Between Past and Future, 1945–65

This chapter considers how Kris and Gombrich decided to update the caricature book in two directions. First, they planned to expand the use of social psychology, tracing links from caricature to magic, propaganda, and social aggression. Second, they looked to tie caricature to conceptual constructs in image making. These ambitions meant rewriting the manuscript nearly from scratch. By September 1949, Gombrich and Kris had four different drafts of the caricature book: the prewar manuscript, the abbreviated wartime manuscript, the one incorporating the new emphasis on a psychology of perception, and the one giving greater prominence to social psychology. During the next four months, the two scholars attempted to salvage a project that threatened to break apart.

The Caricature Book, 1936–38

This chapter follows the two scholars as they continued their work on the book manuscript in the quarters of Kris' study, during the months that led up to the Daumier exhibition. Gombrich translated the full German manuscript, Die Karikatur, into an English version, Caricature, for publication in exile. He kept the London manuscript to the same length as the Viennese: two hundred and fifty-four typescript pages of text and citations. Both the German and English versions of the book's foreword leave no doubt that it aimed to bridge Kris' research on Freud and the Warburg circle's art historical approach. Describing psychoanalytic theory as critical to bringing art history in line with science, Kris accepted the sole burden for applying Freud's concepts.

The Unfinished Project

This chapter discusses how two Viennese scholars—Ernst Kris and E.H. Gombrich—worked in 1936 to complete a book manuscript. The manuscript explored the subject of caricature: the art of comic distortion and willful exaggeration, of irreverence and, according to its most serious practitioners, absolute fidelity to truth. Inspired by recent advances in psychology and by contemporary innovations in art, the two scholars approached caricature not as a low form of creativity or a debased mode of communication but as a distinctive psychological and cultural phenomenon with its own functions and evolution. They interpreted caricature as an ambitious psychological and artistic experiment, and their effort to grasp each aspect led them to employ theories and methods from both mental science and cultural history.

War Work, 1941–45

This chapter analyzes how several months after the Allied landings in Europe, John Marshall undertook a fact-finding mission to Britain to explore the role that the Rockefeller Foundation could play in postwar reconstruction. At Kris' urging, he arranged to meet with Gombrich. Kris pressed upon Gombrich the importance of Marshall as a professional contact and awaited Gombrich's account of their meeting. During their conversation, Marshall posed a question regarding the caricature project and Gombrich's work as a monitor of German radio propaganda. Gombrich stated that just as the primitive myth studied by anthropologists tends to personalize the forces of the natural universe into beneficent or malign beings, so the Nazi propagandist transformed the political universe into a conflict of persons and personifications.

Daumier in Vienna, 1936

This chapter recounts how, by the time of the Daumier exhibition, Kris no longer expected the Viennese art historical profession or the Austrian Church to offer any reliable protections. In bringing the French artist's work to his own city, he now identified himself intellectually and politically with a broad Popular Front movement. However, the French Légion d'Honneur justified the exhibition and encouraged Kris to continue the caricature project. Gombrich, who had assisted with the exhibition, would not present his work again to an Austrian audience for decades. His career and new family became firmly rooted elsewhere. Much later, when Gombrich described his ties to his original and adopted homes, he discarded national identifications, characterizing himself simply as a Central European working in England.

The Vienna–London Connection, 1932–36

This chapter examines how Kris organized the Daumier exhibition from the spring of 1935 to the autumn of 1936—the period coinciding with the inception and rise of the Popular Front movement in France. Through Honoré Daumier, he and Gombrich moved beyond the psychology and theory of caricature to engage directly with its history. In the world of European galleries, the exhibition was unique: in continental Europe, Daumier's art appeared in no other place outside France during the 1930s. By displaying Daumier's work in Vienna at that moment, Kris and Gombrich attached their scholarly researches to the antifascist cause. The space for examining Daumier's artwork would allow the public to view a culture of republicanism and internationalism that was disappearing in Austria but that still survived beyond its borders.

Toward a Psychology of Art, 1919–32

This chapter looks at how Kris' status as a convert to Catholicism temporarily provided him with professional and personal protection. His work abroad with international collectors, museum directors, and art patrons supplied a safety net beyond Austria if it became necessary. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art required an expert to catalog its cameo collection, it brought Kris to New York in 1929 to undertake the job. At the same time, Kris kept close track of deteriorating conditions in Austria and employed his contacts to find work abroad for his younger, Jewish colleagues. A liberal royalist in post-imperial Vienna, Kris remained convinced of the irreversible disintegration of Austrian political life. At his first meeting with Ernst Gombrich, he made sure that the young researcher understood fully the uncertainties attached to an art historical career in Vienna.

From Vienna to London and New York, 1938–41

This chapter follows Kris' travels to England and New York. First, he went to present a paper on caricature at the Warburg Institute, the first public presentation of his joint work with Gombrich. A year later, he returned to England as an exile from Vienna, hoping to make London his permanent residence, the Warburg reading room his workshop, and British psychoanalytic circles his new professional community. When Kris arrived at the Warburg Institute in 1937, no prospect existed for publishing the caricature book on the European Continent; he had to look elsewhere. While he remained firmly attached to his contacts within the psychoanalytic movement and the Warburg Institute, Kris found new colleagues and exemplars within John Marshall's network of American social scientists and émigré scholars.