Gabriele Baumgartner

2020

When Nikolai Gogol’s (1809 – 1852) first part of the novel „Dead Souls“ was published in 1842, it immediately aroused widespread approval among literary critics and fellow writers, but conservatives reacted with harsh rejection. The story of „Dead Souls“ was originally planned as a trilogy, but the author burned the finished manuscript of the second volume shortly before his death in 1852 and so it could only be reconstructed or is only available in fragments.

In his satirical novel, Nikolai Gogol denounces contemporary Russian society, particularly the large landowners and the civil service. His novel contains a realistic, satirical sideswipe at Russian law: since the tax lists were only updated every ten years, even serfs who had already died were still considered living property. Since in the state administration of Russia at the time, serfs were actually kept as „souls“, large landowners still had to pay taxes for those who had already died until the next update of the registers. Nikolai Gogol’s „hero“ Chichikov therefore travels through tsarist Russia to buy their „dead souls“ – the deceased serfs – from landowners, transfer them to his own business books and later pawn them at great cost. The former owners are relieved to have removed their dead from the tax rolls through the sale and Chichikov becomes a rich man as he claims loans from the banks for these „souls“.

The satirical novel was an important impetus for a series by Josef Mikl, mostly created between 1999 and 2001, in which he dissected individual figures and picked out and visualised incidents. This group of works includes small works on paper with ink wood as well as large-format oil paintings on canvas.

For Josef Mikl, an intensive engagement with literature was always an important companion to his art and his life. He owned an extensive library, which was stocked with numerous first editions. Josef Mikl was not only considered a very well-read person, but also a critical one. His stained glass windows, such as the window for the chapel on Kreuzberg (1975), are based on the words of Andreas Gryphius, those for St. Margarethen (1965, 1970) and the designs for Ollersdorf (1981) are based on Sören Kierkegaard’s thoughts, he realised a series of etchings based on Kierkegaar’s „Silent Despair“ and conceived the design of the Great Redoutensaal (1994 – 1997) as a manifesto for Austrian literature: With the 404 m² large-format ceiling painting, he created a monument to Karl Kraus‘ poem „Youth“ and quoted pieces by Ferdinand Raimund, Johann Nestroy and Elias Canetti with his 22 murals.

From the very beginning of his artistic career, Josef Mikl himself wrote satirical writings in which he poked fun at his contemporaries in texts and pictures. His so-called „children’s books“ and his countless works on his best-known character, the journalist-eater Hawranek, were often the subject of individual exhibitions or part of large presentations of his work. Some of his „Hawranek“ stories were also published. In 2018, the Wien Museum MUSA finally dedicated a large exhibition and catalogue to his satirical works.

From the very beginning, he also wrote characterisations of fellow artists as well as statements on topics important to him, which were published in exhibition catalogues, books and magazines. The written word as well as the spoken word were always important to Josef Mikl, and his works repeatedly address the theme of „conversation“.

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