Sarena Lederer 1917

Egon Schiele made this drawing of Serena Lederer with pencil and watercolor sometime around the start of the 20th century. It's all about the line, isn't it? The way Schiele uses it to carve out space, to define form, and to suggest movement. Look at the ruffles on her collar; it’s almost a scribble, a frantic energy contained within the edges of the paper. And the hands, oh, those hands! They’re like two separate entities, lightly colored, floating in the centre of the piece. You get the sense that Schiele wasn’t trying to capture a likeness as much as he was trying to capture a feeling. I think about Gustav Klimt when I look at this piece. Schiele was clearly influenced by him, but he took that ornamental sensibility and twisted it, made it raw and urgent. It's like he's saying, "Here's beauty, but it's got teeth." Art isn't about answers, it's about asking the right questions.