Julia Kardon 05/17/04

H Band BOME- Vienna

Meyers Unit III

Egon Schiele and Vienna

At the turn of the twentieth century, Austria’s empire was in her dying days. The kaiser, Franz Joseph, was weak and reactionary, but the Austrian people did not seem to notice or care that he, and not parliament, made decisions. Vienna turned a deaf ear to the nationalism that was growing on all sides of Austria, and instead turned towards the lavish cultural center that Vienna had become: a place of balls and operas, of ballets and art.[1] Karl Kraus, a popular writer in fin-de-siecle Vienna, saw through this facade and called Vienna “a research station for the end of the world.”[2] Austria was unprepared to go to war and in their wish to ignore the mounting international tensions, Austrian citizens gave emperor Franz Joseph more power. Franz Joseph, who was described in Janik and Toulmin’s Wittgenstein’s Vienna as, “mediocre and shallow, relying always on ceremonial insulation, which more and more became a cover for both his own personal failings and for his ungovernable melange of Germans, Ruthenes, Italians, Slovaks, Rumanians, Czechs, Poles, Magyars, Slovenes, Croats, Transylvanian Saxons and Serbs,” was the only monarch worldwide who can be said to have enjoyed a strengthening of his control at this time instead of a weakening of it.[3] It is in this atmosphere that Egon Schiele grew up, and it was to this Vienna that Schiele rebelled. His work explores the Viennese subconscious, and the paintings he made are studies of his own psyche, revealing the various societal repression and ideals in his life. Although often under appreciated, Schiele had thus become the voice of self discovery, and the conscience of Vienna.

Schiele’s early work was the foundation for his artistic growth, although it has only recently become acknowledged by the general public. Schiele’s first paintings bear many similarities to the arguably most widely recognized Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt’s work and though some of them can be considered expressionist translations of Klimt, (like “Water Sprites,” painted in 1907 which has almost identical composure to Klimt’s “Water Snakes II”) too often his pre-Expressionistic endeavors are ignored as unoriginal or lacking much character. This could not be farther from the truth: instead, his early works show that it is only through this work that his own abilities were nurtured and brought to light. Some of his earlier works bear very recognizable beginnings of Expressionism; there is a joy the way he painted, especially viewable in his studies rivers and flowers, and an obsession with the form of the body that characterizes all his work. The way he painted skin, which developed speedily from old portraits– the colors are much more dark, variable and emotional than actual skin tones are, yet even in his early paintings there is a depth to his humans that artists at the time were shying away from creating. Schiele, only active from 1907-1918 was forced to change his conventions quickly with the times and soon had a completely distinguishable style.

Schiele’s 1909 “Potrait of Gertrude Schiele” is a one dimensional work filled with geometircal lines and patterns. Though the portrait is of his sister, the work bears little resemblence to later portraits of her, and in fact there is nothing so defining about her features as to make her any different from a common female model. The work closely resembles that of the artist Klimt, although instead of an ornate background, Schiele experiments with the texture of one color, here it is white. In fact, there are few colors in the painting as a whole, something that would differ greatly as his style changed. Later his works would be much more grabbing, and there would be a tension not only in the face but in the whole pose of the body. Still, we can see that Schiele is using his unique skill of discomfort by the way the hands of Gertrude are aranged, painful and desperate, they do not fit the composure of her face. From this origin, Schiele became capable of expressing the inner chaos and fear of his conscious through portraiture, and to develop his technique from Art Nouveau into what is quantifiably Expressionist.

The work Egon Schiele is best known for, however, is not his tense landscapes but his later work, which was often characterized by erotic depictions. From the beginning, Schiele was aiming to be outspoken and truthful, and his paintings bear no resemblance to the “decadent sensuality” or “spiciness” fin-de-siecle Vienna life.[4] Schiele could not deny how he felt for one instant of his life, and this is the aspect of his work that is the most inspiring and appealing to its viewers. Instead, Schiele’s paintings are almost difficult to view, expressing a burden on humankind and in its stark sexuality, the barriers that Schiele felt crashing down on him from every corner are revealed with blunt honesty.[5] Schiele also had a curious erotic affinity for the dead, and worked on several paintings like “Dead Mother,” “Dead City,” and “Death and Girl.” In 1918 as influenza was sweeping the enitre world with devastating results, the war was killing thousands of soldiers each day, and his exposure to this idea of massive pain was growing, it is natural that he would reach out in his paintings in this way. To him, death and sex were the two driving forces that defined the human condition, and they were closely linked to one another. He wrote in a letter, “Everything is dead while it lives” a statement that characterizes much of the fear that can be found in the essence of Viennese thought.[6]

