SelfPortrait:WithWhoseEyes?

OnPhilosophy
Whatcanphilosophylearnabouttheselfandtheotherfromselfportraits?
Aestheticsisthebranchofphilosophythatisexpectedtodealwithworksof
art.Ithopestodeterminetheessenceofartofandfurnishadiscourseabout
aestheticpropertiesandthepleasurewederivefromaestheticobjects.This
isnottheapproachthispaperwishestotake.
Philosophy is concerned with thinking. It engages with science, art or
politicsinsofarasthinkinghappensinthesedomains.Philosophyventures
to think about these domains not because scientists, artists and
revolutionaries do not think. Philosophy is not a higher order discourse
abouttheseobjectdomains.Thesedomainsnolongerwaitforphilosophyto
furnishtheiridealsormethods.Philosophydrawsoutthegenericrulesfor
thinkingfromthesedomainswherethoughtisalreadyinaction.Thiscould,
atbest,resultinausersmanualforthinking.Suchamanualmaybeuseful
inanydomainofthinking.However,practicesinthesedomainsneednot
anddonotwaitforanyguidancefromthemanualsofphilosophy.These
practices are capable of addressing the obstructions to thinking they
encounteraschallengesandproblemsandalsotoinventcreativesolutions.
Eachcreativeeventofthinkinginthesedomaincouldbringtolightnew
problemsandnewsolutions.Philosophytooisacreativeactivitybecauseit
reinvents the manual of thinking in the light of every creative event of
thinkingthattakesplaceinotherdomains.

PhilosophyandArt

ThetraditionofphilosophyfromPlatocautionsusagainstlearningfromart.
Arthasnegligiblecognitivevalueanditcandeceiveus.Artasimitationis
twice at remove from the Idea. The painter imitates several things and
activitiesinnaturethoughhehasnoknowledgeaboutanyofthem.Homer
describedwaringreatdetailshowevernoneconsultedhimonmattersof
war.
Philosophers who came after Plato have revised this position and have
broughtsomerespectabilitytoart.However,artwinsrespectonlyinsofarit
issubjectedtothephilosophicaldeterminationbyaesthetics.Artworksare
boundtoappearanceandtothesensibleandcannotaspiretothatstatusof
theintelligible.EvenHegelwhodevotedmajorworkstoartthoughtthatart

belongedtothepastofphilosophy.Thesensiblecanberetrievedonlyin
aesthetics where it negatively indicates the nonavailability of the
intelligible.
However,therearephilosopherswhohaveallowedthemselvestolearnfrom
art.InthispaperIshallfollowsomeofthemwhotookpaintingseriously.
CezzaneandKleewereimportantforMerleauponty.Foucaultdidnotwrite
anybookonindividualphilosophersbutdevotedabookeachtoMagritte
and Cezanne and began his Order of Things with a detailed reading of
Velazquez. Deleuze, along with his monographs on major thinkers like
Leibniz,HumeandKant,hasoneforFrancisBacon.Thesethinkersdidnot
usethepaintersasillustrationsofavailablephilosophicalpositions.Instead,
they,toborrowaphrasefromStephenMulhall,sawpaintingasthoughtin
action.MerleauPontydidnotwritePhenomenologyofPerceptioninorder
to apply phenomenology to perception. Thinking as understood by
phenomenologyisalreadyatworkinperception.Thoughtdoesnotrelateto
thesensibleasiffromoutsideasinference.Noristhinkingamentalactof
scanning residual perceptual images. Seeing is always seeing more.This
transcendenceistheworkofthought.Paintingrendersvisiblethiselement
ofthinkingwhichisattheheartofthevisible.Hereweseeanegalitarian
relationshipbetweenphilosophyandpainting.Weseepaintersasaddressing
and solving problems of thought in the every element of the sensible.
Philosophybeingaconceptualactivityproposesconceptsthatcanrespond
totheenquiriesofthepainters.Philosophy,insteadofdeterminingart,takes
stockoftheintraphilosophicaleffectsofworksofart.
Whatisaportrait?
Beforewetakeupselfportraitsletusseewhatportraitsare.Thisdoesnot
meanthatselfportraitsareasubsetofportraits.Wemaybetemptedtosay
that a portrait depicts other people whereas self portrait shows the artist
himself.Selfportraitcouldthenbeseenasaselfmadeportraitofoneself.
All these definitions and classifications presuppose available notions of
selfandalsoportrait.Weshallseesoonthatselfportraitshavequestioned
suchavailablenotions.Shouldtheauthoroftheportraitbethesameasthe
oneportrayed?Canoneportrayoneselfwithouttakingupthestandpointof
theother?Doestheauthor,signatoryandthemodelalways coincideina
selfportrait?Weshallsoonseeworkswhichclaimtobeselfportaritsbut
createdthroughtheactive involvementof chance,mechanicalapparatus
andothers.
Thereisanotherreasonwhyweshouldbecarefulwithdefinitions.Ourtalk

