Customer Reviews

Face to the World

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I have always been fascinated by self-portraits, and so was delighted by the appearance of this book. Laura Cumming is a minute observer: her descriptions of the paintings have alerted me to many details of paintings of which I had previously been unaware. How many viewers of Van Eyck's Van der Paele Madonna, for example, would have noticed the portrait of (presumably) the artist in the tiny reflection on the armour of the attendant St George? The book has a detail of this passage in the painting, but the matt illustration is so muddy that it is completely useless and I had to go to Google Images to find a more readable version of it.

The illustrations are the weak part of the book, and some are really poor, for you cannot see many of the details to which the author refers: the glove which Sofonisba Anguissola is carrying or the important key tucked into the belt of Velasquez in Las Meninas; nor can you make out the cat and the dog at the bottom of Gumpp's self-portrait. In the reproduction of Carracci's, you can just about make out the dog, but not `the spectral cat'. The illustration of Kahlo's `The Wounded Deer' is cropped so that the word `Carma', referred to in the text, is lost. Also, increasingly so as the book proceeds, Cumming discusses a number of self-portraits by lesser-known artists, which are not illustrated at all (and are not available on Google Images either); and there are some paintings which she describes without giving their titles, so those cannot be looked up on Google anyway. That's all more than a little frustrating.

But the text is immensely rewarding. We learn such fascinating details as that the flowers in the mirror of Seurat's `La Poudreuse' were painted over what was originally a self-portrait, and Cumming's reflections on this are charming. Many fine essays have been written on Rembrandt's self-portraits, and, unavoidable as it is in a such a book, it cannot have been easy to produce another one; but she rises creditably to that challenge also. About the other great serial self-portraitist, Van Gogh, she argues eloquently that the pity they evoke is purely ours, and that there is no self-pity in the pictures themselves or in Van Gogh's mind.

There are fine passages about how artists have portrayed their hands, and about the transition from the painters' busy workshops to their cell-like studios, as part of the story of Romanticism. Cumming's analysis of Philip Guston's `Studio' is a real tour de force; and there is a lovely analysis of a triple self-portrait by Norman Rockwell. The penultimate chapter, entitled `Falling Apart', shows how photography especially (but inspiring the work of painters also) can show the multiple aspects and/or masquerades of an artist's Self, or indeed convey the sheer elusiveness of what we mean by the Self: a very post-modern theme.

These are just a few of the many felicitous passages in Cumming's text. You may not in every case agree with her reactions and interpretations, but they are always worth thinking about; and what is irrefutable is the acuity of her perceptions, the range of her knowledge, the philosophical dimension of her thoughts, and her intense engagement with her subject.

Laura Cumming, in addition to being the art critic of the distinguished British journal The Observer, is a learned communicator and extraordinary writer. Given that she has been influential in the grace of productions offered by the Tate Museum while at the same time being able to be arts producer and presenter for BBC, she comes by her depth of knowledge about the visual arts naturally - and at the same time communicates in a tone not dissimilar to that of Alistair Cooke of Masterpiece Theater fame. All of these assets she bestows on the reader of this amazingly original book, A FACE TO THE WORLD: ON SELF-PORTRAITS.

Not content to simply list the artists of history and of now who shared their own perceptions of themselves with self-portraits, Cumming instead includes the vision, in her words, ' For all a self-portrait can ever be is the illusion of the artist's self. It can never be a substitute, an embodiment, the last word or the whole summation, and yet the artist paints, even as he doubts, uncertain whether anything of himself will ever get through......Now I am here - and yet I am not.' Her dialogue with the reader is infectious as she explores famous as well as not so famous artists who deigned to leave us 'self-portraits' - the ultimate evidence of vulnerability.

Cumming divides her book into chapters of ideas rather than episodes delivered chronologically. The names of her chapters describe the contents of each well: Secrets; Eyes; Dürer (whose image serves as the cover of this book); Motive, Means and Opportunity; Rembrandt; Behind the Scenes; Velásquez; Mirrors; Performance; Stage Fright; Loners; Egotists; Victims; Pioneers; Falling Apart; and Farewells. Each of these chapter designations describes the approaches of the many painters she 'exposes' with both love and erudition and humor. After her extensive survey through the self-portraits of many artists she arrives at the 21st century ' Twentieth-century doubts about self-portraiture spill into this century too, doubts about the possibility of ever depicting oneself. The assertion 'This Is Me' does not work any of for many artists, and since we like to think of ourselves as complex and fragmented, not susceptible to concise description, unable to be pinned down, it is hardly surprising that is the way the modern self-portraitists show themselves too, from Francis Bacon's swerving body parts to Chuck Close's walls of pixels and Maurizio Cattelan's thousands of little sperm each with the artist's own, but always fractionally different, visage. Mass self-portraiture, serial self-portraiture, partial self-portraiture - it is safer that way, for there never has to be a limiting finality. There can be no last word because one never gets to the end of one's self.'

Laura Cumming is a modern phenomenon and the reader of this book will gain more very comfortable information about art than with almost any other book. Highly Recommended! Grady Harp, April 10

This book is written in a very accessible way. It goes over context and comparisons in an easy manner. I particularly enjoyed looking up the pictures that aren't listed in the book online. The whole experience was lovely - especially since it wasn't a course where I had to memorize and could spend as much time (or not) as I wanted on any part of it.