VANITY FAIR ON ART NOVEMBER 2019UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES
CORNELIUS ; © 2019 CHRISTIE’S IMAGE LIMITED
LISSITZKY ; ©JERSEY HERITAGE COLLECTIONS
CAHUN ; © 2019. PHOTO SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM/ART RESOURCE/SCALA, FLORENCE / © MAN RAY 2015 TRUST/ADAGP, PARIS AND DACS, LONDON 2019
RAY © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES / © 2019 THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC. /LICENSEDBYDACS,LONDON
WARHOL ;©2019CHRISTIE’SIMAGELIMITED/©JENNYSAVILLE.ALLRIGHTSthe publicity shots taken on lm sets. Though categorically not
self-portraits, Sherman’s images have nonetheless inuenced
the genre, exploiting a portrait’s capacity to obscure the self
by recasting the identity of the artist subject. The works
simultaneously initiated much debate around the presence of
the “male gaze”. Robert Mapplethorpe, another 20th-century
icon, created a body of work that is most recognisable from his
self-portraiture. His exploration of the unseen demanded that
open sexuality was represented in art. In his self-portraits he
explored numerous roles, dressed in drag, in militant gear, or
as the devil. Mapplethorpe took pleasure in donning dierent
proverbial masks to emphasise the elasticity of the self.
As the 20th century progressed, one could argue that
photography freed artists from their obligation to document.
Instead, it allowed for greater abstraction, provided
opportunities for performance and enabled the production
of images that countenance a multitude of readings.I
n the aftermath of the Second World War, self-portraiture
took an increasingly existential turn. For Francis
Bacon and Lucian Freud, painting one’s own likeness
was less a means of self-promotion and more a vehicle for
contemplating the human condition. Freud’s self-portraits
are rendered with uninching scrutiny, charting the passage
of time across his own visage. Bacon, too, used the genre as
a means of confronting his own mortality: a concern made
all the more profound by the death of his lover in 1971. While
Freud observed the transience of human esh in immaculate
detail, Bacon expressed it in raw, visceral terms, enacting a
destructive pictorial violence upon his own image. Into these
visions, both artists wove acts of homage to their forebears:
Rembrandt, Titian and Velázquez, who set the genre in
motion. For Bacon and Freud, as for many who followed,
self-portraiture became an opportunity to lay bare their own
artistic DNA; to record their heritage in the stark and brutal
knowledge of their own impermanence.
As painting itself drifted in and out of vogue during the
1970s and ’80s, certain artists took a more conceptual
approach to self-portraiture. Andy Warhol—masterT
hroughout the 20th century, photographers and
artists increasingly turned the lens on themselves.
Frequently, the camera itself played a principal
role in these depictions; one calls to mind a young Edward
Steichen’s Self-Portrait of 1901, in which the artist holds a
brush and palette in comparison to his later portrait of 1917,
in which a camera dominates. In Man Ray’s solarised self-
portrait of 1932, his gaze is xed not upon the viewer, but on
the camera. These images share a connection with those of
Rembrandt, Manet, van Gogh and Oehlen, who depicted
themselves as artists armed with the tools of their trade.
El Lissitzky’s Self-Portrait (“The Constructor”) of 1924
remains one of most important works in the medium, marking
a shift from the purely documentary to the constructed
image. A powerful symbol of the artistic, political, cultural
and societal sea-changes of the time, it draws together the
ideologies of the Russian avant-garde, Bauhaus, Dadaism and
modernism. Using montage to create what he referred to as his
“great piece of nonsense”, Lissitzky combined self-referential
symbols with the overarching theme of artist as architect and
engineer, as evidenced by the compass and hand serving
as his eyes. It is a masterpiece of the period and became a
symbol of 1920s avant-garde, when creativity was seen as a
combination of human intellect and modern technology.
The advance of the camera has allowed artists to
assume alternative roles; indeed, the performative aspect
of photography has been integral to the medium since its
foundation. In 1840, Hippolyte Bayard captured himself
as a drowned man, in protest of the crediting of Talbot and
Daguerre as the founders of photography. F. Holland Day
starved himself in preparation for The Seven Words (1898), a
re-enactment of the life of Christ. Claude Cahun’s surrealist
self-portraits of the 1920s used the genre to explore her own
identity: she shaved her head and transformed herself into
ambiguous roles, among them a man and a Buddha, as a
means of questioning her sexuality.
Among the most dedicated explorations of the performative
potential of photography is Cindy Sherman’s highly celebrated
Untitled Film Stills, taken between 1977 and 1980, which evokesBY CLAUDE CAHUN
Self-Portrait,
1927BY ROBERT CORNELIUS
Self-Portrait,
1839BY MAN RAY
Self-Portrait,
1932BY EL LISSITZKY
Self-Portrait (“The Constructor”),
192411-19-Self-Portraiture-Through-the-Ages.indd 46 19/09/2019 17:08
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