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拍品专文
In contrast to the stark, unadorned line that Schiele had previously employed, his drawings done in 1914 show a growing variety of improvised linear strokes. He had become more interested in describing volume by means of contours that would convincingly show the figure as it existed in a more visually striking context of spatial depth. Jane Kallir has noted that 'Schiele's growing concern with plasticity generates a more organic, fluid line' (in cat. rais., op, cit. p. 52). These tendencies reflected an increasingly classical direction in his work, and as such they related to a trend that was very much in the air on the eve of the Great War. There was a general movement away from subjective distortions of form, which emphasised the artificial flatness of the artist's compositions, to a more sculptural sense of figure and a deeper sense of space. This was observable in Parisian Cubism as well as in German Expressionism. Léger edged away from the abstract dynamism of his Contraste de formes paintings to more recognisable figures in 1914, and Picasso produced his first non-cubist classical drawings in the winter of 1914-1915. Kirchner, Heckel and Pechstein moved beyond the Gauguinesque flatness seen in their earlier paintings to a more complex use of deep space in their figure/interior and landscape paintings of 1914. In Vienna, Kokoschka had begun to eschew the sinewy tension of his figures for more rounded body forms, and Klimt's figure paintings had assumed a looser and more casually realistic look, leaving behind the carefully calculated decorative flatness seen in his compositions done in the previous decade.
The portrait drawing on the recto of the present double-sided sheet is related to a series of clad, semi-clad and nude figure studies of a model whose name Schiele inscribed on a couple of the drawings as 'Poldi' (K 1518-1532). This head study is beautifully balanced in its joined circular forms of her face, hair arrangement and headband. The artist used hatching to introduce some detail into her hair and eyebrows, but he did not employ this technique for the conventional purpose of shading. There is, in fact, no shading in any of the forms. The young woman's rounded features have been rendered exclusively with the use of contour lines, which Schiele has varied with great delicacy. He has also employed subtle gradations in the pressure used to apply the pencil to the sheet. Most notable is the superimposition of a zigzag line over some of the contours, and elsewhere in the definition of the model's collar. This line can also be observed in some of the contours in the verso study. The zigzag or finely looping line is a more subtle variant on what Kallir has described as Schiele's 'stitchlike cross-hatching.' This was a new linear technique 'that characterises drawings from this period and may also be observed in the contemporaneous drypoints. It is impossible to determine whether the technique simply carried over into the etching medium or rather evolved from it...Despite their unorthodox appearance, his seemingly erratic lines actually heighten the plasticity of his subjects' (ibid.).
Schiele's continuing experimentation in line drawing and the evolutional of his later, more classical style might well be expected in an artist who dedicated so much time and effort to this medium. It was also, perhaps, more pressingly, a matter of survival. During this period Schiele barely eked out a living through the sale of his drawings. The Munich dealer Hanz Goltz had told him, 'Your drawings will always be interesting for connoisseurs and even for some non-connoisseurs, and so they will remain salable in the future... But your paintings, in the present phase of your development, are unsalable in Germany' (quoted in ibid, p. 168). The softer, more voluptuous realism that emerged in Schiele's drawing during 1914 might have been an attempt on the part of the artist to capitalise on the most characteristic and salable aspect of his work - its overt eroticism - which he now sought to express in a more realistically titillating and voluptuous manner. Schiele's recent efforts at etching and drypoint, suggested and financed by his patron Arthur Roessler, were similarly intended to increase the artist's exposure by taking advantage of the growing print market in Germany.
While Schiele had, to some extent, put behind him the jagged, tormented subjectivity of his early signal manner, his growing interest in more realistic, observed form paid new dividends in such exquisitely accomplished watercolours as Liegende Frau mit blondem Haar (K 1583, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore). The present head study, seen from slighthly above, and the verso study, as an exercise in foreshortening, were worthwhile investments in a new process of discovery. Schiele was by now achieving mastery of an extraordinarily diverse range of poses, and was well on the way to becoming more inventive in this regard than either Rodin or Klimt had been in their drawings. Schiele could depict the female body from almost any conceivable angle, and he created poses arranged in a believable, yet oddly skewed space that were strikingly unusual, so that whether the model was partially attired or not, there was an undeniable expression of eroticism, which the artist knew could not fail to prove irresistible to the collector-voyeur.
The portrait drawing on the recto of the present double-sided sheet is related to a series of clad, semi-clad and nude figure studies of a model whose name Schiele inscribed on a couple of the drawings as 'Poldi' (K 1518-1532). This head study is beautifully balanced in its joined circular forms of her face, hair arrangement and headband. The artist used hatching to introduce some detail into her hair and eyebrows, but he did not employ this technique for the conventional purpose of shading. There is, in fact, no shading in any of the forms. The young woman's rounded features have been rendered exclusively with the use of contour lines, which Schiele has varied with great delicacy. He has also employed subtle gradations in the pressure used to apply the pencil to the sheet. Most notable is the superimposition of a zigzag line over some of the contours, and elsewhere in the definition of the model's collar. This line can also be observed in some of the contours in the verso study. The zigzag or finely looping line is a more subtle variant on what Kallir has described as Schiele's 'stitchlike cross-hatching.' This was a new linear technique 'that characterises drawings from this period and may also be observed in the contemporaneous drypoints. It is impossible to determine whether the technique simply carried over into the etching medium or rather evolved from it...Despite their unorthodox appearance, his seemingly erratic lines actually heighten the plasticity of his subjects' (ibid.).
Schiele's continuing experimentation in line drawing and the evolutional of his later, more classical style might well be expected in an artist who dedicated so much time and effort to this medium. It was also, perhaps, more pressingly, a matter of survival. During this period Schiele barely eked out a living through the sale of his drawings. The Munich dealer Hanz Goltz had told him, 'Your drawings will always be interesting for connoisseurs and even for some non-connoisseurs, and so they will remain salable in the future... But your paintings, in the present phase of your development, are unsalable in Germany' (quoted in ibid, p. 168). The softer, more voluptuous realism that emerged in Schiele's drawing during 1914 might have been an attempt on the part of the artist to capitalise on the most characteristic and salable aspect of his work - its overt eroticism - which he now sought to express in a more realistically titillating and voluptuous manner. Schiele's recent efforts at etching and drypoint, suggested and financed by his patron Arthur Roessler, were similarly intended to increase the artist's exposure by taking advantage of the growing print market in Germany.
While Schiele had, to some extent, put behind him the jagged, tormented subjectivity of his early signal manner, his growing interest in more realistic, observed form paid new dividends in such exquisitely accomplished watercolours as Liegende Frau mit blondem Haar (K 1583, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore). The present head study, seen from slighthly above, and the verso study, as an exercise in foreshortening, were worthwhile investments in a new process of discovery. Schiele was by now achieving mastery of an extraordinarily diverse range of poses, and was well on the way to becoming more inventive in this regard than either Rodin or Klimt had been in their drawings. Schiele could depict the female body from almost any conceivable angle, and he created poses arranged in a believable, yet oddly skewed space that were strikingly unusual, so that whether the model was partially attired or not, there was an undeniable expression of eroticism, which the artist knew could not fail to prove irresistible to the collector-voyeur.