some are born to endless night

Study for a Self-Portrait, 1963, Francis Bacon

Sailboats at Fehmarn, 1914, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Standing Girl, Egon Schiele, c. 1910, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Prints and Drawings

standing female figure who has fabric around waist that she is holding up and partially covers one breast; fabric has geometric pattern Standing Girl is the largest known drawing from Egon Schiele’s short but prolific career. His life played out against the backdrop of Sigmund Freud’s studies of the mind and intense debates about the treatment of human sexuality in the arts. Characteristic of early twentieth-century Viennese art, this provocative sheet—actually brown wrapping paper—epitomizes the era’s decorative ornamentation and decadent eroticism. Schiele’s contours, at once graceful and awkward, create a momentary confusion between bodily mass and negative space, laying open the mysterious relationship between inward and outward realities. Setting the figure’s clawlike hands against her virginal, downcast eyes, Schiele struck a balance between corruption and purity. Size: 52 3/8 x 20 5/8 in. (133 x 52.4 cm) (image) 61 3/8 x 28 5/8 x ¾ in. (155.89 x 72.71 x 1.91 cm) (outer frame; black) Medium: Conté crayon and tempera wash over black chalk on brown wrapping paper