“I intend to get married, advantageously, perhaps not to Wally.”

August 27th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Art Reviews

Photograph by Anton Josef Trčkof Egon Schiele, 1914

“[Arthur] Rimbaud and Schiele were comparable geniuses, and Schiele was in a way un Vilain Bonhomme, as Rimbaud and his drinking buddies called themselves . . . Schiele’s rebelliousness was part of the overall secessionist spirit that possessed twentieth-century artists impatient for official academic art to be junked and Modernism to begin.”

Who: A protégé of Gustav Klimt. Egon Schiele, born in Tulln, Austria on June 12, 1890 and died on All Hallows’ Eve in 1918. He was renowned alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, and was one of the leading visual and figurative artists of the Viennese modern movement: the Vienna Secession and the Art Nouveau.
What: His paintings visually demonstrate the rejection of conservative Victorian views of art through the medium of Expressionism . . . and I’m not an art-history text book so if you want to read more bland text-book facts, please visit your local library. !

Der Verleger Eduard Kosmack 1910

Egon Schiele’s style is erotic, his artwork has been accused of being pornographic, sometimes disturbing, beautifully sexual and grotesque, death-like, self-discovering…etc. Particularly, it was his nude paintings and self-portraits which acted as signifiers to the realist fashion during the Fin de Siècle in Europe. He is a remarkable self-portraitist who expressively “penetrates” into his own being.

Egon Schiele, Self-portraits

Self Portrait 1910 (middle picture): “…a pathetic and yet powerful exposure of Schiele’s vulnerability. He is mere skin and bone, not yet fully there as a person. He has outlined his body with a glowing line of white to indicate to us both his sense of imprisonment and his limitations: notice how his arm disappears almost at the elbow– yet paradoxically it also suggests growth and potential. He is an unhappy, scrawny youth, the wild and exaggerated expanse of pubic hair perhaps indicating the center of his unhappiness. It may seem too individualistic a view, yet in his hysterical way he is expressing the fears and doubts of many young people. He is wonderful, unsettling, and strangely innocent.“

His paintings eroticize sexuality and as others put it, his style “sexualizes eroticism.”

Sitzender weiblicher Akt, 1914

“There was nothing criminal in his character…”
A muse, a model, a lover, and a passion he could not sever from was 17 year-old Valerie Neuzil aka, WALLY, whom he met in 1911. They lived together in Vienna, were frowned upon for their “atrocious” and “disapproving” lifestyle in the town of Český Krumlov (”Bohemian Krumlov”), and were driven out by its residents. Moving to Neulengbach, his studio there became a hang out joint for the town’s delinquents and yet again, created much animosity. CONTROVERSY! Oh the drama. In April 1912 he was arrested for seducing a young girl below the age of consent. At the end of his trial all charges were dropped, however, he was found guilty for “exhibiting erotic drawings in a place accessible to children.”

Left: Friendship, 1913 Right: ?

“His treatment of the nude figure suggests a lonely, tormented spirit haunted rather than fulfilled by sexuality. At first strongly influenced by Klimt, whom he met in 1907, Schiele soon achieved an independent anticlassical style wherein his jagged lines arose more from psychological and spiritual feeling than from aesthetic considerations.”

Is it just me or does the image of Edie Sedgwick come to mind when you hear the name, “Wally” ? The affairs, the controversies, and the artistic and sexual rebellions against prim and proper views of Victorianism are all quite alluring and curious. Go out on a limb and fast-forward to the 60s: Andy Warhol and the factory–his filmwork in the underground film industry in New York was also considered to be pornographic– the sexual revolution. Ring a bell? I just love making far-fetched connections.

May I digress even more???
A Simple RECYCLING of art– translating the strokes of a paintbrush or etches of a pencil through a technological medium: the camera.

Fashion editorials (Harper’s Bazaar)

SCHIELE: Image Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up 1917; Narodni Galerie, Prague

KLIMT: Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)

John Singer Sargent, Madame X (1884):

OK. AND LASTLY…so I lied. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec got shafted for Egon, but it doesn’t mean I won’t share his art with you. I have a feeling these photos will summon up “lightbulb” thoughts in your intelligent minds such as, “Oooooh, yes. I’ve seen these pieces before. Sheer brilliance!”