Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Why do artists paint self-portraits, Cumming asks, and so expose themselves and their art to the accusation of narcissism? Her answer is that self-portraits "make artists present as the embodiment of their art" and they often do so to ask who this person is who is looking back from the mirror. Cumming's book is a series of linked essays, roughly chronological in order, from Jan Van Eyck to Cindy Sherman, focusing mostly on paintings.  A mighty gallery of artists are discussed under rubrics such as "Eyes," "Behind the Scenes," "Mirrors," "Stage Fright," "Loners," "Egotists," "Victims" and "Pioneers." Their inclusion demonstrates that self-portraiture is a main branch, and not a mere off-shoot, of the artistic tradition. Individual essays are devoted to Durer, Rembrandt and Velazquez, and these are the best chapters in a very interesting book. Cumming's discussions of Durer's Christ-li...

The human figure, his own and others', preoccupied Picasso to the end of his life. "Mosqueteros," an exhibition at Gagosian of his late paintings, curated by his biographer John Richardson, is violent and heroic. The painter, here in various guises, is a musketeer, a matador, and a clown. The women are giantesses. One of my favorites in this exhibition is "Femme" 1972, a mountain of a woman who dominates what looks like a park. The sex in many paintings are explicit, the figures not so much coupling (with the connotation of freight cars) as grappling, the cubist angles further contorting bodies and movements. Often, the man in these scenes pushes his face into the woman's face, as if to seize her by his eyes alone. In "Etreinte" 1972, the penis may look unimpressive, but not the huge straining arms and legs, against a backdrop of cheerful blue waves. He grapples not only with humans, but also with superhumans. The self-portraits strive to outdo mas...

Study #2 after Rembrandt van Rijn The guarantee is your willingness to pull faces at yourself, and to let the weather do likewise. No plastic surgery. No wrinkle cream. No hair dye. Laugh lines, you call the creases in the parchment. The titles at the top, you call, of course, headlines. This face is, you say, with a mental flourish, me. Well, in that case, who am I? Who is this writing about you, making you up as I paint and repaint, giving you the best lines, begging a few laughs? Who is this dour worrier, but your dear guarantor? *

Poetry-Free-For-All is getting people to write seven poems in seven days, starting on the seventh of the month, i.e. this Friday. It is a week-version of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWrMo), in which you write a poem a day for 30 days. Seven seems like a good distance to me, to write at full stretch, and it gives three weeks for rest and recovery before the next race. Seven is such a potent figure too, inspiring all kinds of magic and myth.  I plan to write "Seven Studies for a Self-Portrait." Each study will be written after a well-known self-portraitist. That "after" is very open. My seven masters will be Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Vincent van Gogh, Egon Schiele, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, and Yasumasa Morimura. Rembrandt and van Gogh are obvious suspects; the others came to me as I googled the net. I did not know Morimura's appropriation art till this morning, and he seems to make a good endpoint since he photographs himself in the garb and post...

The exhibition should be re-titled The Age of Acquisitions. Arranged according to how and when the Met acquired these paintings, the exhibition is less about the painters than about the Met and its curators and donors. Which is a huge disappointment to anyone who wants to learn more about the painters and the paintings. The Rembrandt self-portraits excited me much less than before. This time round I was struck by how sensitive the Dutch were in painting portraits of old women. I also liked very much a wonderful still life by Willem Kalf (1619-1693), a painter I discovered for the first time here. It makes me think of the Dutch/Flemish tradition from which Matisse's still life paintings sprang. Still Life with Fruit, Glassware, and a Wan-li Bowl , 1659 The composition of Wheat Fields , by Ruisdael, is magnificent. The road, grandly rutted, reminds me of the river in Turner's Dieppe Harbour , in the Frick. Both have the same intensely mixed colors, though one is of land, and the...