NYC Photo Journal: Sabarsky to Shiele and The Wurst That Can Happen
Edith Harms Schiele
One of my favorite New York City museums is the lovely gem: The Neue Gallerie/Museum for German and Austrian Art. The museum is in a former townhouse; the museum is located at the Southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 86th Street, across from Central Park.
But in order to look at and appreciate fine art, one must fill one’s stomach, so on the line one goes for about thirty minutes to get a table at Café Sabarsky on the first floor (my preference) or Café Fledermaus in the basement, where one can soak up the Austrian atmosphere and have a great meal.
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- Café Sabarsky-the line forms to the right
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- great cuisine
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- Beautiful interior
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- wonderful for a Sunday brunch or lunch
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- fabulous wurst with sauerkraut and potato salad: apple raspberry soda
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- or just have coffee and a great dessert
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- traditional Vienese cakes
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- don’t hold back on “mit schlag”
Then on to the Egon Schiele Portraits.
The life of Egon Schiele was short, creative and complex. He was born in 1890 outside of Vienna. He was regarded as an odd child, obsessed with drawing trains. His father died of syphilis when Egon was fifteen; he became the ward of his uncle who allowed him to attend Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna, where Gustav Klimt had studied. The faculty recognized his talents and advised he be sent to a more traditional school, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, in 1906. Schiele studied under Christian Griepenkerl, but left after three years as he couldn’t abide by his ultra-conservatism. He founded the Neukunstgruppe (“New Art Group”) with other students who left.
Schiele was invited to exhibit work at the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau where he saw the works of some masters such as Edvard Munch, Jan Toorop, and Vincent van Gogh.
Feeling free, he began to explore the human form, sexuality, and began to produce explicit works. In 1911 he began living with a girlfriend, Walburga (Wally) Neuzil, who was his model. Eventually he was arrested for harboring young girls as models who were under the age of consent and for producing hundreds of drawings that were labelled “pornographic.”
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- portrait of Wally
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- The Lovers: Egon and Wally
Schiele was imprisoned for only three days on the grounds that he had made pornographic art available to minors. During his jail time he produced twelve paintings about his difficult incarceration. He even sculpted a small head of hardened bread.
in prison
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- in prison
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- in prison
In 1915 the artist decided to take a wife and married Edith Harms from across the street. He assumed he could keep up his relationship with Wally, but she never saw him again once finding out he wasn’t going to marry her.
Schiele was a master at portraits and landscapes.
Johann Harms
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- self portrait
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- Stein an der Donau II, 1913
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- self portrait
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- Edith Schiele
Edith dying
The Spanish flu pandemic reached Vienna in 1918. Edith died when she was six months pregnant, on October 28.
Egon died three days later. He was twenty-eight years old.
Death mask
I find Schiele’s life and works tragic and fascinating. He came astride Viennese Secessionism, of which Klimt was the founder, and German Expressionism, which was so influential, that the nazi party considered it dangerous and banned it and its exponents as “degenerate art and artists”. He died too young to be banned, but his works were hidden to the public for many years, to reappear only in the late 20th c.
It sounds like you had an interesting day. The ending though is so sad! He was only 28 years old and I guess that Edith couldn’t have been much older than that. Also, I am pretty sure that the food was delish!