Egon Schiele: Influences on and Impact in Art

egon Schiele Influences on and Imp deed of conveyance in ArtWas Egon Schiele ahead of his condemnation or just in strain with it? A master of take protrudeionism or practising pornographer and paedophile? What was the driving force- verboten tush his around memorable images those being his nudes and self-importance portraits? Looking at stinting, favorable, personal influences, was he milking the times and environment for self gain or was he a horm one(a) raging self absorbed kid finding himself?IntroductionExpressionism is described in typic on the undividedy polemic cost in the preface for the 1912 line of battle in Cologne, featuring naked machination plyificers of this genre. In it, it says the exhibition is intended to offer a general vista of the newest movement in pictorial matter, which has succeeded atmospheric naturalism and the impressionist rendering of motion, and which strives to offer a diminution and intensification in the mode of expression, af terwards new rhythms and new uses of colour and a decorative or monumental configuration a general forecast of that movement which has been described as expressionism.Schiele sure enough fulfilled the loose terminologies verbalised above, as a immense deal of the field of operation matter he explored, primarily his nudes and his self-portraits, were colligateed with the constant inquire to redefine and explore divers(prenominal) ways of expressing these themes a simplification and intensification in the mode of expression. At times, Schiele reduces the broad(a) sentiments of Impressionism to a atomic number 53 streak he cuts turn come forward all that is un unavoidable, trim his backgrounds to a simple wash of colour, and thus focuses on his primary interest, that of the man offspring.Schiele was in addition extremely concerned with the notion of self in his trim he is frequently cited in critical work as a narcissist and, with over 100 self portraits to his na me, each of which appear to be concerned with showing himself in various, ofttimes self-contradictory ways, this would appear to be true. alone, beyond simple glorification of the self, Schiele adoptms to be doing something else in his self-portraiture. By visualise himself in much(prenominal) a varied and at times contradictory way, Schiele in turn perplexitys his hold au thitherforeticity, and attempts to align himself with that great canon of mechanic in society, as a contemporary Promethean or Christ-like figure.Allegory, unmasking, the presentation of a personable image, and goal scrutiny of corpse language as influenced by the psyche, all met most palpably where Schieles eye looked most pryingly in his self-portraits, his odyssey through the vast lands of the self. His reflections on and of himself filled a great residence hall of mirrors where he per body-builded a pantomime of the self unparalleled in twentieth century art. Indeed, the ambiguity of Schiele as regards himself is a dense and complex subject, which regards two truth, and a more subjective appraisal of art in Viennese society during the time in which Schiele was paint.Schiele was in any case concerned with respite pig and fundamentally opposing the traditions of Viennese culture and art which, at the time, were largely rattling conservative in opinion. In his art, Schiele would strike knocked out(p) at the culture that celebrated Biedermeier art and the slavish upbringing of bodical works that he was taught at capital of Austrias Academie der Bildunden Kunste (Viennas Academy of alright Art), which he was admitted to on the grounds of his exceptional talent as a draughtsman. just about prominently, he would rest these rules, and was thus ahead of his times with his extremely contentious oeuvre, which broke from these schools close completely, both stylistically and in terms of the subject matter that they conveyed.But it is extremely difficult, if not impossibl e when considering any artist to extricate him / her from the times in which he / she was born. An artist is inevitably unless(prenominal)t over over against to the world around him / her, and thus, it is important to consider the economic, fond and cultural trends that were overriding at the time. Schiele was part of the expressionist movement which immediately set itself up against the heralded principal sums of art in Vienna, by move up its receive artist-led business entities, using the work and the life of Klimt as an example. I exit expand upon the layered tarradiddle that led up to Viennese expressionism, and hold to extrapolate the extent to which Schiele was paving the way for a new multiplication of artists.Schieles art was curiously dis empowerable in its subject matter. In his untimely work especially, unflinching portraits were painted that not only showed Schiele in unyielding positions, but also subjects much(prenominal) as p portiontariat children, who were invariably pictured naked, and painted with a grotesque and sickly eroticism that draws you unerringly into these proscribed argonas. Whether Schiele was deliberately trying to shock and provoke the modesties of the Viennese globe, or whether he was trying to uncover a more universal, spiritual or cozy truth is subject to debate.Overall, in this essay, I lead discuss how the history of Vienna impacted upon the work of Schiele, aspect at the cultural, social