aboutportraitshavetomeetthefindingsofthearthistorianwhoarguesthat
portraitshaveappearedonlyataspecificstageofhistoryanditsgenesisand
effectswereentangledwithconcretehistoricalprocess.Theessenceofa
portraithastobedelineatedinandthroughitshistoricaleffectiveness.
Not all depictions are portraits. Schopenhauer argued that animals couldnt
be the subject matter of portraiture. Human countenance, the only the object
of aesthetic contemplation, can be portrayed because that is. Not all
depictions of human beings are portraits. Gadamer has proposed an
ontological account of portraits in terms of recognition and occasionality. A
portrait should afford us the recognition of whose portrait it is. Resemblance
is neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure recognition. Recognition is not
mere identification either. Identification involves the application of criteria
based on available knowledge. Gadamer quotes Hegels comment on his
portrait by Schlesinger Our Knowledge should become recognition .
Whoever knows me will here recognize me. Recognition is an event of
knowledge. Wittgenstein calls it the dawning of an aspect. We see what is
on the canvas as a person whom we recognize. Recognition is seeing as. It
is seeing and not inferring.

Historically, portraits were made at the behest of the patrons and were
expected to reveal the latters authority and wealth. Portraits were made only
of those who were worthy of being displayed in a portrait. In 20 century
ordinary mortals too became worthy of being the subject of portraiture. A
picture becomes a portrait if it brings out the qualities of the model not as a
type but as a singular individual. In Rembradants portraits we recognize the
presence of a an individual. However this recognition is an event of
understanding. We are not gathering factual details about the historical
individual who happen to sit in front of Rembrandt. The portrait abstracts
from the specific situation. Also in order for a painting to be a portrait we
expect that it suppresses the personal prejudices of the painter with regard to
the model. The image must be valid for all.

Normally portraits are drawn with a model posing in front of the artist. As
we said earlier, the portrait abstract from this situation. It could be that artist
did not have a sitter in front of him and was drawing from memory.
However, for Gadamer the content of portrait carries an intentional reference
to a models having been there. The portrait does not copy the original but
intends it. Gadamer calls it occassionality. This means that the meaning of
the work is partially determined by the occasion for which it is intended. We
th

can have portraits of gods and fictional characters. Even if we hesitate to call
them portraits we would concede that they are portrait-like. In them the
Gods for the first time acquire an Image. They become and Image so that
they can have an image.

Historians credits Raja Ravi Varma for giving a portrait-look to Hindu gods
and goddesses. We know that the painters daughter was the model for these
some of these divine portraits. This does not make those works portraits of
Ravi Varmas daughter. As a model his daughter was expected to pose like
the mythological characters. How do mythological characters pose? They
present themselves as worthy of a portrait! The actual model is not worthy of
such an image, only the mythological character is. However, the portraiture
lifts the attributes and attires in which the model presents character to the
status of an image. Hence these portraits of mythological characters give an
image to the emerging pan Indian woman as an individuated member of the
patriarchal nuclear family.

