Young Boy 1918

Egon Schiele made this portrait of a young boy using watercolor and pencil. Schiele was all about raw, immediate expression, which you can see in his edgy, nervous lines. It’s like he’s trying to capture not just what's there, but what's bubbling underneath. Look at that hand! It’s all knuckles and awkward angles, like he’s trying to grasp something just out of reach. There is a kind of brutal honesty to it, and it’s so real you feel like you could reach out and touch it. The colors are muted, but they work together to emphasize the boy's flushed cheeks and dark, curly hair. Schiele’s work reminds me a lot of Francis Bacon, especially in the way he distorts the human form to get at some deeper truth. Like Bacon, Schiele isn’t afraid to make things a little ugly, a little unsettling. Art’s not about perfection, right? It’s about honesty, even if that honesty is a bit uncomfortable.