Schiele (Basic Art) [Paperback]

Reinhard Steiner (Author)

Book Description

Series: Basic Art | Publication Date: February 1, 1994

80 color, 25 b&w illus. 10 1/4 x 14 1/4.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

About the Author

The author:
Reinhard Steiner (born 1950) is professor of art history at the University of Stuttgart. His particular areas of interest and expertise include late medieval and Renaissance art as well as the art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Taschen; First edition & printing edition (February 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 382280553X
• ISBN-13: 978-3822805534
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,299,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good intro to a disturbing artist, June 13, 2000

By 

Peter F. Stubbs (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Schiele (Basic Art) (Paperback)

As a quick study of/introduction to Egon Schiele, this book is great. Timeline, bio, an examination of influences and early works are included, but the highlights are Schiele's mature paintings. His self-portraits make him look like a concentration camp internee. Beautiful, scary stuff.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In Schiele's Hands, December 9, 2011

By 

Picozzo - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Egon Schiele 1890-1918 (Paperback)

In Shiele's hands is a confident line and an uncensored, cooly critical appraising eye. His self portraits, angular, emaciated, naked place the viewer in the position of voyeur and Schiele the exhibitionist. His rendering of hands are boney, expressive, at times grasping with their black outlines across the body.

His female nudes are unforgiving, distorted, fleshy, grotesque and, at times, with a dismemberment that is confronting. His painting, The Embrace, so resembles the work of the much later, Lucien Freud that I would not be surprised if Schiele was one of Freud's artistic influences.

This book includes Schiele's early works, the influence of Klimt on his work, his later abstractions and landscapes. The text provides a fascinating insight into this complex artist.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly and colorful., March 27, 2002

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Schiele (Basic Art) (Paperback)

This book by Reinhard Steiner gives a very intellectual treatment to the art of Egon Schiele. From pages 9 to 11, Nietzsche is quoted as a guide to the self, and for the first quote, Steiner must be translating from the German himself, for the footnote is not to an English version of Nietzsche's work. Could this be familiar?

It is a theatre of the self which is in dangerous proximity to Friedrich Nietzsche's aphoristic description (in 1888) of the modern artist: "The modern artist, physiologically close kin to the hysteric, bears the signs of hysteria in his very character too . . . The absurd excitability of his constitution, which makes a crisis of every experience and drags drama into the merest chances of life, renders him utterly unpredictable: he is no longer one person, but at most a gathering of persons, and now this one, now that will be conspicuous amongst them, with unabashed confidence. . . ." (pp. 9-10).

Almost everything in the book is reproduced in color, but the paintings might not please everyone. Consider them stark.