Original subtitles

Egon Schiele has become one of the most celebrated artists of the last 100 years, a controversial figure in his own short lifetime, who was jailed on an obscenity charge.

His work is starkly honest and provocative, intensely powerful images where the human figure is stripped down to bear essentials, both sexually and psychologically.

He's one of the great draftsmen in art history and perhaps the most obsessive painter of the self ever, whose influence has struck a neurotic, as well as erotic, called throughout the 20th century.

Egon Schiele only lived for 28 years and he worked for barely 10 of those, but his life and his art were dominated by the cultural centre that was Vienna.

The fourth largest city in Europe that far and away the most cosmopolitan one, a melting pot and a gateway where East met West, and also, and the baritry of the modern world, where in cafes like this one, you might meet composers like Arnold Schernberg, or philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein, or psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud.

But Vienna was a city of fundamental contradictions. It was the lavish centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but that was a dying force.

Its architecture, particularly the recently completed Ringstrasse, was effectively a sham full of fake Gothic and classesism.

And then there was the hypocritical sexual underworld riddled with prostitution, syphilis, and the usual double standards.

And from all this, two themes seemed to emerge as the dominant forces in Vienna's culture, which find their most eloquent and powerful expression in the art of Egon Schiele, and those themes, sex and death.

But the story starts here in the small town of Tone, 20 miles west of Vienna, where Egon Schiele was born on the 12th of June 1890.

His father was the station master, and together with these three sisters, the family lived in a small apartment above the station itself.

In spite of the lack of artistic tradition in the family, Schiele was something of a child prodigy.

Not surprisingly, he enjoyed drawing trains that he saw at his father's station.

His mother claimed that he'd begun to draw before he was two years old, and that he drew from morning to night.

But in 1995, tragedy struck. Schiele's father had contracted syphilis well before the marriage, and became increasingly prone to bouts of insanity.

And eventually, died when Schiele was just 15, leaving his mother to support the entire family,

and an uncle to become guardian to the children, all of which, not surprisingly, had a profound impact on Egon Schiele's developing personality.

But the death of his father only seemed to make Schiele even more determined to succeed, despite the objections of his new guardian.

In courage by his art teacher at school, Schiele replied to the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and was accepted.

A few months earlier, the Academy had refused entry to another young hopeful, Adolf Hitler.

But first, Schiele was happy to follow the curriculum that the Academy demanded.

Copying casts anatomy and perspective, the normal training for any young artist.

But the most radical influence on his work, came from outside the Academy.

The Vienna Session was an art movement set up in the 1890s that broke away from the official academies, which were a guard that is too traditional.

Within a few years of its founding, the Session built its own eye-catching headquarters in the heart of Vienna,

an independent forum for artists, designers, and architects.

In 1907, Schiele met Gustav Klimt, the most prominent portrait painter in the city, and the leader of the Session group.

Klimt saw Schiele's talents and encouraged him in his work.

He occasionally bought or exchanged a drawing, arranged for models to sit for Schiele, and introduced him to potential patrons.

And the traces of the Session's style and the influence of Klimt were soon to be found in some of Schiele's works dated from the time.

This is a work by Klimt, painted in 1901 called Water Sprites.

And six years later, Schiele painted this work, also called Water Sprites.

Although it's more angular than the Klimt, the influence isn't hard to discern.

In 1908, Schiele produced this work that is both traditional, and which also hints at a new artistic visual voice trying to emerge.

It takes the age-old subject of the mother and child, and in this case, the work is subtitled Madonna and child, so it has a spiritual or holy dimension.

But instead of presenting an image of nurturing motherhood, Schiele gives it a slightly sinister twist.

For a start, he presents the child straight in front of the mother, where the two forms almost look like an interlocking or abstract pattern.

But the real contrast is in the faces.

The child has an angelic almost sickly sweet expression, but then look behind that the mother, with his sinister mask-like face, with her pupils barely visible.

Now, this is a short drawing, and Schiele's clearly experimenting, and he's also looking at and playing with a form of art that's very strong in Vienna at the time called symbolism,

where works have various signs and symbols that add it to something much larger.

And people have looked at this work and said in particular, with the three visible hands and the triangle that they make and the triangular forms that each hand has in some ways symbolises the holy Trinity.

