Portrait of a Child 1916

Egon Schiele made this drawing of a child, probably in pencil and watercolor, with a quick, searching line. He’s not trying to make it perfect, more like trying to understand something. I find the clothing really interesting here; it almost seems like the kid is being unwrapped. Schiele's using a lot of earth tones, but then, bam!—there's a little splash of red, or a stripe of green, that just kind of wakes you up. Look at how he’s piecing together the image, almost like a puzzle, where each piece is outlined in a shaky, very human line. And those lines, right? They're so immediate, like he’s thinking through the drawing. It reminds me a little of Guston, especially in the way he lets the messiness be part of the message. For Schiele, like Guston, art wasn’t about getting it “right,” but about getting it real. And that’s a conversation that keeps going, every time someone picks up a pencil.