Still O.K.

German expressionists, too, are supposed to be historical relics these days. Take Oskar Kokoschka, for example. In pre-World War I Prague, they gleefully translated his Czech name literally--"bad weed." Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination helped spark World War I, once growled, "That fellow's bones ought to be broken." He wrote plays that people called mad, but mainly he painted pictures that few people liked. Hitler unhesitatingly banned him as "degenerate." Kokoschka cheerfully outlived them all; today, at 80, he is more generative than ever.

To celebrate his eightieth year, he has had seven one-man shows. The latest, with 68 oils and 64 watercolors, drawings and graphics, opened last week in New York's Marlborough-Gerson Gallery. "My paintings are really a personal diary of my life," he says. This year, for instance, he did a view of the Soviet zone from a skyscraper near the Berlin Wall. "Before me I saw a lunar landscape," he recalls. "I wanted to record this part of a country sentenced to death." As a commission for the German government for $50,000 (which he gave to children's charity), he painted his 1966 portrait of Konrad Adenauer as a figure illusory and shrinking in form, as if wasting away. "He's very cunning, stately, vital," says Kokoschka of the 90-year-old former German chief of state, adding in admiration, "For three weeks he posed, never wanting to sit. 'You are standing,' he said. 'So can I.' "

Old age does not always win such praise from O.K., as he signs his works. A far more personal statement is a recent oil, Saul and David, full of the swirl of clashing colors and impetuous brushstroke. Explains the painter: "I painted David next to the angry old man. The old man is biting his teeth because it's over." Then slapping his knee with vigor, Kokoschka adds, "He is furious at being 80, as I am."

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