New Show at Neue Galerie Discloses a Good Doctor’s Influence on Austrian Painter Egon Schiele

‘Egon Schiele: Portrait of Dr. Erwin Von Graff ‘Neue Galerie New York, 1048 Fifth Ave.Through May 4A painting that is the subject of an exhibition at the Neue Galerie, Egon Schiele’s “Portrait of Dr. Erwin Von Graff” (1910), is characterized by pictorial tics so distinctive that at first we might take them for granted. The distended anatomy, spiky contours, and theatricality of posture typical of Schiele’s style are present and accounted for.Alas, so are his clotted surfaces and grotty palette. It’s worth reminding ourselves that the precocious Austrian artist died young–he was dead at age twenty-eight due to complications from the flu. Schiele was a natural at drawing; putting oil to canvas was a less intuitive endeavor.“Dr. Erwin Von Graff” is, all the same, a striking image. The canvas measures roughly 3-feet in each direction, and the portrait itself is life-size. Anatomical proportions are elongated and arthritic, Schiele-style. Set against a flat background of creamy white, the good doctor looks directly at the viewer, crossing his arms in a vaguely religious and certainly hieratic manner. The right hand has a prominent band-aid on the ring finger. The left arm is dark and mottled; so, too, is Von Graff’s forehead.These flourishes could be pegged as Expressionist overstatement, psychological portent emphasized through texture and color. As it turns out, Schiele’s portrait is, in its anecdotal details, true to life. In an essay included in the exhibition catalogue, a chief curator at Vienna’s Albertina Museum, Elisabeth Dutz, begins her essay by wondering if “Graff’s strikingly dark left arm . . . [might] be an indication that he was using morphine?” Digging through the family’s records, Ms. Dutz discovered that Graff suffered from radiodermatitis, a condition resulting from exposure to radiation. A fascination with x-ray technology offers a plausible interpretation for the specifics of Schiele’s painting, more so than a recent take that extolled the bravery of the “Mephistophelean” doctor, a gynecologist by trade, for having “faced . . . a vagina dentata.” Even the band-aid on Dr. Graff’s finger, don’t you know, has a story to tell.Egon Schiele, Portrait of a Child (Anton Peschka, Jr.), 1916. The Cleveland Museum of Art Severance and Greta Millikin Collection.“Egon Schiele: Portrait of Dr. Erwin Von Graff” has been organized by the museum’s director, Renée Price, along with curator Janis Staggs. Their efforts, I am happy to report, forgo the conjectural for the scholarly. The exhibition is set aside in a single gallery and is packed with around forty works that function as satellites to the main attraction. The installation may be the result of necessity–the Neue Galerie doesn’t have a lot of space in which to sprawl–but the compression suits Schiele’s intensity.Ms. Price writes that “Schiele really came into his own as an artist in 1910, the year he completed the portrait ‘Dr. Erwin von Graff.'” The influence of an artistic mentor, Gustav Klimt, had been absorbed–compare the pieces in the show to a Schiele canvas in the permanent collection, “Danaë” (1909), to glean the difference between hard-won individuality and slickly-contrived derivation. How did a peculiar artist and a generous physician meet? The go-to theory is that Schiele’s portrait was done in recompense for Von Graff having attended to a friend and model, Liliana Amon. The painter and the doctor hit it off, having bumped into each other at a party and later beginning a correspondence. When, exactly, Von Graff allowed Schiele access to Vienna’s Second University Women’s Hospital is unclear. What is clear is that the doctor thought that an artist is best served by isolation: He advised Schiele to steer clear of relationships that would hinder his vision.The Neue Galerie show is replete with works-on-paper that highlight the neurasthenia of Schiele’s vision. Few parents would likely welcome a drawing of their child as pictured by Schiele–a bag of bones doesn’t begin to describe “Newborn Baby” (1910)–and the artist’s hyperbolic gynephilia can be a bit much. But then there are pieces like “Kneeling Pregnant Nude” (1912), “Nude with Violet Stockings and Black Hair” (1912), and “Portrait of a Child (Anton Peschka, Jr.)” (1916) that confirm his uncanny gift for line and, with that, his vitality as an artist. An appointment to the doctor currently ensconced at The Neue Galerie is decidedly recommended.

New Show at Neue Galerie Discloses a Good Doctor’s Influence on Austrian Painter Egon Schiele

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