Yellow City 1914

Egon Schiele made Yellow City without a known date, but it’s a fever dream of ochres, siennas, umbers, and a sickly olive green. The color creates this nervous, agitated surface; the whole thing feels like it’s about to vibrate off the canvas. The mark-making is raw, the paint applied thinly, almost like a stain, with these dark, insistent lines carving out the forms. Look at the way Schiele defines the rooftops, these aggressive strokes that feel both architectural and totally unhinged. It’s like he’s building a city out of pure anxiety. There's a little dark window, right there on the central building; it's like an eye staring back at us, full of existential dread. Schiele's work always reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker, that expressionistic intensity. Both artists wrangling with the rawness of human experience. With this painting, like so many, he’s not just showing us a city, he's showing us a state of mind.