The Untold Mystery Upending Egon Schiele's Legacy | Hacker News Reader

The Untold Mystery Upending Egon Schiele's Legacy

wsj.com

27 pointsapollinaire8 comments

So let's be clear: it's implicitly incest, right? One denial in this article aside, he appears to have encouraged if not caused his younger sisters eroticism as a pre teen, took her away to share a room in the hotel his parents honeymooned in, changed his art after entering a relationship. Nobody knows who the child's father is, fair enough. His pre marriage art was unquestionably "edgy"

Amazing paintings. Also, amazingly disturbing. I cannot conceive of having one on the wall.

It's very stark, touring a gallery show of Schiele.

Every single piece is grotesque except that work portraying his sister.

That's how art is supposed to be, to raise something inside the one experiencing it. For those that want a more mundane experience from the same time-period there's also a Sargent and countless others like him.

For reference, the one Schiele exhibition that I got to attend took place more than 15 years ago, at the Leopold Museum in Vienna itself, and for sure I didn't see it as grotesque. I was more mesmerised later that day by the Egyptian art hosted in the nearby Kunsthistorisches Museum

I saw that same exhibition in Vienna! 2007 IIRC.

I agree that it never struck me as grotesque. His work is bold, stark, urgent. I also find that his draftsmanship is overshadowed. He has an amazing sense of volume, told with simple linework. And his hand renderings are sublime.

Surely the child's father was Anton Peschka? Gertrude was engaged to him, later married him, and his mother raised the child. I don't think the article suggests otherwise.

The “mystery”? I took it to be the arc of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy with her first daughter Gerti—the new awareness of which makes sense of his sister Gertrude’s shotgun marriage to the best friend Anton, and Schiele’s abrupt stylistic shift and change in lifestyle afterward. Apparently they hid her well.

I’d never heard of Schiele until yesterday when I was reading about an actor on a show I was watching. I’m not really an art buff but his work is quite interesting (if a bit disturbing at times).

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