Publisher, poet, and aesthete, Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) led an intense public life that included the editorship of the prominent avant-garde journal the Dial and often contentious friendships with literary luminaries such as T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings. In the early 1920s, Thayer went to Vienna, where he was analyzed by Sigmund Freud. He also embarked on an art-buying spree throughout the capitals of Europe, acquiring (among many other things) a number of highly erotic works on paper by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso. Though these artists were little known or appreciated in America at the time, and though the especially provocative nature of the drawings and watercolors put them outside the mainstream, these works have now taken their place as erotic masterpieces, collected with remarkable foresight and vision. Obsession showcases 52 of these rarely seen works, presenting them within the context of Thayer’s remarkable life and tempestuous times while enhancing our understanding of these three modernist masters.
