Wen | Zhou Ran
The Reclining Woman
The Reclining Woman was a key painting by Egon Schiller since 1916, and for some time thereafter until the artist's death, Schiller produced only a handful of works. The period between 1914 and 1917 was a period of greater maturity in Schiller's work, and the style of painting was more daring than in the early days. The reclining woman marks the beginning of this trend, with the woman in the painting lying on the ground in a jacket and showing the fat, muscular flesh like a sculpture, and the painting does not show the complete body. This feminine posture was uncommon in Schiller's previous paintings. The painting was originally published in black and white in a publication in Vienna, and it was later that Schiller colored it and wrote the date in the lower right corner— 1916.
In this painting we can see Egon Schiller's early coloring technique: the color of the flesh is first gently swept with khaki pigment, and then with opaque red and green pigments, and treated in key areas such as lips and buttocks for a highlighting effect. According to the time estimates, the painter was serving in the Viennese army at the time of the painting, which was also the peak of Schiller's career, and two years later, the painter died in Vienna due to the plague (Spanish flu).
In Vienna in the early 20th century, the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the verge of decline, surrounded by a rich apocalyptic atmosphere, and the pathological pursuit of death and "beautiful corpses" appeared in art, which was the era in which Schiller lived.
Schiller's works unabashedly express the psychology and emotions of the people of that era, and the characters and scenes he depicts are in a state of panic and uneasiness, and the desire of life and the threat of death are intertwined, always enveloping him. His characters are slender and long, and the cold and straight lines are shocking, in addition to the exaggerated portrayal of the characters' expressions and actions, they are intended to depict the neurotic emotions of the characters. This painting of "The Reclining Woman" conveys to the audience this extremely uncomfortable feeling.
Egon Schiller (12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918)
If the darkness of the big era is not enough to create a unique artistic style of the artist, then the family situation he has faced since childhood has had an unquestionable influence on his creation. Schiller's middle-class family in Vienna has never been able to escape the shadow of death, which is the ultimate source of the pathological, dead elements of Schiller's art.
Egon Schiller was born in Tulum, Austria, in 1890 to his father Adolf Schiller, who worked as a train station station manager at the Austrian State Railways, and to a mother from Český Krumlov, Bohemia.
The father provided the family with a superior middle-class life, and was also addicted to the common erosion of the middle class at that time. His father suffered from syphilis before marriage, three boys died after marriage, Schiller was the fourth son in the family, and his only sister died when Schiller was 3 years old. By the time he was 15 years old, his father had died of syphilis.
Death was never new to Schiller, but his father's death hit him hard, and Schiller fantasized for a long time that his father was still around and often talked to him. His relationship with his mother also faded, because he believed that her mother lacked the thoughts and memories of her dead father. Death became a often expressed meaning in his later paintings. Schiller, who grew up cold and unsociable, wrote in his manuscript in middle school: "My poor teachers were my enemies, and neither they nor anyone else knew me. ”
Egon Schiller, Self-Portrait, 1912
Schiller's father was not optimistic about his son's talent for painting, and he hoped that his son would work in a government agency and be rich and stable. As a child, Schiller went to a school run by Klosternenburg Abbey, where his art teacher discovered his artistic talent and supported him in his continued career. With the encouragement of this teacher, the 16-year-old Schiller was admitted to the Vienna Art and Business School and became acquainted with the famous Viennese painter Gustav Klimt.
Gustav Klimt was a famous Viennese symbolist painter who created the Vienna Secession. The Vienna Secession was committed to providing a platform for young, non-traditional creators to publish, bringing excellent works by foreign painters to Vienna, and publishing its own magazine to showcase the work of its members, of which Klimt was editor-in-chief. The separatist statement does not make any declarations and does not actively encourage any distinctive style, where naturalism, realism and symbolism coexist peacefully. Gustav's work is characterized by the presence of a large number of special symbolic decorative patterns, which have a deep influence on Schiller's early works.
Less than a year after attending the Vienna Technical School of Fine Arts, Schiller was recommended by several of the school's faculty members to study painting and drawing at the Vienna Institute of Contemporary Art, but the conservative atmosphere of the new school frustrated him. In 1907, Hitler was rejected by the school, and rumors spread that Hitler and Schiller knew each other.
In 1909, Schiller saw works by Eduard Munch, Jean Tulope and Van High in Klimt's exhibition. Schiller's 1910 work is also very similar to the style of another Expressionist painter in Vienna, Kokoschka, in 1908. They aimed their brushes at the masses of poor and homeless children at the bottom of Vienna, thin and nervous, hungry and confused. Kokoschka's expressionist style became the object of Schiller's imitation during this period. At this time, Schiller was liberated from the conservative academy and began to be exposed to the subject of the human body and sexual desire.
Egon Schiller's 1912 oil portrait of 17-year-old Villani Willie Noizzi
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the modernist school of painting was in full swing, and many traditional artistic laws were broken. Schiller's later stages of creation were even more unscrupulous in his inner thoughts. His depictions of the human body take on a geometric style, with no delicate depictions and more deformations.
Schiller gradually got rid of the routine of his teacher Klimt symbolism and began to draw nourishment from the Expressionist school. He was amazed by the distorted fear and horror of Edward Munch's work, which paid more attention to the expression of his own emotions in his later works.
During his lifetime, Schiller painted more than 100 self-portraits, many of which were naked bodies. Freud said that the meaning of exposing the genitals or related organs is: I am not afraid of you, I despise you! This should also be what Schiller's paintings are trying to convey.
He would pose in various poses in front of the mirror and talk to his true self. Schiller's friends described him as "rarely handsome, meticulous in appearance, and people can't even find an unshakeed stubble on his face." The handsome young man's favorite phrase was: All things are living walking dead. His self-portrait has sunken eyes, a painful expression, and thin limbs and morbid appearance. Either black and turquoise, or red or green are scattered dots. Early Schiller, with the permission of a doctor friend, went to the hospital to observe dying patients, and these unhealthy skin tones came from those who were terminally ill. These self-portraits may not be like Schiller, but they are the real Schiller.