An Unwitting Monument | Lapham's Quarterly
Portrait of the Dying Edith Schiele, by Egon Schiele, 1918. Wikimedia Commons. Let’s begin with Egon Schiele’s elbows: the Austrian artist’s swollen left elbow bent over his head in a gesture of support, the right drawn across his face, almost directly under his nose. Here, in his 1910 painting Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait), rendered in muddy browns and sickly yellows, Schiele’s limbs look withered, his joints too pronounced. His elbows frame his face, drawing attention to one arched brow and a glowing reddish eye (a feature made even more striking by the repetition of its color ...
Source: laphamsquarterly.org