“Death and Girl” was painted in 1915 with recognizable figures: he himself plays death in this macabre painting, and the girl is Wally Neuzil, his former lover whom he dismissed before this painting was created. The painting is an archetype of his work: the passionate colors and frightening positions of the characters, the alarm and panic of the expressions, the brush strokes and representation of limbs– all aspects are completely synonymous with his later work. The fact that he himself is death to Wally is interesting in Expressionist in itself: he had an intense interest in the relationship between man and woman. The thinness of the girl and the desperateness with which she and Death clutch one another only furthers the thesis that Schiele was completely in tune with his subconscious. His mania of repression was associated strongly with a feeling of guilt and anguish, and indeed Death seems frantic to rectify something which cannot help but kill the girl. Schiele’s growth in emotional representation and unique style that has developed with his use of the brush are the defining characteristics of his late work.

Schiele, who was considered the “predestined successor” of Gustav Klimt, was much more risqué than Klimt in his style more than even in his subject matter. [7] [8] Schiele uses the force of Expressionism to eroticize the body with dark and violent features and colors, reinventing a more vulgar aesthetic for turn of the century Vienna. Schiele uses facial features and specific aspects of the body (mostly the torso and the face, but often the genitalia as well) to create nudes that are particularly compelling to modern viewers today– we see in them the sexual repression and isolation that he felt. Schiele’s sexual feelings were often castigated: his parents were very negative about his relationship with his sister, Gerta, and later, after he was living with his young model and lover Wally Neuzil in the small town of Neulengbach, he was sentenced to a month in jail for corrupting minors and tried but acquitted for seducing a minor. [9] Despite the unfavorable reactions society had against what can now be considered not just the paintings of a crazed libido, but instead a portrayal of nakedness versus nudity in art, he turned his reflection more inward and created hundreds of self-portraits.

Schiele explored his own mind with self portraits that scream out to the audience and can not be passed by quickly. Schiele’s portraits immediately engage in a dialogue with the viewer that is perhaps an account of his insecurities and frustrations as an artist and as a man living at that time. His self portraits are filled with tension and contortions, striving to flesh out all of the emotions that had grown with in him, and it is these self portraits for which he became famous for in Vienna. His work borders on hysteria with its helplessness, terror, and the despair of his poses and face. As the war progressed, the self analysis that Schiele conducted in his paintings became something that the Viennese couldn’t help but be fascinated with, and the last few years of his life were filled with portraiture commissions. He was even chosen as both a major participant for the Secession’s 46th exhibition, and as the Austrian representation of art for exhibitions in Stockholm and Copenhagen.[10]

Schiele’s work is challenging and intense, and forces its audience to pay close attention to its message. In the years when the Vienna born psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was coming to popularity, Schiele’s own analysis of himself and of society became appealing to the Viennese who saw themselves reflected in his work. Schiele painted a frightening humanity wrought with inner turbulence that had an ignored presence in Vienna. He defined beauty the way that he deemed appropriate: in his wife, subtle and colorful, yet in himself and some of his models, raw, stark and almost crude– he ignored the “beauty” in the ornate facades of Vienna that had been worshipped for so long. The formula “Beautiful means ugly and ugly, beautiful” was something Schiele was particularly fond of quoting (it was coined by Ludwig Hevesi) and his realm of aesthetics opened up new ideas all through Vienna. Schiele was able to finally force the Austrian aristocracy through his art to acknowledge the repression and pain that was present everywhere at this time. His work was popular because he was able to speak to a people that for so long had been ignoring the signs of decay that their society had been giving off. Schiele’s innovations in the field of expression and interpretation of aesthetic still strike us today because of how truthful they are. He created them under the necessity for society to examine itself, and the sensitivity, awareness, and passion deeply present there still strikes us today.

[1] In part from Dan Goff’s 2000 essay available in full at www.ecfs.org/bome/cities/vienna/eband/goff/index.html

[7] http://www.artchive.com/artchive/S/schiele.html

[8] 5A notable fact about Gustav Klimt is that after his death it was discovered that he actually painted all of his models nude (although they posed fully clothed) and would later paint the clothing on the models.

[9] http://www.artchive.com/artchive/S/schiele.html