Female nude 1910

Egon Schiele made this nude drawing on paper in Vienna. Look at the way he's used color: pale washes of pink and brown for the skin, then splatters of fiery red for the hair, all outlined with a nervous black line. The body feels raw, exposed. Schiele's lines are sharp and angular. Notice the odd hand gesture, as if he doesn't know what to do with it. It's like he's dissecting her, but with a strange kind of tenderness. That splash of red up top is an explosion of creative energy. It reminds me of someone like Francis Bacon, who also loved to twist and distort the human form, but it's all Schiele's own. Art is such a long conversation, isn't it? We're all just talking to each other across time, trying to figure things out, and never really getting there.