wanders into wit. The illustrations are good and the book is pleasantly presented. If you are prepared to shell out GBP 25 for the lowdown on Kokoschka, this version will do you fairly well. Look elsewhere for a more searching study, perhaps to the artist's own writings: his letters are worth 10 biographies.

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