Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in contemporary Russian Poetry

Leading Austrian artists of the first quarter of the 20th century, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, did not attract the Russian writers attention until the 1990s, when the development of Russian postmodern literature was conductive to the attention to their experiments, polystylistics, cultural symbolism and aestheticism. It is stressed that although the heritage of these artists was adapted to the aesthetic project of Russian postmodernism, poetic statements about them revealed aspects of art that are not obvious to the common viewer. First of all, in the Russian poetry of the 1990s and the early 2000s (Alexander Ulanov, Alexander Skidan, Irina Mashinsky, Polina Barskova, Elena Fanailova) it was convincingly shown that Schiele’s expressionism directly takes it start from the symbolism of Klimt, and Klimt’s aesthetics already contains Schiele’s one, but Schiele’s manner retains the achievements of Klimt. Further, the author shows a connection between these artists and the achievements of physics along with the cultural and political atmosphere of the time. Finally, it was reported that the achievements of these artists opposed Nazism because Klimt and Schiele demonstrated the inadmissibility of any form of oppression. Regardless of the private thoughts or the works of Klimt and Schiele, these ideas are conveyed by the very form of their works and the approach to style: the semanticization of the material and the ability to give life to the depicted characters. Particular techniques and devices of expressiveness of both artists were interpreted as auxiliary to their humanistic ideas, and it should be recognized as the contribution of poetry to art history.

A New Austrian Regionalism: Alfons Walde and Austrian Identity in Painting after 1918

This essay assesses the role of regionalism in interwar Austrian painting with a focus on the Tyrolean painter and architect Alfons Walde (1891–1958). At a time when painting was seen to be in crisis, eclipsed by the deaths of prominent Viennese artists such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, regionalism offered an alternative engagement with modern art. As the representative of a wider regionalist movement, Walde paved the way for a clearly identifiable image of rural Austria without foregoing the modernization process that took place in the Alps at the time. Filtering essential elements of local culture and synthesizing them with both a modern formal language and “modern” topics, most significantly ski tourism, he created a regionalism that reverberated beyond the narrow confines of his home province and caught particular momentum during the rise of the Austrian Ständestaat in the 1930s. Moving in between regional and national significance, Walde's work underlines the essential position of the region in Austria after 1918 and conveys that an engaged regionalism that responded to the rapid cultural and political changes taking place became a significant aspect of interwar Austrian painting.

Implementation of Louis Lankford’s techniques in analysis of the work of Egon Schiele “Levitation” (1915)

The subject of this research is the work of the Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele “Levitation” (1915). Emphasis is placed on the phenomenological dimension of this work, for which was adapted and implemented the methodology of American phenomenologist Louis Lankford. This technique allows analyzing the work of visual art using the art criticism and phenomenological means simultaneously.  It includes five successive stages: receptiveness, vectoring, bracketing (phenomenological analysis), interpretive analysis, and synthesis of acquired information. The research is of interdisciplinary nature, combines the methods of art criticism and methods of philosophical science. The conclusion is made that Lankford’s methodology allows analyzing the works of visual art from phenomenological perspective, being adjusted to the composition under review. This case requires the increased role of audience in post-artistic communication. At the same time, special attention should be given to the body as a medium for the information contained in the painting, and to the information received and interpreted by the audience.

Wittgenstein: la consciencia del límite. Una conversación con Carla Carmona

Carla Carmona es una filósofa española. Doctora en Filosofía por la Universidad de Sevilla. Es profesora de filosofía en la Universidad de Sevilla. Especialista en estética, filosofía del lenguaje y Viena fin de siècle. Tiene una investigación internacionalmente reconocida sobre estética en el pensamiento de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Publicó numerosos artículos sobre los pensamientos de Egon Schiele y Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ha disfrutado de numerosas estancias de investigación en Austria, trabajando con expertos del contexto fin de siècle de Viena. En los últimos años, se ha dedicado al estudio del pensamiento estético y político de Peter Sloterdijk. En 2014 publicó Tributação voluntária e responsabilidade cidadã. Vale la pena mencionar sus libros A ideia pictórica de Egon Schiele: Um Ensaio sobre a lógica representacional (Edições Genueve, 2012), Tightrope do eterno: Na gramática alucinado Egon Schiele (Cliff, 2013), Egon Schiele: Writings 1909-1918 (a Micro, 2014), Ludwig Wittgenstein: La consciencia del límite (Biblioteca Discover filosofia, El País , 2015).

Three Paintings by Egon Schiele: Ideas About the Essence of Art

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) is one of the most significant representatives of Austrian expressionism, whose works influenced not only numerous painters and graphic artists, but dancers and theatrical stage employees as well. However, few academic publications are devoted to E. Schiele’s creative work, and among the existing ones, there is a significant proportion of those where his paintings are considered as the evidence of deviations in the painter’s mental health. The main method used in the present work is the philosophical and art studies analysis, appealing to the universal meanings of works of art. Three paintings: Self-Portrait with Black Vase (1911), The Holy Family (1913) and Death and the Maiden (1915), which can be combined into one series demonstrating the genesis of Egon Schiele’s ideas about art in general and about his creative work in particular, are the material for this study

'The Erotic Work of Art is Also Sacred'

The Viennese obsession with sex at the fin-de-siècle was vividly expressed in the artworks of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Their depictions of women demonstrated their fascination with and fear of female sexual pleasure and desire, reflecting a wider societal anxiety and erotic fixation. This paper will analyse selected paintings and drawings by both Klimt and Schiele to explore this dynamic of 'erotic neurasthenia.'