Stop transferring poetry into dream;

know how to see it in reality.

Gide, New Fruits of the Earth

The artist, supposing they possess an honest heart, is the one who bears witness. In this sense, every work is a confession. Schiele was such an artist, not seeking repentance, but confessing nonetheless. But it would be wrong to distinguish Schiele as a moping penitent, for he confessed to himself alone and sought salvation for his living flesh, not his soul.

The confessions I am speaking of can be found in Schiele’s self-portraits. To understand these portraits is to understand the convulsing intimacy that one shares with the body. The shame that Schiele felt towards his physical being is a sensation from which no one is estranged. Schiele’s body, the living prison that the cold hand of fate dealt him, did not fit the shape of his soul. We sense Schiele writhing underneath the skin, searching for a way to break free of the limbs that bore the suffering his short life endured. Slashed and bound in expressive strokes of red and black, a delicate shade of blue smoulders in most of these portraits. It is the sensitive blue of Schiele’s soul that suffocated under life’s corporeal limits. He believed that ‘Bodies have their own light which they consume to live: they burn, they are not lit from the outside.’ With dreams of the infinite, Schiele’s soul ignited his ephemeral body, causing it to burn with an intensity that turned his skin translucent.

Schiele’s work was often provocative, to the extent that he was thrown in prison when it was deemed pornographic. In his portraits of women, the body appears secondary, as if emanating from their sexuality. But when he considered his own form, sexuality became an embarrassing secret that was shrivelled up or had to be covered over. In each portrait, as if catching sight of his true self for the first time, Schiele twists in discomfort and resembles a swatted fly pressed against the canvas, raising his grotesque yet delicate fingers in an absurd surrender. This is the human body, stripped of all affectations and disassociated from all social and political drama. In many of the portraits it is a seemingly glazed and indifferent face that contemplates this body. It is the face of the human condition; the face that can only stare blankly whilst turning over in the mind this condition which must also be an eternal affliction. These are the portraits without colour. Yet when Schiele brought light into his work, the paintbrush worked as a match; the artist protested against the human condition by transforming his body into a burning effigy.

Schiele asks us no direct questions; his self-portraits are his own confessions and we can only appropriate the sentiment. I believe that art can never resist introspection, and that Schiele’s art put him in conversation with a deep sensitivity that is too often dismissed today. Rather than negating the physical aversions he held towards himself, he engaged in a dialogue with them. This artistic dialogue perhaps allowed shame and revulsion to pass over into a fleeting acceptance- a passing reconciliation that is a testament to Schiele’s extensive body of work, as he tried and failed to attain a sense of permanence. I cannot help but feel affection for this artist who sang of ‘fields of colour’ and proclaimed his love for everything; for the artist who painted the world so lyrically, but could only describe himself as ‘worthless’. Schiele suffered from the illness of mankind and teased this suffering out into his work. His portraits demonstrate that although art can never be the cause or reason for existence, it can offer a reprieve, and at the very least a means for surviving.