| Artist: | Schiele, Egon |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Self-Portrait I | |
| Date of Work: | 1909 | |
| Nationality: | Austrian | |
| Context: | Vienna | |
| Movement: | Viennese Expressionism | |
| Medium: | oil paint | |
| Subject: self-portrait stripped bare; the naked self. Peeling off the Art Nouveau decorative overlay. From facade to psyche. Art as painfully autobiographical and confessional. Revealing the psyche means exposing the body. Overbearing physical presence of the body. Style: the Art Nouveau decorative line goes kinky and angular; the manifest (surface) gives way to the latent (unocnscious desires and anxieties). The naked body is not idealized. No setting or locale; the self in the void. Context: Vienna, the city of Freud, becomes the backdrop for the transition from Klimt's elaborate surfaces to Schiele's uncovering of the self. In the move from facade to psyche, we shift from Art Nouveau to Expressionism; the sons against the fathers. Exppressionist rejection of the facade. Schiele paints from inside out. What emerges is the psychological portrait. | ||
