Gustav Klimt was a famous painter and one of the outstanding members of the Vienna Secession movement. He painted, did murals, and sketched, with his primary subject being the female body. He was a mentor to younger artists in the early 1900s. One artist he took interest in was young Egon Schiele, buying his drawings, arranging models for him, etc. Schiele's style was viewed as being grotesque, erotic, pornographic, and disturbing. It focused on sex, death, and discovery.
The painting "Seated Girl" is of a girl sitting upright and facing the viewer. She has no shirt on, just a blue skirt. You can easily tell that his style is very simplistic. There is little to no shaded value on the girl or aound her, and her skin is pure white. The only reason it does not blend into the background on teh paper is because the paper is of a manila color. Her body is not quite proportionate. Her upper arm muscles bulk out way too much and her upper body does not make a smooth and curvy transition down to her waist. Schiele is basically portrayng this girl as an erotic symbol in a non-realistic way.
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good- in other posts, you concentrate on the emotional quality of art works, yet here, where it's so strong you do not- this is a n anguished, tortured image-the eroticism is really more like raw, disturbing sexuality--it's actually not very erotic at all
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