Red lips and a rose nipple inflame the cool flesh of Egon Schiele’s model as she leans back and, blue eyes looking off to the side, lifts her ruffled skirt to show the artist what he wants to see.
You could not exclude Schiele from an exhibition entitled Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to the Present. Nor could you exclude his Viennese contemporary, Gustav Klimt, whose Reclining Masturbating Girl hangs nearby, nor Picasso, whose painting of himself at the age of about 20 being fellated is in the same room. And yet there’s something about that title, “art and sex”, that doesn’t quite do justice to these artists. It implies that art can sometimes be about things other than sex – and I’m not sure if Schiele or Picasso ever believed it could. I’m not sure if I believe it myself.
more from The Guardian here.