and economic impact of Schiele. I will also look at how Schiele uses the self-portrait, especially how he chooses to either promote, or at least define the familiar role of expressionist artist in his work. Then I will look at how the abundance of these controversial self-portraits, a keen-sighted with innumerable photographs of Schiele posing, in turn makes Schieles identity in his work more ambiguous. Then I will look at the more pornographic side of Schiele, and question how Schiele, deeply embedded in the cul tural and moral codes of the time, reacted inviolately against them and launch his own, art of ugliness.History Of Viennese ExpressionismFredrick Raphael, in his preface to fantasy Story by Arthur Schnitzler, suggests something about the Viennese psyche he says that In 1866, Bismarcks Prussia destroyed Austro-Hungarys hardyly incompetent army at Sadowa. The effect of that get the better of on the Viennese psyche cannot be exactly assessed. Austria had already suffered feeler humiliation by the French, under Louis-Napoleon, but Sadowa confirmed that she would never again be a major player in the worlds game. Yet sure acceptance of Austrias vanished supremacy was repressed by the brilliance and brio of its social and artistic life.Who can be surprised that Adlers discovery of the inferiority complex, and of compensating assertiveness, was do in a society traumatized by dazzling decline? It was as if the city which spawned Arthur Schinitzler and Sigmund Freud fe bed to awake f rom its tuneful dreams to prosaic reality. Indeed, the times in which Egon Schiele was reservation his mark on the Viennese insane asylum was a time where the Viennese art community were at their most conservative, or most hypersensitised to lapsing into these tuneful dreams. Schieles self-im confrontd mission, it beted, was to violently shake these people into a state of consciousness.But that isnt to say that Schiele existed in all in a vacuum, sprightliness entirely by his own rules. Comini songes that The content of Schieles Expressionism then was a heightened signified of pathos and impending doom, and an acute awareness of the self. Schieles Expressionist form move from the great European reservoir of Symbolist evocativeness. So, from a veritable ragbag of varying influences, Schiele managed to get his form, which unite that of exceptional draughtsman, with an inescapable desire for limning the artistry of ugliness, something of which Schiele was something of a pion eer.In 1897, Schiele joined the painting class of Christian Griepenkerl who was a deeply conservative artist devoted to neoclassicism, or the slavish devotion and replication of classic works of art. This involved long hours copying the works of the Old Masters at Viennas Academy of Fine Art. Schiele was enrolled for his superior draughtsmanship, but he was last alienated from it because he didnt see the relevance or the importance in neoclassicism. Thus, he became something of a troubler to the establishment, and was eventually forced out.This was echoed 100 years hence by the Romantics an art group who pursued a loose programme intended to reinvest art with emotional impact. The Romantics, however, proved too unpalatable to the Viennese citizenry, who instead favourite(a) the work of Biedermeier artists. Kallir says On the whole, Germans proved more receptive to love affair than Austrians who shied away from such intense expressions of feeling and took refuge in the daily che er of the Biedermeier. She goes on to say Biedermeier was geared more to the use than to the fine arts, though in all its myriad incarnations it promoted the personal comforts of the middle class Burger. Biedermeier painting revolved around go steady renditions of everyday life, scenes of domestic bliss, genre pictures portraying ruddy-cheeked peasants, and picturesque views of the native countryside. be born into this highly stringent, conservative environment must catch do Schieles defiance somewhat, as Schiele not only seems to break with what was established in Vienna as profitable art, but he almost seems to pack exactly the opposite role. in time in works by Klimt, who was deemed controversial at the time, in that respect are still elements of decorative palatability that makes his work visually and aesthetically appealing. Schiele seems to be deliberately work against this formula which was brave considering that art, at the time, depended on patronage and buyers to actually sustain a profit. Schiele didnt seem concerned in the slightest that his work wouldnt get a buyer. In fact, the market place is abandoned almost completely.In Schieles early work, art becomes ugly his figures are pallid and atrophied the composition of the pieces are unconventional and thus ack-ack gun the sensibilities of the reference. Upon his break from Viennas Academy, and much akin to Klimt, whom he admired and painted on a number of occasions, Schiele set up his own group, entitled alone, The parvenue Art Group. This was similar to Klimts route, as he set up the Viennese Secession, of which Schiele would play a part, which came from and used the tried and tested formula of the Genossenschaft betdender Kunster Wiens (Vienna partnership of Visual Artists), a project financed by Emperor Franz Josef as a agency of promoting art in the city. However, this system was not without its drawbacks. Its