Egon Schiele: Portraits

This volume is the catalogue for the exhibition at New York's Neue Galerie from October 2014 until January 2015. In his Preface, Ronald S. Lauder, the co-founder and President of the museum, writes of his youthful enthusiasm for Egon Schiele and the acquisition of his first drawing by the artist when he was just a teenager, the first piece of what would eventually become the extensive assemblage that is at the core of the museum's permanent collection. In concentrating on the portraits, this exhibition is not nearly as comprehensive or extensive as the huge Schiele show mounted at the Galerie in 2005, curated by the Galerie's director, Renée Price, who also edited that show's massive, 500-page catalogue (see the reviews on this website). This is a much more specific focus on what Mr. Lauder calls "the artist's area of greatest strength" (9), and it is appropriate that this show has been curated and its catalogue edited by Alessandra Comini, who has previously written extensively on Schiele's portraits and self-portraits. Dr. Comini provides a succinct overview of Schiele's brief life (1890-1918) and art, tracing the rapid trajectory of his development from a portraitist in the Art Nouveau style of his mentor Gustav Klimt to his "Expressionist portrait style" (24). Five further scholarly essays are devoted to aspects of Schiele's portraits. Christian Bauer ("Egon Schiele: The Beginning," 2013) writes on the influence of the early "technological socialization" the artist was exposed to when he lived above a train station and sketched hundreds of pages of trains, tracks, etc., and on several factors that bore on facial expressions in the portraits, such as contemporary researches into physiognomy and even the practice of police "mug shots." There is an ingenious and convincing explication of the enigmatic canvas "Procession" (1911) as an allegorical self-portrait; a look at the artist's portrait practice in comparison with that of Kokoshka, Oppenheimer and others; and an examination of the role of the viewer in the early double self-portraits. I would point particularly to the contribution of Diethard Leopold, a psychotherapist in private practice in Vienna. He writes an astute and very perceptive psychological profile of the artist, looking at the interconnectedness of his life and art. Short as it is, it is one of the best and most persuasive psychological portraits of an artist that I have read. These are interesting and informative essays, and in coming at Schiele from such a variety of perspectives, they reveal how very fertile and suggestive his artistry was. In addition to these texts, the catalogue also prints the diary that Schiele purportedly kept while in prison for a few weeks in 1912, and the drawings he did to accompany it. These were published in 1922 by his friend Arthur Roessler, and the authenticity of the document is addressed by a number of the writers: how much is Schiele's own words and how much is embellished or even invented by Roessler is an open question, and it is good to have this reprinted here, because it is not otherwise readily available.But, as engaging as the scholarly comments are, it is the reproductions that catch our attention. It is really remarkable how Schiele, whose entire mature artistic career was compressed into a mere twelve years, was able to accomplish so much. But he was precociously gifted, started early, and worked a lot, and his speed of production was a marvel to many of his friends: a fully realized pencil or charcoal bust was often just a matter of fifteen minutes or so. Not all his portraits are here, but there are 126 catalogue exhibits, about half of them full-page and the remainder almost all half-page, and all in excellent reproductions in color and clarity. They are grouped chronologically in several sections, beginning in 1906 with "Family and Academy" studies and proceeding to "Fellow Artists," "Sitters and Patrons," "Lovers," "Eros," and "Self-Portraits and Allegorical Self-Portraits." There is hardly one among them that isn't compelling in some way, either beguiling and charming or, often enough, plainly repellant. Some of them are quite shocking in their radical distortion of the human form, in their wholesale rejection of the traditional norms of physical beauty or in their "in-your-face" sexual explicitness. (And in that respect, one can understand the basis of Oskar Kokoshka's charge that Schiele was pandering to the depraved tastes of a sexually repressed male clientele.) This is a volume directed to a broad general readership, rather than to the academic community, and so there is not much in the way of scholarly apparatus. The exhibition checklist provides basic curatorial data, and there is a ten-page capsule biography well illustrated with photographs of family and friends, and the index, although not comprehensive, lists names and titles. One very attractive feature is the large number of comparison illustrations accompanying the essays (about 125 by my rough count): reproductions of other works by Schiele and his fellow artists, photographs of him and his circle, pictures of source materials, etc. This is an excellent compilation of information and images and it is highly recommended to those interested in Schiele, portraiture, or those intensely creative years around the turn of the last century.

Lovely book. Why is it that exceptionaly gifted people die so soon? He had a fine use of good line work in his drawings and his self-portraits are surely a case study of disturbance. Very well presented.

Enjoyed this

What a beautiful book of an unique artist. Both text and reproductions are wonderful and extensive.

I'm really enjoying this book and your service was great.

Very creamy!

Excellent.