Читать книгу Egon Schiele - Esther Selsdon - Страница 16

The discrepancy between schiele’s external appearance and his repulsively ugly self-portraits is astonishing. Gütersloh described schiele as “exceptionally handsome”, of well-maintained appearance, “someone who never had even a day-old beard”, an elegant young man, whose good manners contrasted strangely with his reputedly unpalatable manner of painting. Schiele, on the other hand, painted himself with a long high forehead, wide-opened eyes deep in their sockets and a tortured expression, an emaciated body, which he sometimes mutilated up to its trunk, with spider-like limbs. The bony hands tell of death at work. His body reflects the sallow colours of decay. In many places, he painted himself with a skull-like face. Schiele admitted in a verse: “everything is living dead”. Just as kokoschka maintained, schiele soliloquized with death, his counterpart. Trakl wrote of schiele, “and surrounded by the flattery of decay, he lowers his infected lids.”

At the same time, schiele perceived himself as a man of pain: “that i am true i only say, because i […] sacrifice myself and must live a martyr-like existence.” If contemporary art banished religious themes from its field of vision, the artist now incarnated these himself. In a letter to roessler, the christ-likeness becomes clearer still: “i sacrificed for others, for those on whom i took pity, those who were far away or did not see me, the seer.” His fate as an outsider led to the ideal of the artist as world redeemer. In the programme of the new artists he explains: “fellow men feel their results, today in exhibitions. The exhibition is indispensable today […] the great experience in the existence of the artist’s individuality.” For him, however, this no longer concerned illustration, rather it was a representation of his soul’s inner life. The nude study is a revealing study. Thereby, the work in its expressive self-staging becomes a study of his life.

Reclining Nude with Black Stockings, 1911.

Watercolour and pencil, 22.9 x 43.5 cm.

Private collection.

Preacher, 1913.

Gouache, watercolour and pencil, 47 x 30.8 cm.

Leopold Collection, Leopold Museum, Vienna.

The Dancer, 1913.

Pencil, watercolour and gouache, 48 x 32 cm.

Leopold Collection, Leopold Museum, Vienna.

Seated Female Nude, 1914.

Gouache and pencil, 46.4 x 31.7 cm.

Private collection.

Seated Girl, 1914.

Pencil on paper, 43 x 30 cm.

Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich.

Standing Girl in Blue Dress and Green Stockings, Back View, 1913.

Watercolour and pencil, 47 x 31 cm.

Private collection.