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Opening Lecture for Portals: The Visionary Architecture of Paul Goesch (48 minutes)

Exhibition curator Robert Wiesenberger introduced Paul Goesch, the subject of the Clark’s spring exhibition in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper. Goesch (1885–1940) produced one of the most inventive, peculiar, and poignant bodies of work to emerge from Weimar Germany. An artist and architect, he made both fanciful figurative drawings and visionary architectural designs. The latter, in a riot of colors, drip with invented ornament and resemble little made then or since. Goesch was a valued member of the Expressionist circles of the 1920s even as he struggled with schizophrenia—a condition for which he was institutionalized, and ultimately murdered by the Nazis. On the occasion of the first solo presentation of his work in North America, and first monograph in English, this talk presents Goesch’s practice and explores the resonances of his work in the histories of art, architecture, and psychology.