.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In this work, Schiele appears to give a glimpse into an interior and private world. The woman clothed in red underwear, whose face is barely glimpsed through the angular crook of the standing figure's arm, bears a close similarity to bohemian dancer Moa, an extraordinary and smouldering beauty whom Schiele frequently used as a model around this time. By pairing her with another lithe, dark haired model, clad only in stockings, Schiele creates a dramatically posed and erotically suggestive image that suggests they are about to enter into an intimate embrace. Unlike other of his more provocative and explicit works depicting coupled women, in this gouache, it is the hint of physical contact - the fact that it is an idea seemingly born only in the viewer's mind - that lends the work much of its mystery and power.
For Schiele, sexuality lay at the heart of all unconscious and instinctual drives, believing that all humans are at the mercy of their inner nature and its physical impulses. With an intensity that bordered on the fanatical, Schiele studied the physical manifestations of these impulses through an artistic exploration of the human body, transgressing societal norms to liberate sexuality from proscribed stereotypes. The lack of inhibition Schiele encouraged in his models and the nearness of their forms reveal he was not a detached or indifferent observer, but was passionately involved with his subjects. By stripping away the veneer of conservatism in fin-de-siècle Vienna, Schiele exposed the latent erotic charge that was exacerbated by this culture's strict moral codes. Although this was a period in which love, eroticism and sexuality were thought of as strictly private matters, Viennese society was also inherently hypocritical. Class disparity meant the city was rife with prostitution and had a booming pornographic industry, with cheap photographs and titillating literature being peddled by children in every café. As a consequence of this dual existence of repressive social mores and irrepressible primal urges, many of Schiele's contemporaries focussed on themes of sexuality, including Sigmund Freud, who defined sexual desire as the prime motivational energy of human life, and who analysed the effects of suppressing these natural impulses. Although there is no evidence that Schiele was informed by Freud's theories, it is clear that he was part of a zeitgeist that sought to lay bare an underlying animalistic sex-drive.
Schiele found in the female form the ultimate mode of conveying these devouring, irresistible physical forces. His developing style, and the focus of his subject matter was, in part, inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec, a painter whose work he first saw in 1909. Schiele's masterly use of pencil, watercolour and gouache finds its origins in the French artist's work, but it was his study of the sexual underworld that left the most lasting effect on the young painter. Otto Benesch, son of one of his earliest patrons, acknowledged that Toulouse-Lautrec had 'made an enormous impression on Schiele through his mercilessly bitter representation, through his investigation of the female psyche' (O. Benesch, quoted in F. Whitford, Egon Schiele, London, 1981, p. 60). The taboo subject of lesbian love was a theme that Toulouse-Lautrec had visited in his own art, and would also provide Schiele with another aspect with which to explore human sexuality.
With their bruised colouring and waif-like forms, the figures in Liegende Frau mit roter Hose und stehender weiblicher Akt indicate the vulnerability and perishability of human flesh, suggesting that the desire for love is tainted by the consciousness of our own mortality. Like so many of Schiele's erotic works, this gouache shows the human being ultimately to be an impoverished and isolated creature, trapped alone in its body and in desperate need of physical contact and communion with others. 'In spite of his 'eroticism', Schiele was not depraved', wrote his friend and mentor Arthur Roessler, 'His friends did not know him as a 'practising' eroticist... What drove him to depict erotic scenes from time to time was perhaps the mystery of sex... and the fear of loneliness which grew to terrifying proportions. The feeling of loneliness, for him a loneliness that was totally chilling, was in him from childhood onwards - in spite of his family, in spite of his gaiety when he was among friends' (A. Roessler, quoted in F. Whitford, Egon Schiele, London, 1981, p. 89).
For Schiele, sexuality lay at the heart of all unconscious and instinctual drives, believing that all humans are at the mercy of their inner nature and its physical impulses. With an intensity that bordered on the fanatical, Schiele studied the physical manifestations of these impulses through an artistic exploration of the human body, transgressing societal norms to liberate sexuality from proscribed stereotypes. The lack of inhibition Schiele encouraged in his models and the nearness of their forms reveal he was not a detached or indifferent observer, but was passionately involved with his subjects. By stripping away the veneer of conservatism in fin-de-siècle Vienna, Schiele exposed the latent erotic charge that was exacerbated by this culture's strict moral codes. Although this was a period in which love, eroticism and sexuality were thought of as strictly private matters, Viennese society was also inherently hypocritical. Class disparity meant the city was rife with prostitution and had a booming pornographic industry, with cheap photographs and titillating literature being peddled by children in every café. As a consequence of this dual existence of repressive social mores and irrepressible primal urges, many of Schiele's contemporaries focussed on themes of sexuality, including Sigmund Freud, who defined sexual desire as the prime motivational energy of human life, and who analysed the effects of suppressing these natural impulses. Although there is no evidence that Schiele was informed by Freud's theories, it is clear that he was part of a zeitgeist that sought to lay bare an underlying animalistic sex-drive.
Schiele found in the female form the ultimate mode of conveying these devouring, irresistible physical forces. His developing style, and the focus of his subject matter was, in part, inspired by Toulouse-Lautrec, a painter whose work he first saw in 1909. Schiele's masterly use of pencil, watercolour and gouache finds its origins in the French artist's work, but it was his study of the sexual underworld that left the most lasting effect on the young painter. Otto Benesch, son of one of his earliest patrons, acknowledged that Toulouse-Lautrec had 'made an enormous impression on Schiele through his mercilessly bitter representation, through his investigation of the female psyche' (O. Benesch, quoted in F. Whitford, Egon Schiele, London, 1981, p. 60). The taboo subject of lesbian love was a theme that Toulouse-Lautrec had visited in his own art, and would also provide Schiele with another aspect with which to explore human sexuality.
With their bruised colouring and waif-like forms, the figures in Liegende Frau mit roter Hose und stehender weiblicher Akt indicate the vulnerability and perishability of human flesh, suggesting that the desire for love is tainted by the consciousness of our own mortality. Like so many of Schiele's erotic works, this gouache shows the human being ultimately to be an impoverished and isolated creature, trapped alone in its body and in desperate need of physical contact and communion with others. 'In spite of his 'eroticism', Schiele was not depraved', wrote his friend and mentor Arthur Roessler, 'His friends did not know him as a 'practising' eroticist... What drove him to depict erotic scenes from time to time was perhaps the mystery of sex... and the fear of loneliness which grew to terrifying proportions. The feeling of loneliness, for him a loneliness that was totally chilling, was in him from childhood onwards - in spite of his family, in spite of his gaiety when he was among friends' (A. Roessler, quoted in F. Whitford, Egon Schiele, London, 1981, p. 89).