Egon Schiele. Reclining Woman with Green Stockings (1917)
NEW YORK — It is hard to say who is my favorite visual artist — one might as well ask which is my favorite book, to which I reply that it depends on which day I am asked. Despite that, there are several that always appear on the list in some order – Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Caravaggio, Franz Kline, JMW Turner — see the list is endless. But I never miss a chance to see any show with drawings by Egon Schiele. Fortunately, I made it to New York the final week of “The Woman Question: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka,” a small exhibition at the always-wonderful Galerie St. Etienne.
The gallery, not much larger than a reasonably-sized doctor’s waiting room, specializes in German and Austrian art. I make it a point to go every time I am in the city and I am never disappointed.
“Pregnant Woman and Man” by Gustav Klimt
This show featured drawings and works on paper by the Austrian contemporaries. Of the three, Klimt has the highest profile with his sumptuously-patterned paintings — his painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer was the subject of the movie “The Lady in Gold” (one of his sketches for the painting is included in the show). His drawings are more immediate and show a different Klimt. His “Pregnant Woman and Man,” a 1903-04 drawing in blue crayon, is a beautifully rendered sketch that has intimacy and sweetness. “Standing Nude Girl With Bowed Head,” from 1902, is a demur side-view sketch of a young girl with a slightly protruding belly. There is a softness to the image, but her pose is deferential.
It should noted that the exhibition seeks to address fin-de-siecle Viennese intellectuals obsession with sex, and the Madonna/Whore question. There is an excellent essay on the gallery’s website which I encourage everyone to read. I am concerned here with the different styles of drawing among the three men.
Nude by Oskar Kokoschka
Kokoschka is the more Expressionistic of the triumvirate, his paintings eschewing the slickness of his elder contemporary’s work. He did not have the classical training of Klimt, nor were his interactions with women as numerous as Klimt and Schiele who, the museum’s text argues, saw no difference between the roles of lover and model. Kokoschka had an affair with the most desirable woman in Vienna, Alma Mahler, wife of the composer Gustav.
Alma and Kokoschka’s first love, Lilith Lang, a fellow student at the Vienna Art School, were both above his station. His drawings of the women he loved were strangely aggressive and lack the smooth interpretation of Klimt.
The nude does not have the prominence in Kokoschka’s work that it does in Klimt or Schiele’s, and the musuem’s literature argues, “Fear of adult female sexuality continued to haunt Kokoschka’s later nudes, which are largely devoid of erotic appeal.”
Two nudes by Egon Schiele
Schiele, on the other hand, is quite a different animal. His line work is immaculate, bold and sure-handed, and each individual line is thing of beauty that goes on and on, way past the point where a lesser artist has picked up his pencil. One can follow an unbroken line from the neck to the wrist, from the thigh to the ankle — and each new line crackles sensuously.
While these women were objectified under the male gaze, there is also a power that emanates from their gaze. The museum’s essay, “Schiele was only twenty when he executed his first artistically mature works, and emotionally he was still an adolescent. Simultaneously terrified and enthralled by the erotic potency of his lover/models, the artist granted the female nude an unprecedented degree of autonomy.”
Schiele has no equal when it comes to pure drawing. His nudes are contorted, and sometimes they are almost pornographic, yet they never lose their dignity under the artist’s gaze.
I have long been a fan of Schiele, whose output is as prolific as any in his short career (he died of pneumonia at 28). His drawings are magnificent, his paintings are gorgeous, and his line work is something I have, vainly, sought to emulate my entire artistic career.
Elisabeth Lederer by Egon Schiele
The most striking of the images in the entire exhibition is, ironically, not a nude, but a simple drawing of Elisabeth Lederer, from a well-connected Vienna family, whom Klimt had introduced to Schiele after the latter’s arrest and jailing on pornography charges in an effort to rehabilitate his reputation.
The linework, of course, is immaculate. She stares out slightly to the right with a bold confidence, her expression almost mischievous. This is a woman who is feisty, strong, confident. The minimal coloring perfectly accentuates the features. It is a portrait of a woman whose sexuality derives directly from the strength of the gaze.
The exhibition, which is an abbreviated version of one which Galerie St. Etienne co-director Jane Kallir curated for the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, in 2015-16, offered a wonderful glimpse into the three contemporaries who were pivotal parts of the Vienna Seccessionist movement.
Klimt died in 1918 of a stroke, and Schiele and his pregnant wife died in the 1918 pneumonia epidemic. Kokoschka lived to 1980 and became a well-respected giant of expressionism. Klimt’s reputation was cemented as the century progressed and Schiele’s reputation has grown in leaps and bounds over the past quarter century.
The trio is worth discovering and a great start would be the catalogue for the show, which is $60 but is great value for the 231 full-color illustrations.
And Galerie St. Etienne, located at 24 West 57th Street in New York, is a gem worth unearthing.
“The sword of Damocles,” from 1842, features the lines:
One of my favorites is “The Abduction of Helen of Troy.” Daumier takes the classic myth and turns it in its head, depicting Helen as being neither beautiful nor particularly frail. In fact, she is carrying the fey Paris to the ships. The image was printed in Le Charivari in 1842 as a response to a heated debate between the painters of the classical and neoclassical schools. The conflict between the schools of thought was a theme to which Daumier returned several times. The piece also reflects current affairs, with Helen representing the Greek people and Paris looking similar to Count Antonios Kapodistrias, a Greek diplomat who served as foreign minister of the Russian empire and was the first leader of the modern independent Greek state.
“The Reading of the Will,” published in Le Charivari in 1853, is one of seven pieces that form “The Human Comedy” series. On the surface it is simply a collection of family members who are gathered at the solicitor’s office. The beauty of the work is the distinctive faces that capture the various levels of expectation. Only the bowed head of the young boy indicates grief.
“I Have Been Accepted … They Do Have Taste/I Have Been Rejected … What Cretins,” is one of Daumier’s commentaries on the art world. Daumier studied at the Paris Academy but ultimately rejected what he considered the elitism of academia in favor of art for the masses. Daumier fully expresses his rejection of the Salon mentality with a piece that shows a man pointing at a painting and saying, “Just look what a degenerated and corrupt universe we are living in! … all these people just look at more or less monstrous paintings and not one of them stops in front of a painting depicting the beauty and purity of nature!” The establishment that the Salon typified favored “history” paintings over landscapes. They were thought to be more intellectually skillful and educational.
Daumier was certainly a progressive who pushed social causes and poked fun at the establishment — he was even imprisoned for his cartoon “Gargantua,” which portrayed King Louis Phillippe.
The figures have the classic indigenous look of Mexican art, and also have disproportionately large hands and feet — reminiscent of 
A cartoon, especially a single panel, has to find a shorthand to connect to the viewer to be able to put the point across. When I did a cartoon about a poor hiring choice by BISD superintendent Carroll Thomas, I used a current movie image, in that case 
