Portrait of Heinrich Rieger 1917

Egon Schiele drew this portrait of Heinrich Rieger with pencil and watercolor on paper. You can really see Schiele working out the image, trying to capture the essence of this person with these tentative lines. The drawing is mostly about contour, about mapping out the boundaries of Rieger’s body, and there’s something kind of awkward about the way he is presented to us. Take a look at his right hand, see how it seems to float away from the body? There’s an emotional effect that comes from this slight awkwardness of representation. It’s as if Rieger is present but also absent, defined but also kind of ungraspable. This ambiguity is something Schiele does so well. Like Klimt, Schiele creates work that is highly expressive and often unsettling in its directness. But while Klimt's art is often ornamental and decorative, Schiele strips things down to their essence. Neither fixed nor definitive, this drawing embraces ambiguity.