Portrait of an Old Man (Johann Harms) 1916

This is Egon Schiele’s “Portrait of an Old Man (Johann Harms),” made with oil on canvas. The ochre paint strokes seem to vibrate with feeling. You can sense Schiele’s hand, can’t you? I wonder what was going through his head as he made this. I bet it was the same old struggle every painter knows: what to put in, what to leave out. And how do you make flat paint feel like skin, like bone, like time passing? Look at how the hands are rendered, one supporting the face and the other loosely grasping. The brushstrokes create a raw, textured surface. Schiele wasn't trying to hide the paint, was he? Thick and thin, the painting becomes a record of the artist's looking and feeling. The humanity here is palpable. Artists like Schiele continue to provoke us; it’s like we’re all in one big, messy, beautiful conversation.