EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Egon Schiele’s Green Belly

There is no such thing as art for art’s sake. It is a contradiction in terms. The early 19th-century art historians could see little beyond narrative so when art started to lose its connection to an apparent subject, they assumed such works were composed for visual effect alone. That, of course, would be paradoxical in that true art must have content. Yet even figurative painters like James McNeill Whistler encouraged the idea so as not to reveal what he was actually painting. Egon Schiele’s Pregnant Woman with Green Belly (1910) is a case in point. Why did he embellish her belly with green? The reason is not that he thought it would look good. No, the issue is metaphor. The pregnant woman with a seemingly male hand is a self-representation of the artist’s pregnant mind which is as fertile as the color green. Shakespeare used a character's name in a similar way to convey (for those in the know) the creativity of his alter ego: “So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe…”¹

It is worth knowing that green in art so often conveys fertility, even in dragons do. I’ll get to that one shortly, hopefully.

1. Shakespeare, Richard II, Act II, Sc. 2.