The 1918 Spanish Flu was one of the largest and most deadly natural disaster in modern history.
The pandemic infected around 500 million people worldwide, which is the equivalent
to 27% of the total population at the time. Out of those, between 50 and 100 million died,
including artists such as Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, Niko Pirosmani, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.
Schiele was only 28 when he died. He became famous for his sensual, if not outright pornographic
images, but one of his final paintings stood out from what we usually know him for. While inflicted
with the Spanish Flu, he started creating, but never finished, a very touching painting; a family
portrait. It was originally titled the Squatting Couple, but it became known as The Family.
You see Egon Schiele himself confrontationally staring at the viewer, towering, overlooking
the composition in front of a dark, messy background. Between his legs sits Edith Harms,
his wife. Unlike Egon, she’s looking away and, though her legs are also spread apart,
she’s taking up a lot less space than her husband. She really is the central figure
of the composition and, perhaps to Schiele, the central figure of his family. Between her legs is
their child. We don’t know the baby’s sex because it will never actually see the light of day.
Schiele wrote in october to his mother:
“Edith fell ill with the Spanish flu eight days ago yesterday and is now
also suffering from pneumonia. She is six months pregnant. The illness
is exceptionally severe and critical; I am preparing myself for the worst.”
The worst did happen. Edith died on October 28th 1918 while pregnant. Here’s the last
portrait of her drawn by her husband. Only 3 days later, Egon also died from the Spanish Flu.
Knowing this, we can now look at The Family differently. We can see Schiele’s enthusiasm
as to his upcoming fatherhood. Perhaps, we don’t see it explicitly in the presentation
he makes of himself, but the very act of painting your family and especially
your child before they’re even born speaks truth of the eagerness. We could also look
at this and see a premonitory image when looking at Edith’s gaze. She looks tired,
absent and empty. With WWI still ongoing and the Spanish Flu infecting millions of people,
predicting how difficult, or near-impossible it is to raise a family at that time wasn’t too hard.
Schiele’s The Family is heart-breaking. It’s a painting of a father projecting
himself in a future he will never live with a wife and a kid who,
them too, will not make it alive. Egon died at 28 and Edith at 25.
I don’t want to stop this video here. Living through our own 21st century pandemic,
I’d love to take a look at a different series of paintings, this one slightly more hopeful.
Last month, we analyzed one of the most popular paintings of all time:
The Scream by Edvard Munch. We saw how this artist’s life was riddled with pain,
sickness and death. Of course, he was also infected by the Spanish flu.
Here’s Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu made in 1919.
Here’s a discussion he had about this painting with his doctor, Rolf Stenersen:
M: Do you find it nauseating?” S: “What do you mean?”
M: “Can’t you smell it?” S: “Smell what?”
M: “The odour of death – don’t you see I’m on the brink of rotting away?”
Munch is painting himself on the brink of rotting away. Here’s the portrait of a 55
year old man who believes he’s about to die like millions of others before him.
Here, the painting, though it smells of death, isn’t dark or colourless.
It’s filled with bright greens, blues, oranges and yellows. It’s very busy,
it’s visually noisy as you can see violent brushstrokes surrounding Munch. The only part
of the canvas that doesn’t seem chaotic is the one behind Munch’s face. This,
compositionally, makes it so his face is framed, making it the main point of focus.
His face is unusually pale, his mouth is opened and his eyes are non-existent. You
can feel Munch’s desperation just in the way he’s depicting himself and his environment.
But, unlike Schiele and his wife, Munch survived the Spanish flu. This is how
this painting is somewhat hopeful. It’s followed by another artwork:
Self-Portrait after the Spanish Flu finished in 1920.
Munch survived the flu unlike many others,
but this painting is no celebration. The artist doesn’t look happy or relieved. He
is still in pain. Of course, you can see this in his facial expression,
but also in the colours he uses on his face to represent fever. But the future seems promising.
The sun is illuminating the whole room through the window. Things are about to get better.
Listen, this pandemic has been extremely challenging for all of us, all around the
world. A lot of us are in quarantine and have been for a while. The reason why I’m bringing up the
Spanish Flu and its disastrous history isn’t to scare you, but to give you hope. Think about it,
the Spanish Flu was catastrophic! It happened during WWI, one of the deadliest wars in history.
Their methods of communication were far from being as effective as ours. The way they treated hygiene
was, more often than not, questionable and, of course, medical technology was far from being
as advanced as today. Yet, despite all that, humanity survived. Everything will be alright.
Thank you for watching. I hope you’re all doing good during these difficult
times. I’d like to thank Isaac and all my patrons on Patreon. If you’d like to
join them in their support, check us out at patreon.com/thecanvas!