The style of art known as expressionism relates to a movement that began in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Expressionist works of art display reality through the unique and at times eerie perspective of the painter, viewing the world outside from the internal depths of the psyche. With respect to art, such emotional states are expressed through a distortion or deformation of objective reality. Intense color, agitated brushstrokes, and disjointed space are common features of German Expressionist painting, as witnessed in the works of Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele.
Expressionist artists like Munch and Schiele attempted to depict their subjectÆs thoughts, feelings, and perceptions through a number of spatial and formal techniques. The main principle underlying the work of expressionists is their belief that the world is distorted or shaped by unique individual point of view. Such a belief leads to what Mike Budd (1990) calls ôthe expressionist externalization of passionate, individual emotionö (p. 46). Expressionists like Munch and Schiele struggled with human identity and the events in a life that shape identity or distort it. In essence, expressionists like Munch and Schiele used painting as a means of providing social and political commentary which itself attempts to shape the viewerÆs understanding of the ways in which postmodernism has impacted upon human identity.
The works of Munch and Schiele demonstrate, in many cases, the ways in which conventional society deadens the individual and forces the individual into roles that are not necessarily natural or comfortable. What primarily links the works of Munch and Schiele to each other as well as other expressionist artists is the intense personalization of individual perspective found in their works. Egon Schiele died before the age of thirty, but by then had already established himself as a critically acclaimed, if controversial, artist. His works...