Standing Female Nude – Back

Description

Egon Schiele
Woman Half Draped—Reclining
Graphite on paper
Loan from the Ernst Pulgram and Francis McSparran Collection
Gustav Klimt
Female Nude Seated—Rear
Blue Crayon on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Francis McSparran Collection, 2007/2.89
Egon Schiele
Standing Woman, Back View
1917
Charcoal and Pen on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Francis McSparran Collection, 2007/2.99
Egon Schiele
Female Nude Standing
(Standing Female Nude in Black Stockings)
1912
Watercolor and pencil
Loan from the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection
Female Nude on a Tight Rope (Tightrope Walker)
1912
Gouache, watercolor and pencil
Loan from the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection
The female nude was not new subject matter for a male artist. Frequently idealized, the nude is presented to the viewer as an art, rather than a sexual, object. Such classical aestheticization is rare in Schiele’s representations of women, however. The viewer is clearly placed as observer, but Schiele’s tendency to draw his models from above, standing on a stool or a ladder, makes this position unstable. Standing Female Nude twists and turns away from the viewer, disappearing into ambiguous space. The viewer’s precarious position is heightened by the bird’s eye view of the Tightrope Walker, who seems precariously balanced on her rope. Schiele’s refusal to contain the female form within a clearly defined space, often depicting women in awkward, contorted positions and in garish colors, make them more frightening than erotic or pornographic. Schiele’s arrest and subsequent conviction for public immorality in 1912 underscores the complicated relationship between the viewer and Schiele’s nudes.