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Modernisms 1900-1980
Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 2
Lesson 2: Expressionism- Expressionism, an introduction
- Expressionism as Nordic?
- Der Blaue Reiter
- Kirchner, Street, Dresden
- Kirchner, Self-Portrait As a Soldier
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Street, Berlin"
- Paula Modersohn-Becker, Self-Portrait Nude with Amber Necklace, Half-Length I
- Emil Nolde, "Young Couple," 1913
- Jawlensky, Young Girl in a Flowered Hat
- Schiele, Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait)
- Nazi looting: Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally
- Schiele, Hermits
- Kandinsky, Apocalypse, Abstraction
- Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912
- Vasily Kandinsky, "Klänge (Sounds)"
- Franz Marc and the animalization of art
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Schiele, Hermits
Egon Schiele, Hermits, 1912, oil on canvas, 71-1/4 x 71-1/4 inches (Leopold Museum, Vienna). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Isn't Schiele's Hermits obviously referring to the Kiss of Klimt? The intimacy of merged figures, the foot, the flowers on the back, and the mosaic like triangle on the right shoulder? Does not Schiele deliberately paint same scene but contrasting the "beauty" of the Kiss with the "ugliness" of the Hermits?(10 votes)
- Good point. Also, both The Kiss and Hermits are big square paintings.(2 votes)
- Does hermit necessarily imply religious? That may have been what the artist was going for, but I've never heard it suggested before that all hermits are spiritual.(3 votes)
- hermit [ˈhɜːmɪt]
n
1. (Christian Churches, other) one of the early Christian recluses
2. any person living in solitude
[from Old French hermite, from Late Latin erēmīta, from Greek erēmitēs living in the desert, from erēmia desert, from erēmos lonely](7 votes)
- This is not a question. Sorry. I'm sure I'm breaking rules, but... I think it is wonderful the way artists like Klee, Dali, Modigliani, Dix and Schiele are saving (for me) this century of art from the cubists and abstractionists.
So here is a question, too. Two hermits together? Aren't hermits solitary?(4 votes)- I think the two represent himself and his spirit. Hermits are physically solitary, but spiritually not.(2 votes)
- When do these types of paintings become labeled as cartoons?(1 vote)
- I am increasingly interested in the role of gender and gender orientation in artists depiction of nudes and of men and women in general--or in their depictions of anything, for that matter. I'm sure this has been written about a great deal. . . Can someone refer me to a good source?(2 votes)
- There is a section of this website dedicated to the contribution of women to art and art history which can be found here: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/tate/women-in-art
Michelle Facos's 'An Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art' discusses the role gender and its social context play in art, although the book itself is quite expensive chapter excerpts are available for free here: http://www.19thcenturyart-facos.com/(2 votes)
- The speakers mention that Egon Schiele "etched" his name into the canvas three times...
Was this man unusually troubled or angry? To carve your name in to a painting versus signing it? That in and of itself seems unusual completely aside from the subject matter.(2 votes)- It was most likely just a style choice, but Schiele did have many mental health challenges (as most artists do).(1 vote)
- What is the reason for the red on his hands, does that symbolize blood?(1 vote)
- Could this be interpreted as a modern memento mori?(1 vote)
- Sure. If you see it as a reminder of death in any way then it is a "memento mori" indeed.(1 vote)
- In what museum can i fine this painting?(1 vote)
- Alright, so the fact that Schiele etched his name onto the canvas is unusual, but why did he etch it onto the bottom left corner instead of the bottom right?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music playing) Steven: We're in the
Leopold Museum in Vienna and we're looking at Egon
Schiele's The Hermits. It's a large, almost
perfectly square canvas. Beth: This dates from 1912
when Schiele was only 22. He was an incredibly precocious painter. Steven: I would say so.
It's a really bleak image. You have two figures that
are so closely entwined, they almost seem to have merged. They're on this barest
reference of a ground and then in back of
them, there's a kind of fractured atmosphere that
almost reminds you of a stained glass window. Beth: It's hard to call it an atmosphere because it's mostly golds and browns. It almost evokes a medieval altar piece and from that grounds
that you just referred to, sprouts two wilted, very small flowers right next to the artist's signature. Steven: Well, that
signature is interesting. The artist has scratched
his name in, not once, but three times, suggesting
that there are almost three authors to this painting. We're not sure about the
identity of the two figures nor are we even sure
that they're meant to be specific figures. Beth: The figure on the
left does look like Schiele, in the way that we often see
him posing in photographs. Steven: And some art
historians have suggested that the figure to the right,
the older bearded figure might be Gustav Klimt, but for me
it's a very Christ-like figure, a very much of a kind of father figure. Beth: The bearded figure
doesn't really have eyes, so there's a way in which
he looks skull-like to me and perhaps dead or sleeping. And the eyes of the other figure
are so prominent and alert. Steven: You know, there's
a long tradition of painting the blind as seers,
as people who actually have a kind of extraordinary vision. Beth: A kind of inner vision. Steven: That's right. Beth: This painting is
certainly meant not to be naturalistic, but to rather be a kind of poetic representation
of an inner vision or a summing up of Schiele's experiences. In fact, that's how he
described it in a letter. Steven: There's a sense that he
is fracturing the visual world. Not only is the atmosphere fractured,
the figures feel fractured. Beth: It's interesting
that there are two heads, only two hands and one foot
and that foot is really planted in the ground or
what seems to be a ground and so it seems like a root from
which these two figures emerge. Steven: It's true. Beth: Schiele is really
calling attention to the materiality of the paint. There's a real sense of the
activity of the artist here. Steven: It's true, that
culminates in a kind of agitation and becomes almost a
kind of psychic state. Beth: What we see in
the early 20th century, is this interest in expressionism, right, an interest in representing
those inner states and experiences and interest
in anxiety and tension. Steven: You know, it's so
interesting because here we are, looking at this Austrian
artist, this member of the Austrian avant-garde in
the early 20th century and this moment of deep anxiety,
but one who is going back to the byzantine tradition in some ways. You could be gone by saying
look at the way in which the background almost
functions as a gold field. It reminds me of byzantine
icons and the way in which those medieval paintings
were attempts to deal with anxiety and fear, in a sense
that being brought here to the modern world, to
our own modern anxieties. Beth; The title is Hermits and
so these art religious figures who've retreated into the
desert or into the wilderness into some kind of private
space for meditation and so there is a joining of the
religious and the psychic here. Steven: But in the early 20th
century, for the group of artists that Schiele was working with,
the idea of the religious could be a cultural religion. Beth: Or the artist as
prophet in the modern era. (piano music playing)