Egon Schiele. Esther Selsdon

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      During this time, studies in love and death went hand-in-hand. On the one hand, the sexual act is associated with the danger of pregnancy and the possibility of dying in childbirth. The life-giving body may be destroyed by death. On the other hand, syphilis lurked in every kiss. Is it possible to explain the subliminal, morbid trait in schiele’s world? In the cult book of that time, sex and character by the author otto weninger, the role of the woman was limited solely to her biological function of childbearing. Weninger commented that men of significance should only get involved with prostitutes, whereas freud posed that their upbringing denies women the ability to deal on an intellectual level with sexual problems, which is where they have the greatest need for knowledge, yet society reacts with condemnation of this desire for knowledge as unfeminine and as a sign of a sinful predisposition.

      Freud attributed the alleged intellectual inferiority of women to sexual repression, which resulted in the inhibition of thought.

      Accompanied by his friend, the painter and mime Erwin Osen, Schiele fled to Krumau where they spent the summer with a dancer named Moa (pp. 31, 115, 116), the lover of osen. There, schiele also made the acquaintance of the young baccalaureate willy lidl, who avowed his deep love for him. Back in vienna, schiele shared his atelier with max oppenheimer (1885–1954). Day in, day out, he lived from hand to mouth. Even if young schiele lamented his financial woes, he quickly managed to get on his feet again and find support from friends and patrons. Then, in 1910, weiner werkstatte, established in 1903, printed three of schiele’s picture cards; at the same time one of his paintings was shown at the international hunters’ exhibition in the context of the klimt group. A further exhibition at the klosterneuburg monastery exhibited the portrait of eduard kosmack and that of a boy, rainerbub, son of the viennese orthopaedist and surgeon max rainer (1910). As early as 1911, the first monograph on schiele, penned by the artist and poet albert paris von gütersloh, was published. In the same year, arthur roessler reviewed schiele’s works in the monthly periodical bildende künstler. In vienna, schiele took part in the collective exhibition at the miethke gallery.

      Wally, his first love

      Once again, schiele wanted to get away. “vienna is full of shadows, the city is black. I want to be alone [in] the bohemian woods, that i need not hear anything about myself,” he wrote in his diary. Wally (valerie neuzil), former model and lover of klimt who supposedly gave herself to schiele, accompanied him. They moved to his mother’s hometown in krumau on the moldau. The devoted lidl had procured an atelier with a garden. A very productive working phase began for schiele. Besides a few landscapes, he mainly worked on nude studies of himself and wally, his “twittering lark”. Like the diary drawings, numerous studies depict the erotic cohabitation of two bodies.

      Standing Nude Girl, 1918.

      Black crayon on paper, 45.7 x 29.5 cm.

      Private collection, New York.

      Landscape in Lower Austria, 1907.

      Oil on cardboard, 17.5 x 22.5 cm.

      Private collection.

      Village with Mountains, 1907.

      Oil on paper, 21.7 x 28 cm.

      Private collection.

      Pregnant Woman and Death (Mother and Death), 1911.

      Oil on canvas, 100.3 x 100.1 cm.

      Národní Galerie, Prague.

      Grimacing Man (Self-Portrait), 1910.

      Charcoal and watercolour on paper, 44 x 27.8 cm.

      Leopold Collection, Leopold Museum, Vienna.

      Self-Portrait with Lowered Head (study for The Hermits), 1912.

      Oil on wood, 42.2 x 33.7 cm.

      Leopold Collection, Leopold Museum, Vienna.

      The Hermits, 1912.

      Oil on canvas, 181 x 181 cm.

      Leopold Museum, Vienna.

      Two Girls Embracing (Friends), 1915.

      Gouache, watercolour and pencil, 48 x 32.7 cm.

      Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.

      Self-Portrait as Nude Study

      There are approximately 100 self-portraits including several nude studies of Schiele. Study of the male nude was obligatory at the academy, psychological self-portraits, however, apart from richard gerstl in 1908, were an exception. The self-portrait as nude study positions the artist not only as a person of insight, but also in his physical being. Schiele did not act as a voyeur in baring his models, rather, he brought himself into play. The nude study depicting a rigid member in the act of masturbation went a step further and shows he was a man fascinated by his own sexuality. This reversal in passivity accompanies the setting of a new goal: to be looked at. The urge to look is indeed autoerotic from the beginning; it surely has an object but finds it in its own body. In turn, showing the genitals is well known as an apotropaic action. Accordingly, freud interprets “the showing of the penis and all its surrogates” as the following statement: “i am not afraid of you, i defy you.”

      Schiele, the Man of Pain

      The discrepancy between schiele’s external appearance and his repulsively ugly self-portraits is astonishing. Gütersloh described schiele as “exceptionally handsome”, of well-maintained appearance, “someone who never had even a day-old beard”, an elegant young man, whose good manners contrasted strangely with his reputedly unpalatable manner of painting. Schiele, on the other hand, painted himself with a long high forehead, wide-opened eyes deep in their sockets and a tortured expression, an emaciated body, which he sometimes mutilated up to its trunk, with spider-like limbs. The bony hands tell of death at work. His body reflects the sallow colours of decay. In many places, he painted himself with a skull-like face. Schiele admitted in a verse: “everything is living dead”. Just as kokoschka maintained, schiele soliloquized with death, his counterpart. Trakl wrote of schiele, “and surrounded by the flattery of decay, he lowers his infected lids.”

      At the same time, schiele perceived himself as a man of pain: “that i am true i only say, because i […] sacrifice myself and must live a martyr-like existence.” If contemporary art banished religious themes from its field of vision, the artist now incarnated these himself. In a letter to roessler, the christ-likeness becomes clearer still: “i sacrificed for others, for those on whom i took pity, those who were far away or did not see me, СКАЧАТЬ