progressive dominance was undermined by a policy of majority rule, which mostly granted success to the conservative faction.Within this scene, the societys role as dealer was particularly upset to the younger, more forward-thinking minority, from whom exclusion from major exhibitions could have adverse financial consequences. Similarly, the capitalistic nature of art, coupled with the conservatism of the market made for a very difficult time for the progressive artist, and perhaps was a reason shadow why Schiele opposed the artistic community with such fervency and vitriol, and a great deal resorted to shock tactics and self-publicity to get himself heard. Klimts Secession operated on similar principles to the Vienna society the Secession was principally a marketing agent for its members work.Thus, again it proved difficult for the younger, more radical artists to break through, despite Klimts support. Later, capital from patronage dwindled, so it was necessary for artists to seek out new markets. The withdrawal method of official patrona ge pre-empted the Secessionists to seek new ways of generating the sales and commissions necessary to keep them in business. Ultimately, this meant that socialist, and personal art became more prominent a theme. The monumental, allegorical themes that Klimt and Schiele tended to attack (although Schieles work was deeply personal, it was also very monumental and took a number of influences from Klimt and symbolist art), no eight-day had a square market.Klimts decorative style, coupled with his established name, could still sell work to his established clients. Schiele, however, had no such luck, and it was only in 1918, the last year of his life, that Schiele managed to break even with his work. Although Schiele did not seem overly concerned with the economic electromotive force of his works in fact, he even seemed to equate poverty and poor to the role of an artist in general, and Schiele was probably one of the most hard-line artists of the twentieth century in terms of pander ing to a particular audience it is nevertheless important to consider economics, social and cultural conditions because, Schiele, by setting himself and his role as an artist in direct opposition to the establishment, also put himself in the long-standing tradition of artist in opposition to mainstream society. Kallir points out thatThe Secession, the Galerie Muethke, and the Wiener Werkstatte , the latter(prenominal) two being establishments set up in the wake of the gradual reduction of patronage funds and a need to find and establish new markets for art, in the formative first ten of this century were peculiar products of their times that shared common aspirations and limitations. It was important to all concerned that these entities, although ostensibly committed to marketing art, were artist- trace. So, although economics were a concern in art, they were not necessarily, as dictated previously with the majority run Vienna Society of Visual Artists, primarily about making silv er and transforming the Viennese art scene into a profitable industry. Economics was an sequential concern, only foisted upon the establishment by chronic necessity The artists evinced a tacitly accepted loathing for art-as-business (Schiele could be particularly eloquent on this point) and a determination to place aesthetic considerations above economic ones. So, as is passably obvious from the art that he made, Schiele was against the motive of making money from art.But this reveals an enkindle contradiction that plagued expressionist and other, later artists seeking to make a accompaniment from art at the same time as gainsay the social and economic processes that ultimately fund its creation If the primary stopping point of these entities was to serve the artistic community, these organisations could not entirely ignore their secondary declare oneself to sell art. So, Schiele, like many other artists, was cut amidst a requirement for money (which was especially apparent now that the former fix of patronage monies had all but dried up), and a requirement to express uncompromisingly his artistic expression. Schiele would not settle for the former, and instead pursued the latter with a vigour and an intensity that, at the time, was quite extraordinary.Schiele and Self-Portraiture.Of all the artists in the 20th century, or indeed any century, Egon Schiele was probably one of the most self-conscious. But, in Schiele, the self is a very problematic subject. Schoeder suggests In his self-portraits, Schiele shows himself as wrathful, with a look of spiritual vacancy, or as if racked by a severe spasm of hysteria or arrogantly looking down his nose, with head tossed back or apprehensively or naively peering out of the picture. Which Schiele is the real Schiele? Schiele seems to instinctively divide himself into differing components, but also, he uses art to singularly pursue his own political views of the role of artist, in many ways using self-portraiture to assert, rather than fragment his own personality.The ambiguity with which Schiele regards himself can be looked at in a number of ways.1. The Artist-as-MartyrIt could be argued that Schiele was simply posing, or playing the varying roles of artist to gratify his ego. This is interesting because Schiele was by all odds working toward a specific identity as artist. In 1912, Schiele