House Wall on the River 1915

Editor: Here we have Egon Schiele’s “House Wall on the River,” an oil painting from 1915. The buildings seem to huddle together, and there’s a sense of something decaying. What jumps out at you when you look at it? Curator: It feels like a whispered secret, doesn't it? Schiele traps time and memory into the layers of paint – look at the color. Not exactly gray but something far away and desaturated. He takes this physical place but bends it like a memory. A real memory always is. Doesn't it make you wonder about the people who inhabited this building, their lives echoing within those aged walls? It's like the building holds their collective consciousness, which leaks to the walls and we, the visitors, witness. Editor: Definitely. The reflection in the water feels a bit like a ghostly double. I am interested in how he layers them. The upper section behind a roof. Was Schiele interested in stage design? Curator: I like your intuition. There’s a performative element! Notice the geometry of the houses, though. How does it sit with you? He distorts our expected perspectives, doesn’t he? Making us feel perhaps the awkward discomfort he had living at the time. WWI. He turned buildings to portraits of emotion, their windows becoming eyes that reflected an increasingly fragmented world. The laundry waving its surrender at the sky. How can beauty come from pain and darkness. That's the art! Editor: So it's not just a city scene, but a kind of emotional landscape as well. I never looked at it that way. It will stay with me, though. Curator: Exactly. These Expressionist works pull us in, twist our expectations and leave us with much more than we started with.