Nudes: Egon Schiele - Tapa dura

Perhaps the Robert Mapplethorpe of his day. Egon Schiele, who died at the age of twenty-eight, was one of the most innovative and controversial artists of the Vienna Secession. Schiele wished to shatter the hypocrisy of Viennese society's facade of propriety. He felt that, regardless of their erotic content, his drawings and watercolors were "still always works of art." Although he was imprisoned for the "immorality" of his art, the passage of time and revisions in modernist critical thinking have led to a significant reevaluation of Schiele's artistic achievement. This extraordinary book of Schiele's erotic drawings, watercolors, and gouaches of male and female nudes includes a selection of twenty-eight color and twelve black and white reproductions. Alessandra Comini's provocative essay, "Schiele's Nudes: Prudence or Pathos?," attempts to illuminate Schiele's psychic and sexuality and their relationship to his erotically charged work.

Alessandra Comini is University Distinguished Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University.