Throughout the complicated and often contradictory cultural milieu that shaped turn-of-the-century Vienna—which included Jewish and non-Jewish artistic patrons who were both friends and combatants, Jewish and non-Jewish artists who were supported by these clients, and the rhetoric surrounding the Secession’s goût juif—Kokoschka, Oppenheimer, and Schiele began to include esoteric hand gestures in their various portraits, including self-portraits (see figs. 3–5, 8–10, 13–17). Deciphering the “secret” language of these signs is the primary aim of this study, in which I argue that the three Expressionists were creating images that incorporated Jewish and Masonic hand gestures in order to “speak” a language of exclusivity, and thus modernity. In so doing, meaning was thus visually communicable between themselves and their sitters, as well as to erudite viewers who were cognizant of these historic “gang signs.” This contention suggests, moreover, that Kokoschka, Oppenheimer, and Schiele had developed a niche lexicon of signs by 1910 based on two separate, yet interconnected, concepts: the mysteries encoded in the gestures of the Freemasons; and an awareness that “talking with one’s hands”—as discussed, for example, by the Austrian-Jewish writer Elisabeth Freundlich (1906–2001)—persisted as a cultural stereotype of Jews in fin-de-siècle Vienna.[15] Importantly, the Expressionists laid claim to these Jewish and Masonic gestures at a moment when the search for “greater truths” was key to their avant-garde agendas, and when Kraus—for better or for worse—had already associated the Secession-led art market with a “Jewish taste.”
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The present essay endeavors to specifically demonstrate that each of these artists (though, as I will show, Oppenheimer and Schiele were more prolific in this arena than Kokoschka) worked in tandem to create an expressive language that iconographically referenced two very specific hand gestures. The first drew upon the Jewish symbology of the Nesi’at Kapayim, or “raising of the hands,” which is still enacted today as part of the Aaronic priestly blessing known as the Birkat Kohanim (ברכת כהנים in Hebrew; see fig. 6). During this benediction, a Kohen (or Jewish priest) invokes the Hebrew letter Shin (ש) by forming his or her fingers into the telltale “W” sign (the thumb serves as one side of the letter), thus drawing a visual reference to the Hebraic word for Shaddai, or “God Almighty.” The second gesture—the Masonic upside-down “M” sign, which also resembles the Shin—was historically used by secular and religious Freemasons to show members that they too were part of the secret fraternity (fig. 7). The “M” gesture, in turn, conceivably developed from the Kabbalah—the ancient source of Judaic mysticism and esoteric teachings—given that the origins and “secrets” of Freemasonry were already connected to Judaism by the time the society was officially formed in the eighteenth century.[17]

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