Broadly though, I think he's using the idea of symbolism as something that mystifies and creates a sense of enigma, and it's that characteristic that he draws out in the art over the next three years.

And it wasn't long before Climps Impact began to diminish.

The changes particularly evident in Schiele's self-portrait painted in 1909, in which he emerges from his secession-style robe.

It's a kind of Christmas, which is if Schiele is saying pictorially that he's now ready to step out of one style of painting and forward into another.

But in 1910, Schiele's self-portraiture takes a radical step, starting with this work called seated male nude,

where in fact all signs of furniture or background are removed, and a contorted figure that is clearly Schiele is projected against a white void that threatens both to overwhelm the figure,

but at the same time emphasises something that's rather stark and almost brutal about the way the figure's presented.

He still uses that elegant curve line to depict the limbs of himself, but the work is becoming much more expressive.

In fact, it's indicative of a style that we call expressionism, where feeling, personal feeling, and that sense of intensity looms large in the work.

It's almost as if Schiele, as a 20-year-old, but still with a vision of an adolescent, is contemplating himself as adolescents do in the mirror,

and trying to make sense of himself as both a sense of pride and revulsion, as a sense of display and exploration,

and in fact he becomes the subject and the object of his own work.

But the pivot of the painting is a search for identity in particular, sexual identity.

And right above his genitals, there's this circle that's almost like a target or a mirror that draws the viewer's eyes in.

Although you can clearly see male genitalia, there's something also ambiguous about it, as if Schiele himself is searching for what he is that he's really about.

And he describes himself on numerous occasions as an eternal child, and I think that idea looms very strong in this picture,

but this also triggers a series of works where this anxiety and this search for himself as a sexual being puts him right at the forefront of radical European painting.

With Schiele, it was always his self-obsession, his narcissism that manifests itself in these new self-portraits.

Here, Schiele presents a frank, matter of fact, adolescent portrayal of himself masturbating.

The subject of masturbation was very much to boo in turn of the century Vienna, as it still is today.

So Schiele's honesty in recording himself in this manner is quite remarkable, although there's probably a hint of adolescent provocation involved too.

And the other big theme that emerges dramatically in Schiele's self-portraiture is that of death, and nowhere is that more apparent in this work.

One of the series of three that he made around the theme of what he called the self-seer or self-observer, although this work is also called man and death.

What we have initially, when we look at it, is a double self-portrait.

Schiele produced out of a miasma of paint, almost sculpturally formed at the centre where this mask-like face, looking almost blankly out of this.

Then in the background, a specter or a phantom that both seems to emerge in the back of his head and also threatens to envelop or become part of Schiele once again.

Now this is part of a German literary tradition known as the doppelganger, where the idea is that at the moment of your death, your exact double appears, it's one of the last things that you see.

And in a way, he's in keeping with the theories of Sigmund Freud, who later on publishes a book called Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where he says,

eros, the life force isn't just the only dominant force in the human mind and human psychological makeup, there's also the death force of Thanos.

It's all there in this picture.

But there's also, in the way that paint is used so expressively.

Another kind of feeling here, look at the hands, look at these gestures, look at the way that the hands make the sign of the cross, there's almost an air of martyrdom here.

Look out, the hands also seem to, on one hand, to be a thumb missing, on another, there's no digits at all.

And there's something of self-mutilation going on here.

And what we get when Schiele produces a self-portrait is not just the idea of a man looking at himself in the mirror,

but a man who's trying to see himself with something approaching an x-ray vision, and also with a prophetic vision,

as if to see what might happen to him, as well as to discover what is actually happening to him.

The mirror features prominently in this drawing where Schiele studies himself in the act of painting.

He scrutinizes and draws both himself at the female nude, a subject for which he'd become famous and infamous,

and which would lead to his imprisonment.

Self-portraiture was the means through which Schiele began his radical assault on the conventions of European figure painting,

but there were other themes that interested him, and also he had to make money.

So predominantly two areas emerged, firstly and most respectively, portraiture.

Here, the magazine publisher Edward Kosmak stares manically at the viewer from an almost vacant space.

In the background, we can see what looked like claw marks down the wall, and to the right a sunflower.

His elongated hands, Schiele trademarked a place nervously between his legs, whilst Kosmak seems to possess a certain power,

the gaze which pierces the viewer has been associated with Kosmak's interest in hypnotism.