was arrested for three geezerhood for publishing obscene works where they could be displayed to children. An item of his work was by and by burned in the courtroom. In prison, he creates a number of interesting works of art, that are especially interesting because their titles read like manifestoes. Titles such as Hindering the Artist is a Crime, It Is Murdering Life in the bud (1912), For Art and for My Loved geniuss I Will Gladly finishure to the End (1912), and Art Cannot Be Modern Art Is Primordially Eternal (1912). Certainly, judging from these titles, Schiele definitely has a number of ideas regarding the artist, his specific role, and what separates a true artist from a charlatan.Schiele, in his highly polemical, hyperbolic painting titles, equates the artist with suffering and martyrdom, suggesting that he will endure, and immediately glorifying the artist as a sponsor of life and eternal well being to the masses. Schroeder goes on to say target these works lies the idealization of suffering in the Romantic cull of genius, as updated in the last years of the nineteenth century through the authorship of Friedrich Nietzsche and through the posthumous response to Arthur Schopenhauer. The turn of the century saw the mop up of the Artist-as-Martyr legend, in which the relationship between suffering and greatness draws so close that the pose of suffering may in itself constitute a shoot to the higher grades of artistic initiation.So, the implication here is that Schiele was indeed acting a specific role of artist, that he was assuming a specific pose of suffering that was in many ways an act of fulfilling his societal role as an artist. Certainly these roles of suffering were explicit in his work. In Self-Portrait standing(a) (1910), Schiele portrays himself as contorted and thin his face is twisted into an ugly grimace, and the work used are mottled, pale and rotten. His arms are deformed and his aligning is unnatural and forced. His eyes are hollow and there is no context to the portrait the background is a simple cream colouring. To exaggerate his alienation yet further, Schiele highlights his body with a shock of clean-living. This has the effect of drawing the subject even further out of his environmental world, and, along with the forced afford gestures, serves to make us see the subject as an exhibit, rather than as part of a natural world. As Schroeder points out On the white expanse of paper, they do not exist they are exhibited.In his principal work, Hermits (1912), he paints himself with Gustav Klimt, whose own break with neoclas sicism and ornate style of expressionism was a major influence on Schieles early work. Klimt is seen as asleep, or else resting on the shoulders of Schiele, who stands in front of him in a large black cloak. Mitsch suggests that in Hermits, seldom has the humankind beings body been visualised so exclusively as a reflection of spiritual forces . But the painting is called Hermits, which suggests something about the role of artist that Schiele observed, although the painting certainly displays elements of the spiritual as Steiner suggests, he presents the master and himself in a picture where two male figures in monklike garb and with aureoles about their heads are seen on a monumental plinth. In Hermits, Schiele and Klimt both look colored Schiele stares defiantly back through the painting.The vast black cloak serves to homogenize the body of Klimt and Schiele, and thus portrays the role of the artist in general as one of blackness, of a biblical darkness. But, the title is more secular Steiner goes on to say that We see Hermits (as the painting is called) and not saints, and the tone is no longer mystical and remote but one of delicate residue between the two men the elder, Klimt, deathlike, and the younger, Schiele, looking grim, doubtless because the artist leads a cave dweller life, condemned by society to suffer.So, Schiele, in a very modernist way, is simultaneously divorcing himself from the establishment of the religious school of Neoclassicism, but is also contemporising it. In similar ways that Freud brought scientific rigour, and secular practice into studies of the human psyche, Schiele was in turn victorious religion out of mystical, allegorical artwork, and instead putting himself into it. This artistic position, as forerunner to Klimt, in a sense, emerging from the body of Klimt, but everlasting(a) out defiantly and uniquely, epitomizes Schieles position. Steiner suggests that At the time that he painted Hermits, Schiele was already seei ng himself as a kind of priest of art, more the vaticinator than the academician, seeing and revealing things that remain concealed from normal people.2. The Artist-As-ProteanThe ambiguity with which Schiele forges his own identity can also be seen in a different way. The variance between different forms of self-portrait merely represent different sides of the Schiele character. This would certainly fit into the Freudian notion of self as a stigmatized, fractional and anarchic collection of different preconceived notions. For instance Freuds basic notions of Id, Ego and Super-Ego serve to fragment the self psychoanalysis in general serves to this effect, and, in a number of Schiele self-portraits, he uses the quite unusual system of the paradigm portrait to encapsulate this fragmentation. Fischer makes the point that