Egon Schiele Constructing An Artistic Identity and the Pathological Body (original) (raw)

Egon Schiele (Esther Selsdon, Jeanette Zwingenberger)

Parkstone International, 2012

Egon Schiele’s work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill in the manipulation of line, above all, lent a taut expressivity to all his work. Profoundly convinced of his own significance as an artist, Schiele achieved more in his abruptly curtailed youth than many other artists achieved in a full lifetime. His roots were in the Jugendstil of the Viennese Secession movement. Like a whole generation, he came under the overwhelming influence of Vienna’s most charismatic and celebrated artist, Gustav Klimt. In turn, Klimt recognised Schiele’s outstanding talent and supported the young artist, who within just a couple of years, was already breaking away from his mentor’s decorative sensuality. Beginning with an intense period of creativity around 1910, Schiele embarked on an unflinching exposé of the human form – not the least his own – so penetrating that it is clear he was examining an anatomy more psychological, spiritual and emotional than physical. He painted many townscapes, landscapes, formal portraits and allegorical subjects, but it was his extremely candid works on paper, which are sometimes overtly erotic, together with his penchant for using under-age models that made Schiele vulnerable to censorious morality. In 1912, he was imprisoned on suspicion of a series of offences including kidnapping, rape and public immorality. The most serious charges (all but that of public immorality) were dropped, but Schiele spent around three despairing weeks in prison. Expressionist circles in Germany gave a lukewarm reception to Schiele’s work. His compatriot, Kokoschka, fared much better there. While he admired the Munich artists of Der Blaue Reiter, for example, they rebuffed him. Later, during the First World War, his work became better known and in 1916 he was featured in an issue of the left-wing, Berlin-based Expressionist magazine Die Aktion. Schiele was an acquired taste. From an early stage he was regarded as a genius. This won him the support of a small group of long-suffering collectors and admirers but, nonetheless, for several years of his life his finances were precarious. He was often in debt and sometimes he was forced to use cheap materials, painting on brown wrapping paper or cardboard instead of artists’ paper or canvas. It was only in 1918 that he enjoyed his first substantial public success in Vienna. Tragically, a short time later, he and his wife Edith were struck down by the massive influenza epidemic of 1918 that had just killed Klimt and millions of other victims, and they died within days of one another. Schiele was just twenty-eight years old.

Austrian Expressionism and Leading Artists Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kochkoska

During the late 1800’s, a transformation began in Vienna, Austria that not only catapulted the development of new social perspectives but it also completely changed the direction of art. There was a transition from academic art to a free and psychologically based art. Inspired by the changing structures of Vienna, these artists created work that now ranks among the most important modern art of all time.

Michael Sappol, Body Modern: Fritz Kahn, Scientific Illustration and the Homuncular Subject

Social History of Medicine, 2017

After suffering a dearth of attention, the intricate mechanico-anatomical illustrations produced under the guidance of German-Jewish surgeon, gynecologist, obstetrician, writer and polymath, Fritz Kahn (1888-1968), have attracted a plethora of publicity. In 2009 Uta and Thilo von Debschitz's monograph with 350 illustrations was published by Taschen. 1 The following year, the first large-scale exhibition of his work was held in Berlin at the Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité followed by several

Egon Schiele’s Double Self-Portraits as Gedankenmalerei

With few visual precedents, Egon Schiele (1890-1910) was the first artist to systematically explore the double self-portrait’s potential by painting, drawing and photographing thirteen works in the genre. In this paper, I argue that these pieces reflect Schiele’s interest in establishing a deep engagement with the viewing subject. I consider Schiele’s double self-portraiture in two distinct categories: as an original group (The Self-Seers) from 1910 and 1911, and as a series of unique, experimental works after 1913. While the Self-Seers paintings exhibit Schiele’s concern with the act of viewing, his subsequent works suggest that Schiele recognized double self-portraiture’s potential to be multivalent, engaging with the concept in a highly experimental, yet strategic manner. These singular works address Schiele’s various creative concerns as well as the preoccupations of Viennese culture, and they display his capacity to create art that is thoughtful and thought provoking, presenting an unexamined facet of Expressionistic art.

Egon Schiele’s Double Self Portraiture

2015

With few visual precedents, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was the first artist to systematically explore double self-portraiture's potential to convey multiple meanings, by painting, drawing and collaboratively photographing thirteen works in the genre. In this dissertation, I argue that these works reflect Schiele's interest in establishing a deep engagement with the viewer. I consider Schiele's double self-portraiture in two distinct categories: as an original, intended group from 1910 and 1911 that, borrowing from two of the works' titles, I call the Self-Seers, and as a sequence of unique, experimental works after 1913. While the Self-Seers paintings exhibit Schiele's concern with the act of viewing, his subsequent works suggest double self-portraiture's potential to be multivalent, engaging with the opposite qualities such as inner and outer, the spiritual and the mundane, and death and life in a highly experimental, yet strategic manner.

Ernö Kállai and Wilhelm Kolle: Science and Art in Weimar Germany

Acta Historiae Artium Vol. 37, 1996

Late in 1932, rluring the closing mon ths of th<~ Weimar Republic, Erno KaJiai publis h<~rl the articl< : Biorumantik (Bioromanticism), 1 in which he summ<:rl up id<:as on tlw relationshir of Modernist art to naturT he had b<~en formul ating since h<: rlistane<:rl himself fmm I ntcrnational Constructivism in th<~ rnirl 1920s. The central argum<~nt <~xpresscrl in Bioromantik was that the optical rPscmblance b<:tw<~<:n biomorrhic abstraction and Surrealism on th<: on<: hand, and to sci-< :ntific imagery on th<· other, was not necessarily rlw: to the artists being visually insrinxl by X-ray and microscopic photographs or films. Hather, KaJiai rositerl an ex planation based on the notion of the artists responding to rle<~p impulses which thr~y shan~d with structures revealed in mi croscopic and X-ray imagery: