Egon Schiele's Self-Portrait

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Recommended: Expression theory of art

Egon Schiele's Self-Portrait

When I look at this portrait, the first thing that hits me is the way the artist, Egon Schiele, appears to have made himself look animated, like a cartoon. The way in which his right eye is rounded like a cartoon character and his left eye is squinting and almost shut, adds to the idea of a the portrait being a cartoon. The squinted left eye is as if he is sneaking around and evaluating his surroundings. If you cover the right side of the face (with the widely opened eye), it makes you realise that the left side with the squinted eye does not look very lifelike, but the two eyes seem to cancel each other out.
The over exaggerated wrinkles on Schiele’s face and neck make him look a lot older than he actually is. He was actually only 20 years old when he painted this portrait but the way in which he was exaggerated the wrinkles makes him look around 40 years old. Schiele may have done this to portray his feelings at the time he painted it; he may have felt old and tired. But Schiele may also have been just experimenting in different ways of painting facial features and expressions.

If you look at Schiele’s hands in the portrait, it looks as though
Schiele has deliberately elongated the fingers and made them thinner and more withered. This again, makes you think that Schiele has deliberately made himself look older and more animated. The clothes that Schele is wearing in the portrait look to be too big and baggy for him, and therefore seem also to ...

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