Sexuality, Sensibility, and the Self

Cover Image: Egon Schiele, Self Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant, 1912. Image via Google Arts and Culture.

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Truly embracing the notion of unbridled, raw sexuality in his art, Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter with a particular mastery over the craft of self-portraits. Despite his life being prematurely shortened by the Spanish flu, Schiele was a transformative figure in the Viennese modernist art climate. Much of his work amplifies the image of the human body, specifically using the aesthetics of anatomy to convey deeply resonant ideals of existentialism. Charged with a distinct emotional intensity, Schiele’s works relentlessly interrogate the ways in which humans use their bodies and faces to voice their psychologies. 

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Schiele was an artist of the expressionist era, yet his works individualise themselves through his radical style of representation, heavily influenced by the Viennese Secession. Known for his innumerable oil self portraits, Schiele typically presented them as affirmations of his artistic identity, whereas his watercolours involved more experimenting with emotions and personas. 

One particular work that exemplifies such is his 1912 Self Portrait with Lowered Head. In the image, Schiele explores all facets of an individual: his posture, his facial expression, his gaze, and his gesture. Specifically, the gaze directed out of the picture operating in contrast to the natural tilt of the head punctuates the art with diabolic tension. The angular frame of the eyebrows and the way it contrasts with the white crescents of the eyeballs further evokes a directive vortex-like intensity. In another clever display of colour blocking, the grim nude complexion set against the pure white backdrop, that almost spills over to the shirt, offers a dramatic element to the piece, urging audiences to experience the revolt and the torment the character inhabits. Above all, there is a sense of rawness and vulnerability to the way Schiele frames the entire artwork, perhaps through the details of the wrinkle or the splayed position of the fingers. Regardless, the piece in its entirety acts as a demonstration of Schiele’s expertise in painting the range of humanity. 

Aside from self-portraits, Schiele also crafted an array of artworks inspired by muses, among which many were prostitutes, evident in the 1914 portrait of a Female Seated Nude. As opposed to his painted self-portraits, several of his pieces on female sexuality are drawings. With Gustav Klimt as a mentor, Schiele interweaves qualities of Klimtian art into his own works. Yet instead of crowding the backdrop of his paintings with Klimtian ornaments, Schiele poses his characters in front of a blank canvas, thrusting them into an existential void. Through the splayed shading and the definite outlines, Schiele exudes a sort of anxious tension, depicting a robust embrace of flesh and bone. The contortion of her posture and the vividness of the red further heightens this unease and contrasts it against the soft, feminine gaze the model offers, offering a visual representation of the duality of women. 

Blindness was a theme Schiele often depicted to castigate those who are too ignorant to see, or rather understand, the deep realities and truths underlying mortality. This is especially reflected in this double-self portrait, Levitation (1915), in which Schiele casts himself as the blind. The fatal expression of the characters conveys the damnation of ignorance and the layered backdrop is effective in illustrating how beauty and vibrance may be tainted by such blindness. 

This painting holds resemblance to another 1915 painting, Death and the Maiden, where a saucer-eyed Schiele occupies the role of Death personified, binded in uttermost intimacy with his long-time muse, Wally Neuzil and the Maiden. The two appear to be floating above a daunting natural landscape on a ragged white bedsheet; the ambiguity within this allows a tragic, philosophical interpretation — perhaps the only certainty we may cling onto in life is death. Thus, there is that signature tension denoted through the clinging and the curvature of the bodies against the patterns of the background. The way the two mould into each other paints them as a singular entity, representing the notion of life and death, as opposed to life versus death; we, therefore, should live in acceptance of death, acknowledging that mortality adds value to the experience of humanity, as opposed to living in fear or in repulsion of death.

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Irrefutably an artist with a thoughtful artistic sensibility, Ergon Schiele encourages those who view his art to consider its deeper implications on notions of sexuality, self-perception, and mortality. 

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