But later Schiele changed his style and started to include the environment of the sitter in the portraits.

Here, Hugo Colour, the industrialist and bibliophile, sits surrounded by his piles of books.

And the second area that Schiele made his own, and which also generated a substantial income for him,

and which also led to the production of confident, almost brash in rocketing masterpieces like this one later in his career, was of course the female nude.

His first model was his sister Gerti, whom Schiele seems to have had an unusually close relationship with.

Her head faces away from us, and the composition is cut off at the top and at the knees.

Schiele's clearly focusing her attention on the genitals.

Schiele had no trouble finding other models to pose for him, producing a large number of figure drawings throughout his life.

In 1911, at the age of 21, Schiele met the woman who was to serve as the model for some of his best and most acutely erotic drawings.

Her name was Vali or Wally Noisel, who was 17.

Wally had previously posed for Schiele's mental climped. She inspired in Schiele the kind of erotic fantasies on which he's art thrived.

These drawings are the expression of a physical passion so far unequalled in Schiele's life.

In 1911, together with Wally, his mistress and his model, Schiele decided to leave Vienna and go instead to the old town of Cruma, where his mother had been born, now in the Czech Republic.

There, he painted a series of landscapes.

Man-made environments in nature played an important but subsidiary role in Schiele's art, acting as a kind of necessary relief from the stress of his work with the human figure.

Schiele created in his townscapes a vivid pattern of form and colour in an almost abstract cubist style.

And here, in a tree in late autumn, Schiele shows the continuity he saw between things and animate beings by making the tree almost come to life.

Looking at it, we can almost see a figure dancing.

But in Cruma, Schiele and Wally faced problems, not least because of their behaving in lifestyle and the perception that Schiele was both promiscuous and irreligious.

And in the end, they were forced to leave, so they decided to move back closer to Vienna to the town of Noilinbach, not far from Schiele's birthplace in Tom.

There, he set up a studio, which in turn became a gathering place for young people.

Many of whom were willing to be painted and some in various states of undress.

Like the people of Cruma, the residents of Noilinbach were not impressed, but this time, the results were rather different.

Complaints were made to the police who, when they arrived at Schiele's studio, discovered explicitly erotic drawings in portfolios and also pinned to the walls.

But it was worse to come. A specific allegation was made that Schiele had seduced a young girl below the age of consent.

And while the matter was investigated, Schiele was put in prison.

After two weeks in jail, Schiele was sent for trial.

The charges of seduction and abduction were dropped, but he was found guilty of exhibiting an erotic drawing in a place accessible to children.

In addition, the judge made a point at the end of the trial of burning one of Schiele's erotic drawings in front of the assembled crowd.

And in addition, sentence Schiele to three days in prison to go with the 21 that he'd already spent in custody.

But the sentence was, in fact, lenient if Schiele had been convicted of corrupting a minor, he could have faced 20 years of hard labor.

Whilst in jail, Schiele did a series of drawings of his surroundings and more self-portraits.

This one is called the single orange was the only light, a reference to the dim conditions in which Schiele found himself.

News of the affair quickly reached Vienna, and Schiele's already notorious reputation was established permanently so.

Schiele never denied making works of art with drawings and watercolors that were erotic, but he insisted, as many have done since, that a work of art is not pornographic, if it's artistically significant.

He also added that filth, as he put it, was only filth if the beholder himself had a filthy mind.

After serving his prison term, he was reunited with Wally, and both returned to living Vienna.

When Schiele actually got out of prison, it's widely believed that this was the work that he produced.

A double portrait of him and Wally in an embrace, and in a way, paying a distant homage to an iconic Viennese painting produced by Gustav Climd, called the Kiss.

There are certain similarities to figures enveloping each other.

This simpler, more abstract pattern of interlocking triangles in black and red, a simplified, or more minimal version of the patchwork quality of patterning on Climds' work.

And the subtitle of this work is the kiss or the embrace.

But its full title is the cardinal and the nun.

And what Schiele is presenting here is himself dressed as a church dignitary, looking mortified, as if he's caught like some rabbit in the headlight,

as he embraces not just Wally, but a nun.

This is Carnal knowledge in the cloisters, and it's a savage, comic, and satirical attack on the whole moral establishment that has just put Schiele in prison.

But the relationship with Wally was soon to be over.