According to Hegel ancient Hindus conceived their gods as monsters with

several heads and hands. They oscillated between the image of god as
property-less and empty on the one hand, monstrous and excessively
sensible on the other. Only in the modern Christian West that the God for the
first time gains the image of man with a soul and individuality. Recent
historical criticism has argued that this is an orientalist prejudice of the West.
We must learn the correct lessons from this valid criticism. It will be
uninteresting to say that ancient Hindus and Egyptians too had made
portraits. Here we are confirming the recognition model and extending it to
the past. We might say that in an antique sculpture of a bust from Greece we
recognize Socrates. Here we are extending a fact about modern Europe into
the destiny of all art. It is we who recognize Socrates in a bust. Did Socrates
contemporaries recognize him in the bust? Or, was it the image of a typical
philosopher or citizen? Did the social practices yielded an individual who
sought to be recognized in an image? If not, does the portrait has had a
destiny other than that of recognition? The coins of many ancient
civilizations were stamped with the figures of the sovereign. Perhaps, those
figures sought obedience as sovereigns and not recognition as individuals.
Were they portraits?

Self Portrait: Model and Mirror.

In the Self portrait, the artist himself is the model. Usually the artist uses a

mirror to portray himself. He looks at his own image and draws on the
canvas. Even if they do not uses a real mirror we may say that he needs to
look at some mirror image of himself drawn from his memory. Hence the
mirror is a transcendental presupposition of self-portrait. In the case of
portrait the mirror was proposed as an analogy. As Gadamer says
recognition always sees more than what is there in the model. Self-protarit
presupposes a literal mirror. The self portrait need not show the artist in the
process of drawing. He could be doing something else. He is shown as he is
made visible in a mirror. His visibility is that of someone who presents
himself to himself as we do in front of a mirror. Self-portrait makes this
mirror image visible to all. What he sees in the mirror is seen by all in the
self portrait. For the eye which stares out from the self portrait the viewer
replaces the mirror and also the model, the painter. What is the nature of the
visibility afforded to us by the mirror?

Phenomenology and the visible

We have three modes of the visible the prosaic appearance of objects in the
world, paintings and mirrors. Let us see what phenomenology can teach us
about these modes.

a)Objects

Merleau-ponty teaches us how finite seeing is always seeing more. This

more is not something which we add on as inference or as a discovery. We
always see more. From our finite perspective we cannot see all sides of a
cube. We can see the sides invisible to us if we move around the cube.
However from any fixed position we see the cube as having six sides. Each
finite perspective of the cube is already and opening to other perspectives.
The visibility of the object presupposes that I can go around it. Vision is not
a relation between my eyes here and the object there. The visual effect of the
object on me is not a internal picture on my retina. First of all it is a
provocation and an invitation to the I can which can visit the object.
Perception will not take place if I can see all side of the cube at once. I have
a partial view because the invisible sides have already made a claim on the
I can of my moving body. I see objects in world which is not a distance
but around me and I can go around those objects.

My eyes too are invisible to me. However, it sees as part of a body which
can move around and hence enter the field of vision. Visibility is the seeing

seen of my body. My body is summoned by the objects to enter the visible

region. Body is the locus of visibility. The invisible is not what is hidden or
beyond the capabilities of my eye. It belongs to the matrix of the visible. The
visible is a radiation that visits my body and the objects seen. It is both here
and there. Merleau-Ponty thus shifts the locus seeing from the mind to the
body.

b) Paintings:

Merleau-ponty distinguishes paintings from other visible appearances.

Painting, to borrow a phrase from Klee, renders the visible. Paintings
visibility is a rendering of the visible along with its invisible matrix. It
renders the premises of vision which the prosaic vision forgets. The painter
does not copy reality. Instead he looks for what reality lack in order to be a
painting. He does not compensate for this lack by modifying an internal
picture. Instead he undertakes a gestural articulation with his hand on the
canvas. Painting is executed not with eyes alone but hands too. The
rendering of the visible happens when the painter brings his body to the
canvas. Phenomenology restore the work of hand to painting, though this
hand works as part of the body in delineating the matrix of the unseen eye.
From minds eye to the eyes hand such is the transformation Merleauponty brought out in thinking about painting.

