EXPRESSIONISM

       Portrait of Eduard Kosmack

The Kosmack portraits are among Schiele's best known series, compelling portraits of Kosmack, noting the commonalities between the present work and Edvard Munch's haunting composition, Puberty: "The sketch closest to the final oil, Study for the Portrait of Edouard Kosmack, Frontal with Clasped Hands, provides a less overt but equally effective intensification of the sitter's forceful gaze by means of a rhythmically repeated symmetry that affects all paired parts of the body -- knees, hands, elbows, shoulders, ears -- in a regular, mesmeric progression to the luminous eyes. A photograph of Kosmack confirms the wire physique, but tells nothing of the radiance or compelling quality of the eyes. Should Schiele's arresting depiction be considered solely in the light of an Expressionist adaptation of the watching heads of consciousness in Jugendstil art and architecture, or as a continuation of the staring Medusa faces popularized by Franz Stuck and Khnopff Even the affinity with Munch's Puberty ends here, for the gaze of Munch's young girl is fixed on her thoughts, whereas Kosmack's stare is one of determined will power directed outward and aimed at the beholder. There is a more personal explanation. Kosmack was an enthusiastic and successful amateur hypnotist. It was this prepossessing faculty, a power capable of transforming its frail owner into an image of authority with access to the mind's innermost secrets, that Schiele wished to incarnate and project against a void of subconsciousness. Both sitter and subject matter therefore were eminently suited to Expressionist interpretation.