Schiele. Ashley Bassie

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      Years later, Schiele wrote to his sister: “I have, in fact, experienced a beautiful spiritual occurrence today, I was awake, yet spellbound by a ghost who presented himself to me in a dream before waking, so long as he spoke with me, I was rigid and speechless.” Unable to accept the death of his father, Schiele let him rise again in visions. He reported that his father had been with him and spoken to him at length. In contrast, distance and misunderstanding characterised his relationship with his mother who, living in dire financial straits, expected her son to support her; in return, the older sister would work for the railroad.

      Reclining Male Nude with Yellow Pillow

      1910

      Gouache, watercolour and black pencil on paper

      31.1 × 45.4 cm

      Private collection

      However, Schiele, who had been pampered by women during childhood, claimed to be “an eternal child”. By a stroke of fate, the painter Karl Ludwig Strauch (1875–1959), instructed the gifted youth in draftsmanship; the artist Max Kahrer of Klosterneuburg looked after the boy as well. In 1906, at the age of only sixteen, Schiele passed the entrance examination for the general art class at the Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna on his first attempt. Even the strict uncle, in whose household Schiele now took his midday meals, sent a telegram to Schiele’s mother: “Passed.”

      Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait)

      1910

      Oil and gouache, 152.5 × 150 cm

      Leopold Museum, Vienna

      His sister Gertrude (1894–1981), called “Gerti”, four years his junior, was a compliant subject for him. In a watercolour, Gerti reclines backwards, still fully clothed with black stockings and shoes, and lifts the black hem of her dress from under which the red orifice of her body gapes. Schiele draws no bed, no chair, only the provocative gesture of his sister’s body offering itself (Reclining Girl in a Dark Blue Dress, 1910).

      Reclining Girl in a Dark Blue Dress

      1910

      Gouache, watercolour and pencil with white highlights

      45 × 31.3 cm

      Stefan T. Edlis Collection

      Incestuous fantasies? At the same time as Sigmund Freud discovered that self-discovery occurs by way of erotic experiences, and the urge to look emerges as a spontaneous sexual expression within the child, young Egon recorded confrontations with the opposite sex on paper. He incorporated erotic games of discovery and showed an unabashed interest in the genitalia of his model into his nude studies – the forbidden gaze, searching for the opened female vagina beneath the rustling of the skirt hem and white lace. Gerti with her freckled skin, the green eyes and red hair is the prototype of all the later women and models of Schiele.

      Grimacing Man (Self-Portrait)

      1910

      Charcoal, watercolour and gouache on paper

      44 × 27.8 cm

      Leopold Museum, Vienna

      Klimt’s Paternity

      Vienna was the capital city of the Habsburg monarchy, a state of multiple ethnicities consisting of twelve nations with a population of approximately thirty million. Emperor Franz Josef maintained strict Spanish court etiquette. Yet, on the government’s fortieth anniversary, he began a large-scale conversion of the city, with its approximately 850 public and private monumental structures and buildings. During this time, the influx of the rural population selling itself to the big city was increasing.

      Black-Haired Nude Girl, Standing

      1910

      Watercolour and pencil with white highlights

      54.3 × 30.7 cm

      Albertina, Vienna

      The increasing industrialisation resulted in the emergence of a proletariat in the suburbs, while the newly rich bourgeoisie settled in the exclusive Ring Street. In the writers’ cafés, Leo Trotsky, Lenin and, later, Hitler consulted periodicals on display and brooded over the beginning century.

      Just how musty the artistic climate in Vienna was is evidenced by the scandal which erupted in 1893 over Engelhard’s picture Young Girl under a Cherry Tree.

      Albertina, Vienna

      Seated Nude Girl

      1910

      Gouache and black pencil with white highlights

      44.8 × 29.9 cm

      The painting was repudiated on the grounds of “respect for the genteel female audience, which one does not wish to embarrass so painfully vis-à-vis such an open-hearted naturalistic study”. What hypocrisy, when official exhibitions of nude studies, the obligation of every artist, had long been an institution.

      In 1897 Klimt, together with his Viennese fellow artists, founded the Vienna Secession, a splinter group separate from the officially accepted conduct for artists with the motto: “To the times its art, to the art its freedom.”

      The Scornful Woman (Gertrude Schiele)

      1910

      Gouache, watercolour and charcoal with white highlights

      45 × 31.4 cm

      Private collection

      In 1898, the first exhibition took place in a building belonging to the horticultural society. It was distinguished from the usual exhibitions which usually included several thousand works by offering an elite selection of 100 to 200 works of art. The proceeds, generated by the attendance of approximately 100,000 visitors, financed a new gallery designed by the architect Olbrich. Exhibitions by Rodin, Kollwitz, Hodler, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne and Van Gogh opened the doors to the most up-to-date international art world.

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