拍品專文
After years of struggling for recognition and sales, Schiele suddenly achieved well-deserved success as the First World War ground to its conclusion in 1918. In response to the harsh reality of news from the front and shortages at home, the Viennese appeared to have acquired a growing and more diverse taste for art, which, as a result of wartime inflation, had also suddenly become a desirable commodity. The artist wrote to his friend Anton Peschka, "People are unbelievably interested in new art. Exhibitions--be they of conventional or new art--have never before been this crowded" (quoted in J. Kallir, Egon Schiele: Life and Work, New York, 2003, p. 217). Gustav Klimt, who had dominated the avant-garde for two decades, died in February 1918, and Schiele was now widely viewed as his successor. Schiele's contributions to the 49th Secession exhibition, which opened in March, practically amounted to a retrospective, taking up the central room of the hall, and all available works were sold within a few days of the opening. He soon became inundated by requests for portrait commissions, and offers from numerous new collectors to buy his drawings.
Schiele's drawings of female figures--both nude and semi-clothed, in overtly or ambiguously erotic poses--now openly attracted a wide audience, partly the result of a more tolerant moral climate near the end of the war, but also because of the artist's more naturalistic treatment of his subjects. The nervously subjective line of Schiele's early style had yielded to a simpler, more classical and volumetric rendering of the figure, a pictorial trend that was also observable in the contemporary figurative work of Picasso in Paris and would soon spread throughout Europe as a post-war revival of neo-classicism.
With her stockings pulled down, undergarments drawn up to display shapely bare and spread legs, and her chemise lifted to reveal her breasts, the comely young model in Liegende ("reclining woman") clearly signals her availability, but her matter-of-fact casualness partly mitigates the immodesty of her pose. She seems self-absorbed and oblivious to the artist as observer, and indeed this attitude was meant to entice the collector, who assumes a role as voyeur to the scene. The economy of Schiele's line sharpens these effects; his contours are assured, varied and unerringly interwoven throughout. In Liegende and other drawings of this model (see also Kallir, nos. 2331 and 2332), the artist plays sleight of hand with the lines themselves, leaving gaps in the contours which tease the eye, and create a rhythmical counterpoint between open and closed forms. Schiele has kept the description of form and detail within the figure to an absolute minimum, using hatching sparingly to render the shadows in the folds of a garment, the dimple on a knee and the girl's right nipple. The viewer's eye is immediately drawn to a small tuft of hair under her raised arm (as Picasso was also fond of depicting in his late drawings), which, in conjunction with the posture of her legs, takes on a suggestively intimate connotation.
Schiele's drawings of female figures--both nude and semi-clothed, in overtly or ambiguously erotic poses--now openly attracted a wide audience, partly the result of a more tolerant moral climate near the end of the war, but also because of the artist's more naturalistic treatment of his subjects. The nervously subjective line of Schiele's early style had yielded to a simpler, more classical and volumetric rendering of the figure, a pictorial trend that was also observable in the contemporary figurative work of Picasso in Paris and would soon spread throughout Europe as a post-war revival of neo-classicism.
With her stockings pulled down, undergarments drawn up to display shapely bare and spread legs, and her chemise lifted to reveal her breasts, the comely young model in Liegende ("reclining woman") clearly signals her availability, but her matter-of-fact casualness partly mitigates the immodesty of her pose. She seems self-absorbed and oblivious to the artist as observer, and indeed this attitude was meant to entice the collector, who assumes a role as voyeur to the scene. The economy of Schiele's line sharpens these effects; his contours are assured, varied and unerringly interwoven throughout. In Liegende and other drawings of this model (see also Kallir, nos. 2331 and 2332), the artist plays sleight of hand with the lines themselves, leaving gaps in the contours which tease the eye, and create a rhythmical counterpoint between open and closed forms. Schiele has kept the description of form and detail within the figure to an absolute minimum, using hatching sparingly to render the shadows in the folds of a garment, the dimple on a knee and the girl's right nipple. The viewer's eye is immediately drawn to a small tuft of hair under her raised arm (as Picasso was also fond of depicting in his late drawings), which, in conjunction with the posture of her legs, takes on a suggestively intimate connotation.