Painting offers a blue print for the genesis of visible things. In everyday
perception we see objects against a background. We do not see the line the
separates them. Everything we see belongs either to the figure or to the
background. However. painting presents the line as the generative axis of the
visible. Lines, color and light which we see in paintings are categories of the
visible. Lines are not contours of the object not color the surface. Cezzane
painted Sainte Victorie from various locations and under different
conditions. He wasnt trying to create a look alike of the hill. He once said
Look at that mountain. Once it was fire. Painting gives an account of this
deflagration of being.

c) Mirror

Mirror is a source of fascination, embarrassment and fear. Response to

mirror image varies across cultures. In some parts of India children are not
allowed to see themselves in mirror. In some cultures after death during the
period of mourning all mirrors in the house are covered up. Animals too are

fascinated by the mirror image they create but they do not sustain that
fascination. Empirical studies have shown that The human childs response
to mirror undergoes various stages. It begins with curiosity followed by the
excitement meeting a playmate on the other side of the mirror which
becomes wariness to be followed by the acceptance of the self image. Does
the normalcy of self recognition imply the availability of a concept of a self
and hence mastery over self? Philippe Rochat, Dan Zahavi discuss an
interesting experiment which throws light on this issue. In front of the mirror
Chimpanzees too, behave like a human child. In an experiment a group of
Chimpanzees were exposed to mirror for 10 days to familiarize them with
the reflecting properties of the mirror. Then they were sedated and odorless
marks were put on top of their eye brows and opposite ear. When awake they
were observed for ten minutes for their recognition of the marks. Then they
were exposed to the mirror. It was observed that with the mirror their
response to the mark showed a significant increase. The mirror enabled them
to notice themselves and perform self-directed actions. Does this imply the
availability of the conceptual self awareness and mastery of the self. Does it
show the identity between the observed and the observer. From a
phenomenological perspective D . Zahavi disputes this claim. Chimpanzees
and human child at some point stop searching for the other side of the mirror
and turn towards their side. Instead of looking through the mirror they learn
to look at it. On this side of the mirror we discover a new dimension depth.
It is from this depth that the I as the seen-seer emerges.

The mirror breaks with the kinesthetic image of the self. The mirror does not
establish an identity between the felt-me and the image. Instead I am seeing
myself as seen by others in an exteriority. I am an other. The uncanniness
of the mirror experience is due to this intertwining of the identification and
alienation and the self and the other. My self image sticks to me. I cannot
take a fresh perspective on it the way I can do on other objects in the world.

Merleau-ponty notices the presence of the mirror in Dutch paintings where

the round eye of the mirror digests rooms where no one is present.
According to him more completely than lights, shadows and reflections, the
mirror image anticipates, within things the labor of vision. The mirror is a
technical object that springs up between the seeing and the visible body.
Before reflecting me, the mirror has been at work in the reflexivity of the
sensible itself. The mirror translates and reproduces that reflexivity. I am a
seen-seer. Mirror reproduces this reflexivity and completes my externality.
The mirror is a prosthetic but like all prostatic it is implanted in my body. It

extends and reproduces the very externality of my body. The mirror image is
like a phantom limb. Merleau-Ponty refers to Schilder who said that while
smoking a pipe in front of the mirror he felt that the burned surface of the
pipe touched not only where his fingers were but also on image of the finger
in the mirror. The mirror allows the invisible of my body to invests its
psychic energy in the other visible bodies. It also allows my body to include
elements from other bodies. Mirrors are instruments of universal magic
that converts things into spectacle, spectacle into things, myself into another,
and another into myself. The mirror looks at us and shows the painters how
things looks at us.

The mirror extends and completes my externality and restore that to the
depth of my body and field of vision. For Merleau ponty depth is not an
extra dimension which can be thought of in terms of length. Depth has a
primacy over length and breath the latter two are conceived in terms of
length. For Descartes depth was the distance of things from my body. In the
Cartesian space nothing can hide behind anything or nor encroach upon
anything. There is no depth but only distances between things. Here each
point is what it is and nothing more or less. This is a space without depth or
thickness. Spaee is the self evidence of the where

