Which Gang did Egon Schiele belong to?

Austrian painter and draftsman, Egon Schiele made a brazen and provocative contribution to the history of figurative painting. Schiele put line and color to work rendering near skeletal nudes with exposed genitals, deformed limbs, and somber expressions. If we look closely at both self-portraits completed by Schiele in 1911 and 1912,  the artist seems to have made an even more significant contribution to popular artistic representations and portraiture. Behold the original demonstration of the gang sign throw-up and pout photo-pose, a prolific but definitively questionable contemporary trend in photo-taking. Even though this misguided practice’s origin story can now be considered art historical it is still very, very misguided.

We hold Schiele responsible.