Vanity Fair UK - 11.2019

NOVEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR ON ART

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. / LICENSED BY DACS, LONDON WARHOL; © 2019 CHRISTIE’S IMAGE LIMITED / © JENNY SAVILLE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2019 SAVILLE; © THE LUCIAN FREUD ARCHIVE / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES FREUD; © ADRIAN GHENIE, COURTESY PACE GALLERY GHENIE, OIL ON CANVAS, 47.6 X 31.1CM

of disguise—positioned himself among depictions of

Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Grappling with the

explosion of mass-produced imagery, Warhol became the

self-proclaimed mirror of his age, aping the aesthetics of

reproduction in order to shed light on its dark implications.

Unlike Bacon and Freud, his self-portraits seemed to reveal

nothing: even the haunting skull-like appearances of his

later “Fright Wig” paintings were tantalisingly vacant.

Through very di‚erent means, Martin Kippenberger also

hid from the viewer in plain sight. His self-portraits were

rooted in a startling cast of tragi-comic alter egos: from

the cruci…ied “Fred the Frog”, to the anthropomorphic

“Eggman” and, somewhat bombastically, Pablo Picasso. For

Kippenberger, much like Warhol before him, to be an artist

was to perform to an audience. In his self-portraits, he wore a

set of masks—prophet, martyr, genius, comedian, prankster—

that concealed his true identity.

With the 1990s came the birth of the “Young British

Artists” whose work took a very di‚erent direction. Tracey

Emin, whose oeuvre might be viewed as one extended self-

portrait, placed autobiography at the core of her practice.

Taking inspiration from Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele, she

wrote her inner monologue (sometimes literally) into every

’bre of her work. While some are obviously self-portraits,

such as the notorious I’ve Got It All (2000), others operate

metaphorically. Her seminal installation My Bed (1998) is

a self-portrait unlike any other: a snapshot of a moment of

personal crisis, rebuilt like a crime scene in extraordinarily

intimate detail. Though the artist’s own image is absent,

her presence is painstakingly clear. Jenny Saville, though

more closely indebted to painterly tradition, adopted a

similarly confessional approach, exposing her own body with

un—inching candour. Shot through with the lessons of the Old

Masters, Saville’s work has less to do with exploring her psyche

than with interrogating the properties of naked —esh. Though

deliberately devoid of narrative and personal anecdote, her

self-portraits nonetheless demonstrate the unabashed,

revelatory qualities that de’nes much of the art of this period.

I

n the 21st century—a world of virtual reality and social

media—the notion of self-portraiture seems more

relevant than ever. Yet for a number of artists, the

genre has, in many ways, come full circle. Njideka Akunyili

Crosby’s self-portraits are powerful assertions of identity and

cultural heritage, layered with photographs, talismans and

fabrics from her personal family archives. Adrian Ghenie,

meanwhile, has cultivated a form of self-portraiture that—

much like that of his forebears—raises important questions

about the role of the artist in society. Like a time traveller,

Ghenie journeys through history, painting himself in

the guise of …igures who changed its course, for better or

worse. Dressed as Darwin and Van Gogh, or alone amid the

crumbling ruins of the Third Reich, he inserts himself into

the very fabric of history. Ghenie believes that the artist has

the power to rematerialise the past: to look beyond the —at,

glossy images through which it is transmitted and, through

the carnal, physical substance of paint, to restore a sense of

lived reality to its narratives. In an age that has seen the mirror

replaced by the screen, it is a pertinent enquiry. The future

of self-portraiture will ultimately hinge upon the question of

how we come to de’ne ourselves—and, by extension, the act

of art-making—in the digital era.

BY ADRIAN GHENIE

Self-Portrait as Vincent Van Gogh

2012

BY ANDY WARHOL

Self-Portrait,

1986

BY LUCIAN FREUD

Self-Portrait (Reflection),

2002

BY JENNY SAVILLE

Self-Portrait,

1992

Self-portraiture was

an opportunity to

lay bare artistic DNA

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