Egon Schiele

This book is an ideal size for my art collection. Big books are heavy, and knowing that I can find every picture that is still known of a particular artist takes some of the excitement out of seeing what is on the next page. Some of the early pages, and even worse, plates 62 and 63, have pictures in black and white, which isn't the way I expect to see them, because I know they have been robbed of the original color. The list of plates numbers 73, which is a fair number for 80 pages. The Contents lists 8 topics, all of which are interesting enough, and "The Artist and Society" was particularly a problem for Egon Schiele. I think the most is packed into those seven pages, which includes pictures of Lovers 1911, Self-Portrait 1912, Agony 1912, Nude Black-Haired Girl Standing 1910, Prisoner! 24 April 1912, Cardinal and Nun 1912, Hindering the Artist is a Crime, It Is Murdering Life in the Bud! 23 April 1912, For my Art and for My Loved Ones I will Gladly Endure to the End! 25 April 1912, and Fighter 1913. I relate most strongly to the (in prison)autobiographical portraits, and I'm disappointed that Self-Portrait with Hand to Cheek 1918 is not in color on page 27, but the explanation on the following page is good, even if it mentions his critics: "Alessandra Comini has put forward the convincing explanation that, whatever else it may mean, the gesture is a punning reference to the artist's name: in German the verb schielen means to squint, and apparently a number of hostile critics used this correspondence to make sarcastic jokes about Schiele's eyesight." (p. 28) Plate 72 is a late portrait which I have seen in an art museum, exhibited with other paintings. The paint covers the canvas and it is signed, Egon Schiele 1918, the year of Schiele's death, but the final comment of this book is "This, the most painterly of all his late works, is a final, monumental statement of Schiele's vision of the artist. It was left unfinished at his death." It is not clear from the picture what more he might have done, and he previously had left things out. If he was going to finish anything, I think he should have given the Black-Haired Girl Standing in 1910 a right elbow.