EGON SCHIELE - Leah Barsher

A Woman Nude Body

Reclining Woman with Blond Hair

"Egon Schiele (June 12, 1890 – October 31, 1918) was an Austrian painter, a protégé of Gustav Klimt, and a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. Schiele's body of work is noted for the intensity and the large number of self-portraits he produced. The twisted body shapes that characterize Schiele's paintings and drawings make the artist a notable exponent of Expressionism."

http://www.egon-schiele.net/

"Schiele's personal path into adulthood was paralleled by changes in his artistic approach. As he grew less self centered and more outward-looking, his art grew less anguished and introspective. The number of self-portraits diminished, his line became smoother, his manner of modeling more overtly realistic. The female nude had always figured prominently in Schiele's work - as indeed it does in that of many artists. However, whereas in his early twenties he had explored his own ambivalence toward and even terror of sexuality, he now approached the subject from a greater emotional distance. His later nudes were increasingly depersonalized, but his portraits were, conversely, more probing. Instead of projecting his own personality onto that of his subjects, as he had formerly, he was now intimately attuned to each individuals's identity. "

http://www.egon-schiele.com/

Masturbation

I was first introduced to Egon Schiele's work by my roommate's mom. She is an artist herself and was deeply moved and inspired by Schiele. After looking through a book that displayed his work, I was both confused and awed. His nudes present an interesting juxtaposition between the nudes we discussed in class and the ideology of the nude that we read about in Lynda Nead's essays. There is an on-going controversy about whether Schiele's work is simply pornography or whether its vulgarity is a true artistic result of Schiele's own "disastrously erotic intentions". An article in The Atlantic quoted Simon Schama (in The New Yorker), "Nowadays...to dismiss a work of art as pornographic is to risk charges of philistinism...He then went on to dismiss Schiele's work as puerile and pornographic. But at one point he abruptly reversed himself and praised Schiele for his pornographic fervor: To deny the lewdness of Schiele's art is to do him no favors, for that is precisely where he concentrates his potency.'" 
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/criticaleye/ce980219.htm

You can find most of his works on the website: http://www.egon-schiele.net/