ICONS FOR AND OF THE SELF by Edward Lucie-Smith 2018
In this fascinating series based on the self-portraits made by a number of extremely eminent artists from the past, Hugh Mendes offers an examination of what this form of activity has meant to the Western canon.
Self-portraits are not common in non-Western artistic traditions. Here in the West, on the contrary, they have played an important role in defining the meaning and purpose of art. Certain major artists, among them both Rembrandt and Van Gogh, exist within the sphere of the popular imagination through the series of images they made of themselves. In no other sphere of creative activity has the direct, unflinching examination of the self played such a major part. Autobiographical texts play the same role in classic literature, but do not occupy nearly such a central place. Music is sometimes autobiographical by implication – when it does so, usually with the aid of words. It is hard to think of examples of architecture serving as a tool for self-examination.
It is therefore paradoxical that an artist should now choose to repeat, as exactly as he can, these originally self-generated likenesses. In part this belongs to a recently established tendency in the visual arts, where ‘appropriations’ – more or less exact copies of pre-existing images – are put forward as embodiments of contemporary originality.
Yet in this case there is something that goes much deeper. In making these paintings, Hugh Mendes also looks to another model – that is, he offers these versions as surrogates for the photographic portraits that often accompany obituaries in newspapers. An obituary of this sort, with its accompanying image, indicates that the person so commemorated has achieved a certain degree of importance within contemporary society.
That is, these are no longer simple acts of self-examination, obediently copied, but tributes to the enduring celebrity these often long-departed personalities have achieved, and to the way in which they now continue to resonate in the popular imagination after their demise. What they say is: ‘Yes, this person is still very much alive to us.’
One can also suggest a further dimension. Basically, what is offered here is a series of cultural icons. It is not going too far to say that they are the equivalents of the sacred images one might find in a church.
We live in a time when this hunger for and sense of the sacred have been displaced from the purely religious settings they once seemed to occupy. Rather than celebrating rituals in church, we now very often subscribe to a more general cult of ‘the creative’.
The growth of interest in self-portraiture, from the time of the Renaissance onwards, can be regarded as being part of this. Essentially, self-portraits offer not simply a likeness that external observers will recognise, but an invitation to penetrate the innermost recesses of creativity. Another paradox here: in doing so, the observer is often made aware of the huge gap that exists between the maker of the self-portrait and himself (or, as the case may be, herself). The self-portrait thus alienates at the same time as it penetrates. We can never be Rembrandt. We can never be Van Gogh. Nor would we, in all honesty, wish to be either.