The Brother

Egon Schiele made this painting, The Brother, with oil on canvas, but we don’t know exactly when. There’s a strange, almost sculptural quality to the paint application, like the figures are emerging from some molten earth, and I think that the making of the painting, the application of paint, the materiality of it, is really the subject here. Look closely and you’ll see the paint is thin in some spots, thick in others, almost like a relief. The ochre backdrop is luminous. But it is the brushstrokes that really seize my attention, especially in the dark browns and blacks, building up and contouring around the figures, as if to protect them. Notice the smaller figure’s hands; the way they clutch and clasp each other so full of tender protection. Schiele reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker in that they both use painting to capture the intense, and often difficult, realities of human existence. There is no one meaning here, only feeling.