Egon Schiele

This is a very well written and illustrated introduction to Schiele. The intro, which provides the historical background, painting the late Austro-Hungarian empire as a decadent and decaying civilization whose days were numbered, is quite entertaining in its discussion of the sexual politics of the day and how Schiele's decadent Vienna compared with other cities in that regard, such as Berlin (which is still not as sophisticated in the perversion dept. according to the author). This made it entertaining just by itself. In fact, Whitford says turn of the century Vienna was in some ways the most schizoid in terms of hiding its seamy underside behind a false veneer of surface moral probity, while the prosperous middle and upper class continued to enjoy an occasional forbidden tryst with a prostitute, in the meantime condemning the theories of Freud and Kraft-Ebbing for their unvarnished look at sexual issues. Schiele's paintings of wasted looking, dissipated, and in general unprepossessing figures seems to reflect a fin de siecle disaffection and alienation with this sort of hypocrisy, although the author points out that Vienna did have one saving grace, which is that the intellectual culture was one of the most progressive in Europe, and many of the famous names and revolutionaries of the period, from Stalin to Trotsky to Freud and many avant-garde writers and artists, met and knew each other there. I thought this was an interesting perspective and commentary on Schiele and his relationship to the culture of the period, and I enjoyed the book as much for that in addition to the many important examples of his work.

Because he cared about how his art looked and because he accepted traditional ideas of what looked good on canvas, EGON SCHIELE remained outside of Expressionism. Expressionist influences nevertheless showed up in his bold graphics, distorted lines, and unnatural colors: "The artist's wife" wore a plain skirt covered with heavy impastoes, against a similarly treated background, by the emotionally charged, energetically treated brushwork style of Oskar Kokoschka; "View of Krumau" brought Georges Braque- and Pablo Picasso-type Cubism into the exaggeratedly high, unusual viewpoints to make a three-dimensional motif work on a two-dimensional Gustav Klimt-style decorative picture plane. They also had their role in his opinion of art as having to do with feelings, which he drew as abnormal or exaggerated in his self-portraits: "Self-portrait with black clay vase" gave him a double-jointed pair of hands in the manner of medievally represented saints, Paul Gauguin-style self-painted ceramic head, and a vulnerably, wide-eyed look. Expressionism played a part, too, in his pessimistic views: "The family" painted an unhappy trio looking in different directions against a brightly lit background as menacing as a spotlight; drooping "Sunflower" leaves hung dejectedly along a woody stalk; and with her Gustav Klimt-styled fine society lady's huge hat, "The scornful woman" showed an Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec-styled fish wife nude to the waist and sneering at a hurtful world. Author Frank Whitford has come up with a good set of illustrations and text. The author's book, along with his KLIMT, and Christopher Short's SHIELE give a good idea of the artist's place among Bernard Denvir's TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Jose Maria Faerna's KOKOSCHKA, Hans Ludwig C Jaffe's PABLO PICASSO, Susanna Partsch's GUSTAV KLIMT, Belinda Thomson's GAUGUIN, and Karen Wilkin's GEORGES BRAQUE.