The Dancer 1913

Egon Schiele made this drawing of a dancer, probably in pencil and watercolour, at some point in his short but very active life. It's all about process. Look how Schiele builds up the image with layers of transparent colour washes and emphatic linear marks, redrawing and rethinking the body as he goes. I love the skin tones, a kind of raw fleshiness achieved by scrubbing the surface with thin layers of pinks and blues and letting the white of the paper peep through. The blue marks, especially, feel like bruises. The drawing is unresolved. The dancer's left arm, for example, is more of an indication than a fully realized form. Maybe that's why I find it so compelling. The whole thing feels very precarious, as though it might slip away at any moment. Schiele reminds me a little of Francis Bacon, another artist who was preoccupied with the vulnerability of the human body. But unlike Bacon's paintings, with their thick, fleshy impasto, Schiele's drawing is all about the immediacy of the mark. It feels like a fleeting glimpse into a soul laid bare.