Grand Austrian Perverts 2: Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

Photo by Anton Josef Trčka (1914)

 

Ich bestreite nicht, Bilder erotischer Natur gemacht zu haben. 

Aber sie sind immer Kunstwerke und den Künstler einzuschränken ist ein Verbrechen.[1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst I have previously expressed my dislike of Egon Schiele's treatment of his devoted muse and lover Wally Neuzil - click here - it would be amiss to write a series of posts on the grand perverts [2] of Austria and not include this brilliant young artist. 

For he may have been a bit of a shit and his concern with marrying advantageously so he could climb the social ladder may make me despise him, but there's no denying that this protégé of Gustav Klimt - another grand pervert in his own right [3] - was a hugely talented figurative painter, whose work is noted (and notorious) for its twisted body shapes and explicit sexual nature.

 

 

II.

 

Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele was born in Tulln, Lower Austria, in 1890. 

 

As a child, he was fascinated by trains and would obsessively spend his time drawing them. I imagine that this was due more to the fact that his father was in charge of the local railway station, rather than an immature form of siderodromophila, but, who knows, maybe these early sketches did have a fetishistic or erotic component to them, which might help explain why his father one day became so enraged that he destroyed them. 

 

It might also explain why even his schoolfriends found him queer - that and the fact that this shy, reserved young man also had an incestuous desire for his younger sister, Gerti; something else that met with paternal disapproval [4]. 

 

By the time he turned sixteen, it was obvious that Egon had a tremendous talent for drawing and so he was enrolled first at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna (where Klimt had once studied) and then at the more traditional Academy of Fine Arts (also in Vienna). 

 

Although he stayed at the latter institution for three years, Schiele despised the ultra-conservative style of painting being taught [5] and so, in 1907, he decided to contact Klimt, who was known to mentor talented young artists. Klimt was so impressed by Schiele, that he not only helped find models and potential clients, but bought some of the young artist's drawings himself.  

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, Schiele's earliest work shows the strong influence of Klimt, although there are also similarities with his slightly older contemporary - and rival - Oskar Kokoschka. However, he soon developed his own distinctive style and, free from the conventions that had been imposed upon him at the Academy, he began to explore (and distort) the human form, particularly in its sexual aspect. 

 

This included some shockingly honest nude self-portraits, including one from 1910 in which  he is seen grimacing, and another, from 1911, in which he is masturbating. Other nude portraits were equally provocative; not least those which featured very young (and very thin) models in sexualised poses, such as Girl with Black Hair (1910), or Nude with Red Garters (1911): see figures 1 and 2 below.

 

Many critics thought the works grotesque and pornographic and soon the authorities would be coming for Schiele, who, perhaps sensing that trouble was brewing, decided to leave Vienna and start afresh elsewhere ...

 

 

III.

 

Schiele and his mistress Wally first moved to the small town of Český Krumlov (German: Krumau), in southern Bohemia. Unfortunately, they quickly upset the locals with their lifestyle and the fact that Schiele tried to employ their young daughters as models. 

 

Obliged to move on, they travelled to Neulengbach, about 25 miles west of Vienna. However, as in Krumau, Schiele's studio became a meeting place for delinquent adolescents and unsavoury artist-types and soon the town's residents were up in arms, the Bürgermeister agreeing that something had to be done. 

 

And so, in April 1912, Schiele's studio was raided by the police who seized more than a hundred works they considered degenerate [6] and arrested him on a charge of seducing a girl below the age of consent (which was then - as now - fourteen in Austria) [7]. Schiele was imprisoned for three weeks while awaiting his trial, during which time he produced a series of twelve paintings depicting life behind bars. 

 

When his case was finally heard, the charge of seduction was dropped. But he was found guilty of exhibiting obscene drawings in a place accessible to children and the judge seemed to take a strange delight in burning one of these offending works over a candle flame in the courtroom itself.   

 

Deciding he really needed to settle down - and tone down the pervy-paedo content of his work - Schiele married in 1915 into a solidly middle-class family, breaking Wally's heart in the process. Despite being conscripted during the War, he continued to work and to exhibit. By 1917, he was back in Vienna and able to focus more fully on his artistic career. 

 

This was, in fact, his most productive period and at the Secession's 1918 exhibition, Schiele had fifty works on display in the main hall. He also designed a poster for the event; a version of the Last Supper, with himself in the role of Christ. The show was a huge success and not only did he receive many new portrait commissions, but prices for his older works dramatically increased.

 

Unfortunately, in the autumn of that same year, the Spanish flu [8] arrived in Vienna: it first killed his wife (who was six months pregnant at the time) and, three days later, on Halloween, it claimed Schiele's life too. Allegedly, his last words were: Der Krieg ist aus, und ich muss gehen ... 

 

Which is a nice line with which to close either a life or a post. 

 

 

Fig. 1: Schwarzhaariger Mädchenakt (1910)

Fig. 2: Akt mit roten Strumpfbändern  (1911)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For those who don't read German and can't be bothered to have it translated, the lines in English read:  'I do not deny that I have made pictures of an erotic nature. But they are always works of art and to restrict the artist is a crime.'

 

[2] I am borrowing this phrase from D. H. Lawrence, who, in a letter to Aldous Huxley, once described St. Francis, Michelangelo, Goethe, Kant, Rousseau, Byron, Baudelaire, Wilde and Marcel Proust as grand perverts. Click here for my post on this subject.

 

[3] Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), was an Austrian symbolist and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His primary subject was the female body and his works are marked by what is often rather coyly phrased as a frank eroticism. As he began to develop a more pervy style, his work was increasingly the subject of controversy; this culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic.

 

[4] When Egon was sixteen he took his twelve-year-old sister Gerti - by train - to Trieste and spent the night in a hotel room with her. By this time his father had died, of syphilis, and he was technically in the care of his maternal uncle (another railway official).   

 

[5] Schiele's main teacher at the Academy was the German painter Christian Griepenkerl, who specilised in allegorical works based on themes drawn from classical mythology. As well as frustrating Schiele, Griepenkerl was also the man who twice rejected Adolf Hitler's application to study at the Academy in 1907-08. 

 

[6] As Cody Delistraty reminds us in his essay 'Rethinking Schiele' in The Paris Review (3 Dec 2018):

      

"Working at precisely the time that fin-de-siècle decadence and excess was giving way to prewar conservatism, Schiele found that degeneracy would become a key term in his damnation. Degeneracy, of course, was also the term that the Nazis would use to describe so much of modern art, from works by Vincent van Gogh to Paul Klee to Edvard Munch." 

 

This interesting essay, which discusses Schiele's art in relation to questions of pornography and sexual exploitation, can be read online by clicking here. 

[7] Thirteen-year-old Tatjana Georgette Anna von Mossig. Frl. Mossig, from Neulengbach, was the daughter of an esteemed naval officer. I am grateful once more to Cody Delistraty for this information. 

 

[8] Unlike the coronavirus pandemic which caused global hysteria, the Spanish flu pandemic (1918-20) was exceptionally deadly and no one really knows how many people it killed, although estimates vary from 17 million to 50 million (and possibly as high as 100 million). Unusually, whereas the flu usually kills the very young and very old, this strain also had a high mortality rate amongst young adults, such as 28-year-old Schiele. 

 

 

To read the first post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Arthur Schnitzler - click here.   

 

To read the third post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Freud - click here.