(Routledge Research in Art History)
by Claude Cernuschi (Author)
Presenting
a radically different picture of Egon Schiele’s work, this study
documents (in one-to-one comparisons) the extent of the artist’s visual
borrowings from the Viennese humoristic journal, Die Muskete.
Claude
Cernuschi analyzes each comparison on a case-by-case basis, primarily
because the interpretation of cartoons and caricatures is highly
contingent on their specific historical and cultural context. Although
this connection has gone unnoticed in the literature, in retrospect,
this correlation makes perfect sense. Not only was Schiele’s artistic
production frequently compared to caricature (and derided for being
“grotesque”), but Expressionism and caricature are natural allies. One
may belong to “high” art and the other to “popular” culture, yet both
presuppose similar assumptions and deploy a similar rhetorical position:
namely, that the exaggeration of human physiognomy allows deeper
psychological “truths” to emerge.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, popular culture, and politics.
