Woman Buttoning Her Shoes 1915

Egon Schiele made this drawing of a woman buttoning her shoes with pencil on paper. The lines are quick and raw, but they really nail the pose, you know? It's like, he's not trying to pretty things up, but instead capture the realness of the moment, the sort of zig zag quality to the lines giving the image a nervous kind of energy. You can almost feel the paper's texture. The marks are delicate, but you can see how he's gone over some lines again and again, building up the form. Look at the way he's drawn the hands, so delicate, and the shoe itself, it is so detailed. The way her body folds and twists, it's all there in these simple marks. You can tell that Schiele was interested in the process of making art, not just the end result. Schiele reminds me a little of Alice Neel, in the way that they can use the human form to tell a story, but of course Schiele’s marks have got that restless, searching quality to them. It's like he's having a conversation with himself, and inviting us to eavesdrop.