Egon Schiele: 'The Family', 1918 (Belvedere Gallery, Vienna).
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| Illustration 1: 'The Family'. |
My lifelong Egon Schiele obsession began with seeing a reproduction of 'The Family', in an art-book that I'd bought in the 1990s. His use of line evokes an exquisite sense of touch. In describing the human outline, the body becomes an exposed object. Its presence feels like an incision in space. Schiele's mastery of contour-line also transmits enormous emotion and pathos.
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| Illustration 2: 'Self Portrait', 1914. |
Having the privilege, much later, of viewing 'The Family' in The Belvedere Gallery, Vienna, I was struck by its compositional authority. I see it as Egon Schiele's great attempt to resolve the problem of alienation, and of human separateness, that is pervasive in his earlier work.
The family members are joined, like Russian dolls, in a sequence of interlocking forms. But they're positioned inside a cradle of darkness, each face pointing in a different direction. The self-examining gaze of Schiele is, perhaps, an expression of parental anxiety.
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| Illustration 3: 'The Family' (detail). |
The painting's emotional centre gets shifted, however, towards the mother's face. With her expression of sad ambivalence, there is also a glimpse of some kind of unity.
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| Illustration 4: 'The Family' (detail). |