the familiar repertoire of Freudian psychological science with its ego and super-ego, conscious and unconscious realms, might equally be use to these dual self-por traits.A great deal of photography of Egon Schiele (of which a great deal exists) utilizes the effect of double exposure, thus, a doubling of the self. In one untitled photograph of Egon Schiele , he is seen firstly staring into the distance, while some other image of himself looks back, observing himself intently. Steiner says that Schiele countered the sensory fragmentation of the self by means of a multiple self which came little by little to form a visual concept which reconstituted his unity with the world in a visionary way. Indeed, during the time when expressionism was most active, a serious redefinition was underway, on the secular, suppositional grounds of Nietzsche and Freud, and also due to the cataclysmic human and social sequel of the Great War. In Hermann Bahrs 1916 book, simply entitled Expressionism, he says neer was there a time so shaken with so much terror, such a fear of death.Never was the world so deathly silent. Never was man so small. Never had he been s o alarmed. Never was happiness so far away and liberty so dead. But he rallies against this bleakness, which is encapsulated in other modernist and expressionist works works such as Eliots Wasteland and the paintings of Munsch and the German school of expressionism Now necessity cries out. Man cries after his soul, and the whole age becomes a single cry of need. Art, too, cries with it, into the depths of darkness it cries for jockstrap it cries after the spiritual that is expressionism. So, by ploughing the ambiguities of the self, this reading would assume that Schiele was, in many respects, crying after his soul, so to speak searching among the myriad of different identities available to him, a concrete or at least a compatible sense of self that had eluded him, along with an entire generation of artists dispossessed by the Viennese establishment.The various parts of Schieles meticulous, and almost surgical self-analysis falls into a number of distinct camps, but also seems to, in a more generalised sense, work against the excogitation of self-portrait or nudity established by other artists. Up until that time, generally speaking, the nude was seen in a grandiose sense the painted nude women, such as those in Degas, were painted as Goddesses, resplendently beautiful, radiant, often placed in scenarios that depicted frolicking jollity or natural equilibrium and the men, who were much rarer in contemporary art, were generally seen as heroic, muscular and noble.Schiele breaks entirely with this long-established tradition. Firstly, the school of nude self-portraiture at the time only comprised of a single person Richard Gerstl, whose painting Self-Portrait, Naked stood on its own at the time as the only painting to be done of the nude artist. Schroeder points out Just how uncommon is was to depict oneself naked is revealed by the fact that earlier 1910 only one precedent existed in the whole of Austrian art. Thus, Schiele was already putting himself in the position of pioneer of a particularly blinker genre. But, in unsheathing the artist of the attire that would previously assign to him his identity, Schiele places a whole new dynamic in the art the dynamic of the self itself.One of Schieles most important works Seated Male Nude (1910), Schiele portrays himself screening up his own face. Indeed, in most of his self-portraits, especially his early ones, his comportment is contorted and manufactured he is posing and the background again is simply a plain, unembellished white. In Seated Male Nude, Schiele is grossly emaciated, his feet have been cut off, and his nipples and eyes glow red, suggesting that there is a deep demonism within him. He is seen as grotesquely, disturbingly ectomorphic the figure looks as though it has been taken down from a gothic crucifix it is angular, and looks mold Schiele was seeing himself as Christ without a loin-cloth.The red highlights of his eyes, nipples, navel and genital organ make the body look as if it were intent from within. But, also, the red glowing from within also exposes another central tenet of Schieles work namely, that it gives the coming into court that he is hollow inside.Schiele preserved his more allegorical, symbolic works for the strength of oil paintings such as Hermits discussed earlier, and thus, this hollowness cannot be overlooked as having greater metaphorical meaning, and would suggest the reasons behind why Schieles self-portraiture varied to such a large degree namely, that the inner self which Schiele was desperate to uncover, was absent, or simply defined as a mad, glowing redness. Spastic and hunch-backed, or with a rachitic deformation of the ribcage this was the artist as an image of abject failure a cripple the dirty colouring, with its shrill accents, makes the flesh tones ugly and aberrant. In Seated Male Nude, a self-portrait, the artist mutates into an insect. The absence of feet is an amputation. This is a mangled soul in a man gled body. We see through the body into the soul. Indeed, the mangled soul is non-existent, the inside is hollow and empty.So, insomuch as this is likewise affected by social and cultural developments at the time, Schiele is moreover crack a more detailed and theoretically astute