Egon Schiele and dystonia.

Egon Schiele was a leading Austrian Expressionist painter who, after the era of Gustav Klimt, strongly influenced the artistic scene in Vienna in the early 20th century. Schiele's depiction of his body in his self-portraits in a twisted, contorted, dystonia-like pose raised questions about the possibility of his suffering from dystonia. However, there are no grounds whatsoever for such a hypothesis. Schiele's conception of distorted, at times bizarre, body postures reflects a concourse of the Expressionist formal style of displaying extroverted emotions and psychic confl icts with the emerging perception of photographs of patients with movement disorders in Vienna's art scene and intellectual circles. There are reliable indications that Schiele knew the images of diseases published in the 'Iconographie Photographique de la Salpetriere' and the later 'Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpetriere' including hysterical and dystonic postures. The brevity of Schiele's life adds to the popular fantasy of the outlaw who lived fast and died young. In fact, however, his drawings sold well to discerning collectors, and his exhibitions were a financial success, so the myth of Schiele as a sacrificial outcast does not tell the whole story. It may be speculated that the figuration of the pathological body in Schiele's self-portraiture was part of modernist strategizing.