EGON
SCHIELE
Egon
Schiele was an Austrian born artist, trained under Gustav Klimt, who
primarily focussed on portraits and who produced a great deal of
self-portraits. He is well known for his unique approach to fthe
figure, in particular his exaggerations of features and thematic
obsessions with sex and death. At times his works were graphic and in
early 1900's Austria he faced censure over the sexually explicit
nature of his paintings, and was briefly imprisoned for having
explicit worrks in his studio that could be visible to children.
Infamously, one of his drawings was burned in front of Schiele by the
judge of the trial. Despite this, Schiele found success towards the
end of the First World War in a period in which he is considered to
have been in his prime as an artist. The brutality of the war is
reflected in his uncomfortable, jarring style of physical
representation.
Schiele
died aged 28 during the Spanish flu pandemic in October 1918. Though
he died young, he was a prolific artist and produced hundreds of
works that have come to be widely studied. His unconventional
approach to portraiture is significant in it's contrast to more
traditional styles of the time, and has been influential since.
The
origins of Schieles very stylised approach to representing the figure
are likely influenced by his obsessions with physical vulnerability,
morbidity, sex, and the combinations of all of these facets. His
characters, and particularly in his self portraits, are distorted,
skeletal and look physically broken or sickly. Not all of his works
are as extreme, however, and some of his works, though recognisably
his, do not contain the physical pain present in his self portraits.
It would appear that with these pieces especially there is a sense of
body dysmorphia, as present in the sef portraits by Jenny Saville and
other artists who are uncomfortable with their own self-image.
Schiele's
use of colour is a key element of his 'sickly' style, painting flesh
tones in off yellows, and creating bizarre skin contours and
textures, emphasising and exaggering wrinkles, skin folds, muscle and
bone structure.