reading of the self and warring and dissolute factions. Schroeder says that If all of these self-dramatizations reveal the true nucleus of the painters psyche, then he must have been a fragmented personality, unlikely to course the diagnostic attentions of the genius Sigmund Freud.The question is just how much of his psyche is conveyed by his self-portraits, either those with grimaces or those that express a frozen resignation? What and whom does Egon Schiele really see in his studio mirror? It makes all the difference in the world whether he is observing his own body as an act of direct, emotional self-knowledge or whether in his imagination he is slipping into individual elses role and experiencing h is own self as that of another person. So, that Schiele depicts himself as a variety of different people doesnt necessarily mean that he is living up to a certain artistic function in a sense, glamorizing the role of the artist as a suffering person.Art As PornographySchiele has been regarded by many critics as a pornographer. Looking at his paintings, which often draw attention to the genitals, to eroticized regions of the human body, as well as the contorted and mechanistic quality to the nude portraits, which appear twisted and exploited. Schiele was eventually put in prison for his indecency, although this was due to his eccentric practice of showing his work to the friends of the children who were painted, often nude. Schroder suggests that in Schieles early pictures of children the objective astonishment of the models lowly social origins is reinforced by the embarrassment of their obscene nakedness. This would suggest that the portraits themselves are intentional to be as e xploitative and as pornographic as possible.The children visualised are certainly seen in an especially lurid light and their embarrassment is portrayed by their forced poses, the absence of environment, etc. However, it is often difficult, at the time and later, to extrapolate eroticism from pornography, and in Schiele, this is particularly difficult. Schiele himself denied accusations of pornography, and certainly, the nudes have greater substance and meaning in terms of formulating an Expressionist identity of the self. Mitsch suggests that Schiele expresses in his eroticism human bondage and is to be understood as a burden that is odious to bear. Aimed, from the beginning, at outspokenness and truthfulness, it assumes almost inevitably a daring form. So, here difficulty with regarding Schieles output is highlighted.The work is about expressing human bondage, but it is also exaggerated and mutilated and outspoken. So Schiele acts as both pornographer and eroticist, and also str ikes out more clearly at exposing the truth behind the body. Schiele himself commented on accusations that his work is pornographic made by his Uncle, by replying in a letter, saying that the erotic work of art is scared too. The painting Reclining Girl In A Blue Dress (1910), establishes this difficulty. In it, a girl is portrayed, leaning back and revealing her genitals. Her genitals are high-lighted in white, and draw the eye to the girls genitals using both composition and colour.The brush-strokes are strikingly crude, almost sketchy. Fischer says that it is impossible to defend this picture against the charge of pornography. Even so, Schieles radicalism of form places him beyond too simplistic a categorisation. He goes on to say He was not merely out to satisfy a shallow voyeuristic impulse. Pubescent lust and delight in discovery, the nave symbolism of distinguishing sexual features, and boyish stratagems for looking up girls skirts are combined in the twenty-year-old artists way of viewing the world with the invention of ingenious new forms, which took the Schiele of 1910 a step forward, out of the world of teachers and uncles and into the radical world view of the Expressionist avant-garde.In the years ahead, Schiele pursued this distinctive combination obsessively. So, harmonize to Fischer, even though his work was pornographic, the forms in which this pornography took and the means by which Schiele painted these pornographic images, allowed us to question the nature of the images and thus urge forward them to something beyond pornography. Schiele was certainly obsessed with portraying the self his images, despite being, at times, shamelessly provocative and deliberately controversial to the conservative Viennese public (the pre-conceived role of an artist to challenge the perception of the ordinary people would stress this, and was a certain depiction of the artist that Schiele would live by), would also put stress on the techniques and the principl es applied to the painting in order to put up it beyond mere titillation or voyeurism.In his nudes, Schiele was definitely looking to get closer to his, and societies view of the human condition in the confusing wake of secularism, the transmogrification of belief toward the self (in Freud and Nietzsche, for instance), and the selfs role in society. Naturally his view is not a particularly optimistic one, and he is frequently out to establish the pain in the heart of the self his cut-off, mutilated and misshapen figures serve to expose the more desultory aspects of the self, and thus his images appear less as pornographic, and more as pieces that actually challenge and oppose the traditionally porno