Dancer 1913

Egon Schiele made this drawing, Dancer, with line and watercolor, it's all about the trace of his hand moving across the paper, figuring out how a body folds and holds itself. The thinness of the line and the pale washes of color let the paper breathe. You can see all the starts and stops, the quick decisions, the searching, and the vulnerability. Look at the way he renders the hand, the strange angles and awkwardness, yet it's full of tension. The way the fingers are almost grasping at nothing. It makes me think of Gustav Klimt, an artist he admired, but while Klimt filled the canvas with decoration, Schiele pared it back to the bare essentials of line and form, showing us the raw process of seeing and drawing. It’s the honesty of the searching that’s so compelling.