Realism In Egon Schiele's Embrace

One of my many influences is rooted in the tradition of German expressionism. One could look at anything from this era of art and see it as a sort of “embellished realism.” Ostensibly natural forms are twisted and contorted to fit the artist’s liking, taking a variety of shapes and colors, seemingly taking inspiration from primarily impressionism, surrealism and cubism to create a style that would influence the fields of illustration and graphic design. In particular, one of the leading artists from this movement was a man named Egon Schiele. Schiele lived during and died just before the end of World War 2. His figures had a blemished, twisted quality to their proportions and in particularly how he utilized lines to define the contours and appearance of his subjects.

Schiele’s “Embrace (124)” is a perfect encapsulation of his main style of art. The two figures appear engaged in some kind of sexual play, yet it feels completely devoid of passion or love. This is, of course, very intentional. The two figures have blank, simple faces. Their proportions are somewhat realistic and distinctly unidealized. Their skin is as pale as chalk, which in artwork implies disease or even death. One could probably gander that these two figures are in some sort of loveless relationship that had once been exciting and new, but now the honeymoon phase has long-since passed and they seem fairly bored with what is happening. They’re clearly struggling to find any intimacy in the situation now that their emotional connection has gone cold. Human connection is one of the most important aspects of being human, yet it’s also quite transient, all too fleeting or easy to lose. Schiele seems to encapsulate that idea through taking something that normally implies love and connection to depict a desperate need for both when there seemingly is