Against this Cartesian clarity Merleau ponty holds that depth preserves the
enigma of Being. It is there where soul and body, seer and seeing, visible
and invisible intertwines a there which Descartes either left to the God to
scan it from above or treated as a confusion from which thought should
preserve its distance. I do not see space from above or according to its
external envelope. I see it from within. After all the world is around me, not
in front of me. . A bit of can show us forests and storms. These
transcendences are not the constructions of my mind. They are including
depth a question posed by the visible to vision. In pursuing this question
we plunge into the reasons which allows multiple interpretations and
answers. When the painter depicts depth he is not copying or constructing
but articulating a question. In pictorial depth the I know not whence finds
a support. This only heightens the enigma. Depth insists on being sought.
Depth is the earl dependence between things which eclipse one another in
their visibility. This dependence and contestation between things is not
relationship that can be a matter of measurements. Depth is the experience
of the reversibility of dimensions. Depth is the global locality of there
where everything is in the same place at the same time. It is the
voluminosity which is expressed in the there. It is from this there of

depth that things receives it dimensions. This is the belonging toether of

space and content. Things are modulations of depth.

Color responds to this modualtions of depth. Color is a dimension, a branch

of Being. Color is not the property of the external surface. It belongs to the
heart of things. It is the depth from which things receive their materiality and
volume. Pianting marks the birth of the painter from this very depth. Birth
too is appearing. At birth the child so far neither seen nor seeing in the
womb emerges into he world where it can see and be seen. Depth, like the
womb harbor the possibilities. Color, like the cry of a new born is an
expression of this emergence.

The mirror instead of letting the light pass through it and staging an illusion
on the other side, reflects it back and creates depth on this side. The seerseeing me emerges from this depth. The mirror does not display some fact
about me. Instead it pluges me in to a depth on this side from which I shall
now undertake action. We act in and from this mirror image. The wariness
which accompanies self recognition and the fear emabarrassement
associated with mirror all could be traced to the enigmatic nature of this
depth to which the mirror frees us. The painter of a self portrait looks into
the mirror not to check how he looks but to be born again and to render
visible the depth from which all that is visible emerges. For Merleau Ponty
seeing is not presence to self. It is the means given me for being absent
from myself, for being present from within at the fission of Being only the
end of which I close up into myself. Seeing myself in the mirror I am being
absent from myself only to return to myself in the depth on this side.

Mirror of Finitude: I am an other

This dialectic between identification and distanciation in the mirror shows

that reflection in the mirror is not merely copying but productive. Since Kant
philosophy has elaborated this productive structure as an ontology of human
finitude. Against Descartes Kant argued that the I has no immediate access
to itself. The determination I think relates to the undetermined I am only
through form of the determinable space and time. I am an other. The Is
lack of immediate access is the ground of knowledge and freedom. The I is
not transparent to itself. It needs the external mirror to attain an image. A
critic of representation like Richard Rorty urges us to destroy the mirror.
However, modern philosophy which is at once a critique and an ontology of
finitude reinstates the mirror as more than mere reflection.


As bearers of ontological finitude we are not allowed to know world apart
from our relation to the world. The conditions of the possibility of our
experience are the same as the conditions of possibility of the object of
experience. Our limits are the openings for our freedom. We are such that
our own being is an issue for us. We are constantly reborn from the very
depth to which we withdraw. The mirror grants us this enigmatic depth.

Foucault and the surface of mirror.

It is from the mirror that I find myself absent from the place where I am, as
long as I see myself there. Foucault

The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since, since it is a placeless place. In the
mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that
opens up behind the surface; I am over there where I am not, a sort of
shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself
there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror _ Foucault.

Foucault too was fascinated by painting and also the mirror work. In
Velasquezs Las Meninas Foucault discovered a radical absence instituted
by the mirror. This absence is not gathered as enigmatic depth and returned
to the model-viewer. This absence is more like the white patch Escher
encountered while rendering the scene of watching a painting transparent.
The painting laid bare the absence on the surface of the painting so that
Escher could put his signature on the white patch at the center of the work.
The mirror too is a surface and the depths on both sides are effects.

