Egon Schiele by Simon Wilson (review)

256 Books practices and suggest new expanded concepts within this field. Activities are seen as more than time-killers or tranquillizers. Museums, hospitals and adult education centres are all seen as institutions that should expand their facilities to provide outlets for meaningful art and craft activities for the elderly in various environments, including rural environments. The right sort of leadership and the forms of instruction are examined with purposeful thoroughness. The section on research isthe least satisfying, for it only outlines some of the work done on learning processes among the elderly and on how to provide activities to enhance the quality of life at this age. For instance, the Faculty of Development in the University of North Dakotahas been researching relationships between age and creative thinking. It appears that, as with 'intelligence', there is little decline in creativity with advancing years and that the main factor in any decline is lack of exercising particular capacities. This booklet will be of interest to all those near retiring age and to those who are concerned with and interested in the well-being of the elderly. It is a worthwhile addition to the increasing literature on the needs and problems of old age. Egon Schiele. Simon Wilson. Phaidon, Oxford, 1980. 80 pp., illus. $19.95. ISBN: 0-8014-1330-3. Reviewed by Christopher Crouch" "1 am extremely sensitive, and all those people (art dealers and patrons) have absolutely no idea how they should behave towards an artist." This mournful little plaint was written by Schiele whilst suffering from societal indifference. In his monograph Simon Wilson has obviously taken this admonition to heart, and endeavours to present Schiele not merely as an interesting artist, but as an artist whose importance transcends that of his own immediate culture. In a book in which the illustrations take precedence (the corresponding text in pleasing proximity to them), Wilson sets himself two major tasks: first, an exposition of the unfolding of Schiele's career, and second, an attempt to establish Schiele's body of work as an important part of the collective European tradition. He examines the artist's drawings and paintings thematically, starting with a brief investigation of the man's transition from youthful symbolism to expressionism. The examination continues under such headings as, 'The Self, Metaphysical and Sexual Angst, Themes of Love and Death, and The Artist and Society and concludes with Schiele's portraiture. Wilson's aims are too extensive for the scope of the book. The historical account and critical evaluation of Schiele's work do not coexist happily. Perhaps they would have been treated more satisfactorily as two specific and separate aims, in an objective biography, followed by Wilson's personal appraisal. His pictorial analysis is again limited by the format of the book; whilst saying "Hands and gestures of hands can be of course highly expressive", there is no examination of the nature of that expression, nor of the often repeated gestural mannerisms. His analysis is further marred by overly prescriptive language and the frequent use of "masterpiece" when referring to the painter's work. Wilson places Schiele at the forefront of expressionism, and further proposes that Schiele's importance lies in his embodiment of expressionist art, "one of the most vital transformations in the early history of modern art". As is evident, Wilson's style does not suffer from lack of confidence, and it is these assertions and their insufficient substantiation (due mainly to lack of space) that make his critical evaluations hard to accept on face value unless one is already a devotee. Central to Wilson's study, and rightly so, is an examination of the attitudes towards sexuality that emerge from Schiele's work. Wilson makes some valid points with respect to the morbid introspection that sexual repression tends to generate. However, having made a relevant point with respect to Schiele, he attempts to isolate it historically and give the man's work a universality that goes beyond early twentieth- "26 Rutland Ave., Sefton Park, Liverpool 17 2AP, U.K. century Vienna. There is a confusion here between the commonality of human sexual experience and the forms of sexuality that are conditioned by specific social circumstance. This methodological...