The German art encyclopedia, Thieme and Becker, qualifies Schiele as an eroticist because Schiele's art represents the erotic portrayal of the human body. In this case, however, it is for him not only a study of feminine, but also male nudity. His models characterize an incredible freedom with respect to their own sexuality, self-love, homosexuality or voyeuristic attitudes, as well as skillful seduction of the viewer.

 In 1964, Oskar Kokoschka evaluated the first great Schiele Exhibition in London as "pornographic". In the age of discovery of modern art and loss of "subject", Schiele responded that for him there exists no modernity, only the "eternal". Schiele's world shrank into portraits of the body, locally and temporally non-committal. Self-discovery becomes an unrelenting revelation of himself as well as of his models. The German art encyclopedia, Thieme and Becker, qualifies Schiele as an eroticist because Schiele's art represents the erotic portrayal of the human body. In this case, however, it is for him not only a study of feminine, but also male nudity. His models characterize an incredible freedom with respect to their own sexuality, self-love, homosexuality or voyeuristic attitudes, as well as skillful seduction of the viewer. Cliches and criteria with regard to feminine beauty, perfect smoothness and sculpture-like coolness, however, do not interest him. He knows that the urge to look is interconnected with the mechanisms of disgust and allure. It is the body which contains the power of sex and death within itself. The photograph, Schiele on his Deathbed,depicts the twenty-eight year old nearly asleep, the gaunt body completely emaciated,head resting on his bent arm; the similarity to his drawings is astounding. Because of the high danger of infection, the last visitors were able to communicate withthe Spanish flu-infected Schiele only by way of a mirror, in which he viewed himself and his models, which was set up on the threshold between his room and the parlor.