Las Meninas shows Velazquez doing the portrait of the King and the Queen.
It is Velazquezs self portrait and also the self portrait of self portraiture. The
entire picture is looking at a scene for which it is itself a scene. Velasquez is
shown as looking at the models the king and queen. But what we see on
the canvas is what the models see. However this is a painting done not by
the model but the painter whom the models are looking at. It is like a story
in which the telling of that story is occurring as an event. The model has
taken over the place of the painter. The painter is painting the scene by being
inside that scene.
What is the object of this representation? What did Velasquez want to

portray? The King and queen, the models, do not appear in the painting
except for the dim appearance in the mirror kept in the dark recess of the
studio. The focus of the actual painting in front of us seem to be the on
lookers Infant Maria, her wards and the visitor at the door step. Velasquez,
the painter appears but he seems to be caught in he painting as if chance. He
would soon disappear behind the canvas the moment he begins to paint on
the canvas. No one can possibly see the picture that is being drawn on the
easel whose rear side faces us.
We can remove the paradox of this self representation by a) removing the
mirror b) By stretching the frame towards us and exposing the models c) by
making the king the painter of this picture. The presence of the mirror in
itself need not push this picture into a paradox. Such mirrors are common
features in Renaissance Dutch paintings. In Las Meninas the mirror shows
the reflections of those figures who are not shown in the picture but whom
everyone in the picture seems to be looking at. We the viewers see the
painting from where those figures are looking at this scene. However, our
image is not seen in the mirror.
There is a mirror at work in representation and it carries an image of
someone whom the picture points at but does not show. This pointing finger
that is about to say what it is showing has to pass through the visible regime
to name what it is showing. The classical representation hopes to say what it
shows. It dreams about a total adequation between representation and
resemblance. Velasquez shows that these two regimes of saying and
showing for ever remain inadequate to each other. We cannot say what we
show and vise-versa. Even the title of the painting The maids of Honor
does not indicate what the painter intends to show. The mirror that is
supposed to map these regimes onto each other without any residue is in fact
the meeting ground of two incompatible invisibilities that of the models
whom the painter in his represented reality looking at and also those who are
looking at the painter as laid on the canvas. The depth of the mirror and also
painting is the result of the unstable superimposition of these regimes of
invisibility. This double invisibility one belongs to the space represented in
the painting and another due to its nature as painting - produces the
metathesis of visibility in the mirror.
Hence it is in vain that we try to say what we see. Foucault says:
But if one wishes to keep the relation of language to vision open, if one
wishes to treat their incompatibility as a starting point for speech instead of
an obstacle to be avoided, so as to stay as close as possible to both, then one
must erase those proper names and preserve the infinity of the task. It is
perhaps through the medium of this gray, anonymous language, always over-

meticulous and repetitive because too broad, the painting may, little by little,
release its illuminations.
Foucault sees the execution of this new task in the mirror work of Manets
paintings. Manets A Bar at the Folies-Bergere we see the bar girl standing
in front of a wall of mirror. The mirror forms a wall behind her and closes
off the space refusing any depth to the painting. The composition of the
painting does not allow us to see what is in front of her either. The mirror
reflects what is in front of the canvas. However, the figure that stands right
in front of the mirror prevents us from seeing that. It is nearly impossible to
locate the mirror reflections of the things which are on the table. On the right
side we see the reflection of the girl and another man who must be facing
her. From the same location in front, the painter could not have seen the
woman and her reflection in the way it is portrayed here. The painter and
also the viewer occupy two incompatible places. This problem could be
solved if the mirror were oblique. However we can see that it is not oblique
from the golden frame which runs parallel to the table. If the man were
standing in front of her the woman then his shadow should have been falling
on her. Also the man in the mirror seems to be looking at her from plunging
point of view and not from the eye level of a face-face encounter.
In Manet the mirror has moved from the depth of Las Meninas to the
surface. With the refusal of the depth this painting radically dislocates the
viewer. Unlike the renaissance painting neither the viewer nor the painter is
assigned a fixed location.
So you see the canvas in which there is something real, material, in some
way physical, is about to appear and to play with all its properties in
representation. (Here representation plays with the material properties of
the surface. Surface properties of the canvas which we are watching stand
for the what is depicted in the painting.
Zahavi mentions an interesting result of the experiment on the behavior
chimpanzees display in front of the mirror. They rub their body on the mirror
and thereby bring their body in contact with the specular image. They
establish a specular contact with parts of their felt body and the
corresponding part of the image on a contingent location on the surface of
the mirror. Zahavi also mentions another experiment where the subjects
after touching the mirror mark on their body look at their own fingers. Also
majority of the children from non western country like Kenya did not exhibit
self directed behavior in front of mirrors. They remained transfixed in front
of the mirror. This did not mean that they were incapable of social
behaviour. It seemed that they did not plunge into an enigmatic depth where
they recognized themselves. The world they shared with others perhaps did

not spring from enigmatic depths.