In 1914, he met and fell in love with Edith Harms, who was soon to become his wife.

Edith came from a respected, well-to-do family, something that Schiele seems to have wanted in a wife despite his behavior and ways.

This portrait's typical of the many painted of Edith, or was dressed unlike those of Wally and other models.

Schiele wanted to carry on seeing his mistress, but Edith demanded a complete break if she was to marry him.

Unsurprisingly, Schiele chose to express his feelings in paint.

It's called death and the maiden, and undoubtedly is one of Schiele's great masterpieces.

It takes the traditional subject in Western art of youth and beauty, but with the spectra of death always hovering.

But look again, and look at the details, and you realise that this isn't just an allegory that something intensely personal about it,

because the face of the woman is clearly that of Wally, and the face of the man, the spectra of death clad in a monks robe,

is Schiele, look at those familiar hands.

And suddenly, the idea of Schiele once again is the marted figure,

clinging to his lover, who is decided to banish, but Wally clinging even more tightly to be gone Schiele makes it a very, very poignant work.

The extraordinary thing about this work is the perspective.

It's as if we're seeing it from above, and the two figures, clush each other, lying on a sheet,

which seems to have traces of the passion that's just taken place, and all around in a landscape where you can see small trees, or maybe animals,

in something that's rather dislocated, it seems to have been ravaged by a storm, but the storm is just finishing.

It's just about to pass.

And in a way that's a metaphor for what's happened with the love between these two people.

It is if passion and life is emptying away, and I get the feeling standing in front of it,

is if I'm being pulled away from the picture, as if the figures are going to receive and become much smaller gradually.

And there's a tragic postcript if you like to this work, because Schiele did banish Wally from his life,

never saw her again, and two years after this was painted, in 1917, she died of scarlet fever in Dalmatia.

With more raging in Europe, it wasn't long before Schiele was drafted into the Austrian army, in June 1915, just ten days after his marriage to Edith.

Luckily, he was never sent to the front, but was posted in Lower Austria, working as a clerk in a prison camp for Russian officers.

In October 1917, Schiele was offered membership of the Vienna Session,

and was asked to organise its 49th exhibition for the following year for which he was also to design the poster.

The show was a great success. Schiele sold all of the 19 paintings and 29 drawings of the exhibited,

and began to make his name on the International Circuit.

Among the very few recently completed works by Schiele, included in the Session exhibition of 1918,

was this late-great masterpiece called the Family, where father, mother and child are presented in a composition that's like an inverted pyramid.

And in the bottom, foreground with the child, the colour is bright.

The flesh of the mother is lifelike, and when you get to the father, it's yellowing, and there's something almost death-like about it.

Clearly, this is Egon Schiele, and the expression on his face is melancholic,

but it's almost as if he's trying to see through to some kind of light.

And the style is getting increasingly painterly.

It's almost a virtuoso performance in how paint is applied, and it's moving away steadily from the linear style from which Schiele began.

But as always, in Schiele's later work, there's a very strong personal dimension to this work.

When Schiele began the work, it was initially called crouching or squatting couple, and just involved himself,

and the figure in the middle ground here, which is actually not his wife, Edith, but a model.

In the foreground, it was a bouquet of flowers.

And in a way, it's a continuation of a great work that he produced the year before in 1917, called The Embrace,

where two figures are in twined on a sheet against a yellow background.

It's one of the great works of erotic love in the 20th century.

It there, it's all quite old passion here, there's a sort of post-coital melancholia,

but Egon Schiele discovers that his wife, Edith, is pregnant when he's painting this work,

and so projects the idea of an ideal family into this painting.

But this pictorial vision, tragically, was never realized in the flesh,

because the child inside either stomach, that Schiele projects, if you like, onto the canvas,

died along with its mother.

Towards the end of October 1918, when Edith was struck down by the Spanish influenza virus,

that was decimating Europe, and then three days after Edith and the child inside are died,

on the 31st of October 1918, Egon Schiele himself died at the age of 28.

Schiele's brief life was among the most creatively intense of any artist.

His death was tragically early, and at a time when he was beginning to receive the acclaim and attention,

he'd always craved.

But it helped to maintain the myth of Schiele, as he put it, as an eternal child,

whose art had an adolescent vitality, a neurosis to it, along with a powerful honesty,

rarely, if ever, surpassed in Western painting.

Thank you for watching!