Yesterday, I went to view the exhibit Egon Schiele's Women currently on view at Galerie St. Etienne on West 57th Streeet. The display of roughly fifty drawings and watercolors spans Schiele's entire career and demonstrates the development, not only of his art, but of his relationship to women as well. This as the role of women in European society itself changed dramatically in the years immediately preceding World War I.
Egon Schiele, of course, died tragically young at age 28 in the great flu pandemic of 1918. Consequently, there is no "mature" body of work by which to judge the evolution of the artist. The directions which Schiele may have explored in later life can only be inferred from the body of his youthful work.
What most caught my attention yesterday was the artist's uncanny ability to capture the entire personality of a given model in the briefest desciption of her expression. In even the most graphically sexual works, at least those where the model's face is shown, what dominates the image is not the erotic pose but rather the eye contact between model and artist. Time and again, it was the eyes that Schiele detailed rather than the nude figure itself. As the catalog notes:
"The girls' forthright stares challenge the primacy of the male gaze, blurring the boundary between subject and object that had heretofore been central to the genre of the nude."
There can be no doubt, after viewing these works on paper, that Schiele's great gift was for portraiture. Without knowing anything of his models, we have only to glance at a drawing to perceive immediately the entire temperment of the sitter. This psychological intimacy elevates the erotic works beyond the mere display of carnality to a penetrating study of individual character.
The exhibit continues through December 28, 2012.
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