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Lot Essay
Mime van Osen is one of an outstanding series of highly dramatic and colourful portraits that Schiele made in 1910 of an outlandish character, who called himself Mime van Osen. Depicting the naked van Osen in a variety of deliberately eccentric and expressive poses that Schiele has set brilliantly in a deliberately unorthodox manner against a wide expanse of empty space made by the blank page, these works raise the expressive power and existential presence of the lone figure to new heights in Schieles work. Highlighted with a sensuous use of startling almost unnatural colour in places, a work like Mime van Osen exemplifies the graphic power and inner Expressionistic vision that Schiele was developing in his art at this time.
Erwin Dom Osen, or Mime van Osen were the names adopted at this time by Schieles close friend and former fellow Neukunstgruppe member Domenik Osen. Osen was an extraordinary and gregarious character who seems to have held Schiele in thrall during this early stage in his career with his energy, exploits, exhibitionism, eccentric gestures, tales of adventure and exploration of both the mime arts and the pathological expressions of psychiatric patients. Schiele's friend, patron and biographer Arthur Roessler described Osen as, tall, slim, haggard... with the pale beardless features of a fallen angel, elegantly dressed but wearing strikingly exotic rings and an equally striking pin in his voluminous and gaudy necktie... Apart from his prodigious gift for mimicry, the young man commanded a remarkably rich vocabulary when, born improviser that he was, he let his imagination loose on strange tales of travel episodes. (A. Roessler, 'Errinerungen an Egon Schiele', in F. Karpfen, Das Egon Schiele Buch, Vienna-Leipzig, 1921, p. 73).
Osens hero was Rimbaud, whose poetry he could quote and whose rambunctious lifestyle he sought to emulate. Both in private and in the coffee houses he dressed to be noticed and put on affected facial expressions of the kind that Schieles drawings of him seem to show. In this work Osen seems to have affected the pose of a mystic stargazing aesthete, his head infused with the energy of intense and distant contemplation, his green eyes wide and gazing far into the distance while his body leans limply behind, a weak physical encumbrance remaining in the earth-bound realm of the here and now. It was these intensely psychological portraits of Osen and of Anton Peschska that ultimately inspired Schieles acutely introspective and emotionally charged self-portraiture that followed in late 1910 and 1911.
Erwin Dom Osen, or Mime van Osen were the names adopted at this time by Schieles close friend and former fellow Neukunstgruppe member Domenik Osen. Osen was an extraordinary and gregarious character who seems to have held Schiele in thrall during this early stage in his career with his energy, exploits, exhibitionism, eccentric gestures, tales of adventure and exploration of both the mime arts and the pathological expressions of psychiatric patients. Schiele's friend, patron and biographer Arthur Roessler described Osen as, tall, slim, haggard... with the pale beardless features of a fallen angel, elegantly dressed but wearing strikingly exotic rings and an equally striking pin in his voluminous and gaudy necktie... Apart from his prodigious gift for mimicry, the young man commanded a remarkably rich vocabulary when, born improviser that he was, he let his imagination loose on strange tales of travel episodes. (A. Roessler, 'Errinerungen an Egon Schiele', in F. Karpfen, Das Egon Schiele Buch, Vienna-Leipzig, 1921, p. 73).
Osens hero was Rimbaud, whose poetry he could quote and whose rambunctious lifestyle he sought to emulate. Both in private and in the coffee houses he dressed to be noticed and put on affected facial expressions of the kind that Schieles drawings of him seem to show. In this work Osen seems to have affected the pose of a mystic stargazing aesthete, his head infused with the energy of intense and distant contemplation, his green eyes wide and gazing far into the distance while his body leans limply behind, a weak physical encumbrance remaining in the earth-bound realm of the here and now. It was these intensely psychological portraits of Osen and of Anton Peschska that ultimately inspired Schieles acutely introspective and emotionally charged self-portraiture that followed in late 1910 and 1911.