Egon Schiele. Esther Selsdon

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      Klimt’s picture of women is based on the analogy of the female body as a personification of nature. Curled tresses become stylised plant formations and the wave-like silhouette melts into a consecrated atmosphere. Schiele, however, broke with the beautiful cult of organic art nouveau and ornamental art. It is here, where Klimt offended the authorities in various episodes, namely in violating modesty, that Schiele found his main objective. He stripped his models of every decorative accessory and concentrated solely on their bodies. Yet, in contrast to the academic nude drawings, which mainly limited themselves to a neutral portrayal of anatomy, Schiele showed erotically aroused bodies. He knew of the erogenous function that charms the eye and set erotic signals with red painted lips, fleshy labia and dark moon circles under the eyes. The Observed in a Dream even opens her vulva.

      Expressive Art Process

      Drawings served Klimt as preliminary studies for his paintings. In contrast, Schiele signs his watercolour sketches as finalised works of art. It is precisely the sketch-like, unfinished product that characterised Schiele, who unfolded the art process even in his oil paintings. In contrast to the ornamental surface decoration in art nouveau painting, his sharp line executions and jagged aggressive style suggest the artist’s subjective guiding hand.

      Encounter with the Mirrored Image

      The contour line captures the physical presence and becomes a sculpture-like containment within space. Thereby Schiele dispensed with every spatiotemporal specification. Like a person regarding himself in a mirror, only seeing his face and body, and like a lover who within the body of his love, forgets the world around him, Schiele created his self-portraits before a mirror, as well as some of his female nude drawings. Schiele, Drawing a Nude Model in front of a Mirror illustrates this. The scene is illuminating, the duplication of frontal and rear views of the nude woman are revealed in the reflection, however there, where the mirror is, stands the viewer. He functions as the mirror in which the model regards herself, reassuring herself of her body, and in whose gaze it moves. The intimacy between painter and model is countered in the relationship between viewer and drawing.

      The Dancer Moa, 1911.

      Pencil, 48 x 31.8 cm.

      Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.

      First Exhibitions

      In 1908, Schiele took part in a public exhibition in the Imperial Hall of the Klosterneuburg Monastery for the first time. He exhibited small-scale landscapes that he had painted from summer through to the autumn (pp. 39–40). According to Jane Kallir, around the end of 1908, Schiele had painted nearly half of all the oil paintings of his lifetime. It was only in 1909 that Schiele’s artistic creativity reached a great turning point. He left the academy and the reactionary professor Christian Griepenkerl, together with Anton Peschka, Albert Paris von Gütersloh, Anton Faistauer, Sebastian Isepp, Franz Wiegele and others, established the “New Art Group” (Neukunstgruppe). The theme of the new artists was ‘opposition’.

      Schiele’s retreat from the subjective experience of the individual was a counter-reaction to Viennese historicism and its prince of painters, Hans Makart, who was celebrated by the government. Schiele distanced himself from their allegoric compositions. He turned Catholicism’s conventional values upside down and placed them in the service of sexuality. His strategy: he wanted to shock. In the painting provocatively titled The Red Host, Schiele reclines on his back in an orange shirt with his abdomen bared, his spread legs suggesting the feminine gesture of submission, while before him, gazing at the viewer, a nude strawberry-blonde holds his enormous phallus.

      Nude on Her Stomach, 1917.

      Gouache and black crayon, 29.8 x 46.1 cm.

      Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.

      Portrait of Arthur Roessler, 1910.

      Graphite on paper, 24.2 x 32 cm.

      Private collection.

      In other paintings, monks make love to nuns and expectant women, who were often unwelcome and repudiated by strict viennese society an example being, the nun prays chafed and nude before ‘christ’s agony on the cross’. Furthermore, schiele painted homosexual couples, transgressing taboos and provoking the fantasies of his contemporary viewers. In turn, schiele found acknowledgement at the international art show in vienna where he was represented by four paintings next to the expressionist works of vincent van gogh, edvard munch and oskar kokoschka. He made the acquaintance of josef hoffman, the director of the vienna workshop. In december of 1909, the first exhibition of the “new art group” took place at pisko’s fine art dealership.

      Vienna Art Scene

      By 1909, thus relatively early, schiele had made the acquaintance of decisive personalities of the viennese art scene, whose portraits he painted and who were to remain loyal to him for his entire life and beyond. Schiele befriended arthur roessler, writer and art critic, who became one of his most decisive friends and promoters. Other figures who influenced his career were eduard kosmack, the publisher of the magazines the architect and the interior; carl reininghausen (1857–1929), one of the most important viennese collectors; and the railroad official and schiele collector heinrich benesch (1862–1947), who later dedicated a book to schiele.

      Schiele’s Close Circle of Friends

      Perhaps because schiele opposed the plans of his uncle who would have liked to persuade his ward to enter military service, czihaczec withdrew his guardianship in 1910. During the same period, the incident with the mysterious lover occurred, of which, with the exception of an exchange of letters with the gynaecologist, erwin von graff, who assured schiele that he had admitted her to his clinic and was attending to her, nothing is known. Schiele dealt with this incident in several paintings: Birth of the Genius and The Dead Mother. He painted a foetus, which, still in its mother’s womb, stares at the viewer.

      Self-Portrait with Lavender Shirt and Dark Suit, Standing, 1914.

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