Egon Schiele: The Egoist

by Jean-Louis Gaillemin, Liz Nash (Translator)

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was one of the most popular and influential painters to emerge from turn-of-the-century Vienna. Before his premature death at 28, he managed to be thrown in prison on a morals charge and also to create a strongly erotic body of work, both deeply expressive drawings and sublimely beautiful paintings. This enfant terrible of pre-WWI Vienna worked in the shadows of Klimt and Freud, but he found his own voice, and his own nude body was his best model.

Egon Schiele delves into both his controversial sexual themes and neglected aspects of Schiele’s art, notably his formal experiments and his later expressionistic portraits and allegorical paintings—works that reveal much about the importance of his short career.

Genres: Art, Biography, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2006

Reviews

[judi shade · Rating 5 out of 5]

ahh, schiele - had we lived in the same time i'd have been desperately in love with you.

[Khanh · Rating 4 out of 5]

he has the same birthday as me. same daddy issues too.

[Deepak Kashyap · Rating 2 out of 5]

one of the questions that i picked up the book with was in how far can we separate the art from the artist? i don't think that any book would be able to answer that particular question. and perhaps it shouldn't have to. the art and the artists are intricately intertwined, but the viewer only sees the art at the first glance. and that art is the artist. that's the only hermeneutics i understand. any further probe may not be very fructuous.

schiele, was like all artists, highly notorious. perhaps the best prerequisite of becoming an artist also. i don't know one artist, one modern artist, who i can not call crazy. crazy is the prerequisite of being an artist. but schiele was way too crazy. there are some moralities that one should adhere to, the narrowminded myself presumes heftily. i don't know when paedophilia could be justified. the party involved isn't yet fully conscious of the decisions they are taking and may in hindsight only regret it. true that it's also the moral constructs that would lead them to that understanding. but the choice is theirs. i don't condone.

megalomania is apparently also the prerequisite. the pop gen-z slang is "delulu is solulu." so yeah, dude was highly delulu. had to be. no other way. writes to his mother: "am i not the finest fruit of your life? how great must be your joy at having given birth to me." have half a mind to follow suit. follows nietzsche, the other ecce homo, in saying that "i am so rich that i must offer myself at all times." one has to dismantle all the preexisting symbols of reason in order to establish themselves. that schiele does efficiently, and is fittingly tagged as "a moralist whose painting is full of menace."

has an acute understanding of art and says aptly that there is no such thing as new art, but only new artists. and the new artist must be true to himself. very fitting that the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist, was developing this strain of thought. filled with todesangst, distortion, and neurasthenia.

whether as a book it's good or not, i am not quite sure. it is a mere summary of the events of his life, with a not quite masterful narrative. buy it for the pictures, i guess?

"noor"/01.01.2025

[Steve Kubick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find that Schiele defines in his work a certain time and place, as is and take it or leave it; I'd take it...

[Hennesy · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was a read

[oliviaassi · Rating 4 out of 5]

sin duda no existe artista que no sea un absoluto personaje

[Sonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

se me está haciendo bastante pesada la lectura así q de momento paso

[Michael Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite artists, I have several books on Schiele's paintings. All are good; most them provide excellent images of his work. This tiny volume is the most succinctly informative book of his history and development as an artist, including the controversies surrounding him. He died at an early age of Spanish Flu just after World War I. Who knows how his talent would have evolved and where it would have taken him.

[Suzan Poisner · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book afforded me a deeper insight into Egon Schiele, I often found the critiques of the author pretentious and assuming.

The imagery, and the chronological way they are displayed, are very moving and beautiful.

I especially enjoyed reading the documents in the back of the book as they provided for a greater, unedited, understanding of Egon Schiele...how he viewed the world, what drove him as an artist, and how he evolved over time.

[in8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

engaged w/ it here: http://www.5cense.com/14/396.htm

[Ash88 · Rating 3 out of 5]

الفن كإرادة وشهادة على عصر بآكمله.