Egon Schiele

You must have seen The Kiss before.

The other well-known Austrian artists would include Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, and the two main places to learn about them would be the Belvedere Museum and the Secession Building.

You'd certainly have to conclude Freud on the list, who did all his most important psychoanalysis work here, and whose house is now a museum, which you can visit to learn all about him and his work.

And, of course, you'd have to mention Hitler, who was born in Upper Austria, but who came to Vienna to try his luck as an art student in the early 1900s, but who was rejected, leaving us all wondering what would the history of the 20th century have been if he'd just been a little better at painting.

And that's how it was for me.

And what was interesting is that previously to that, I'd always just only loved expressionist work, you know, Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Kate Colwitt.

And this was my first real life encounter with a very, very minimal abstract painting that I totally got and totally understood without anybody explaining anything to me.

So you did study painting.

Can you remember any specific ones that became a reference point for you?

I do remember Egon Schiele, a lot of Egon Schiele.

Francis Bacon, especially for Baxter.

We looked at a lot of French painters.