Self portrait and the mirror work.

While painting his Self -Portrait with Palette Cezannes might have been
standing in front of a strange object a mirror with the image of the painter.
Like a child, he seems to be so much under the grip of the image that he
even forgets to see the inversion caused by the mirror. Painters can use
multiple mirrors and correct the mirror inversion. However, not many
bother to do so. Even when the painter is painting from the mirror we do not
usually see the mirror in self portraits. In Cezanne with the palette the
mirror inverted right hand which paints is hidden. The palette in the other
hand is placed in an awkward position almost parallel to the surface of the
painting. This palette on the left, and the easel on the right, block off the
foreground. The wall behind the figure leaves hardly any space in the
background. The figure pressed against the canvas appears like a cut out.

Cezannes coat, beard and hair are painted in gray tones. The palette is
almost an extension of the arm. The palette and the face shares same the
tone. The palette picks up the tones of the beard, hair, coat, face, the table
and the easel and also the contours of the body. While the spatial
configuration denies depth, the color tones establish correspondences
between the various surfaces. The eyes of the artist are neither focused on
the viewer nor on the canvas that is on the easel. He seems to have intensely
lost or indifferent look. It is not a look which emanates from the depth, cuts
through the picture plane and proceeds to the world beyond. It is a look in
which the eye has exhausted its passion for looking and has come to rest on
the picture surface. This eye is not lured by the illusion on the other side of
the mirror nor by the enigmatic depth on the human side. Let us assume
that Cezzane painted his figure as seen in the mirror. The portrait does not
show the eyes of the painter which meet with those of the image. With an
inner restraint the eyes are withdrawn from the dialectical play of
recognition and alienation. The eyes see from the surface of the mirror.
Cezanne expected his models to pose like apples. This self portrait has the
eyes of an apple.

The intensely indifferent eyes are neither the chaotically wandering eyes of
the pre-individual felt body nor the enigmatic eyes of the human soul. These
eyes open and grow upon the mirror. As we have seen, for phenomenology,
the mirror is a magical instrument which converts myself into another and
another into myself. It institutes the visible world where I can see what

others also see. This is the world in which I am an other. However,

Cezannes self portrait subtracts the eye from this world of the I and the
other. The self of the portrait, before encountering the I looks with an
impersonal eye.

I see myself in another head:

Francis Bacon was fascinated by the self-portrait of other painters like

Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Here is his remark on Rembrandts Self Portrait
with Beret, 1659, at Musee Garnet, Aix-en- Provence.

"if you analyze it, you will see that there are hardly any sockets to the eyes,
that it is almost completely (an) anti-illustrational" work. I think that the
mystery of fact is conveyed by an image being made out of non-rational
marks. And you can't will this non-rationality of a mark. That is the reason
that accident always has to enter into this activity, because the moment you
know what to do, you're making just another form of illustration. But what
can happen sometimes, as it happened in this Rembrandt self-portrait, is that
there is a coagulation of non-representational marks which have led to
making up this very great image. Well, of course, only part of this is
accidental. Behind all that is Rembrandt's profound sensibility, which was
able to hold onto one irrational mark rather than onto another

This portrait does not present the soulful eyes which we see in other self
portraits of Rembrandt. The eyes without sockets are vanishing into the
lump of flesh - a lump of fat in a bowl of soup. Those eyes are disappearing
from the world and also from the face. Rembrandts hand renders this visible
on the canvas through non-illustrative, non rational and contingent marks.
The hand here is not copying what appears in the minds eye. Nor is it
gesticulating in the wake of an eye that always sees more. Here the hand is
responding to the withdrawal of the eye. The hand doesnt know what it is
doing. Nor can it will the marks it makes. The eye has come to rest on the
surface of the mirror and the hand is committed to the surface of the canvas.
The hand of the painter works on the canvas just as the child who is in front
of the mirror rubs its body part against the contingent location of
corresponding part of the image. The self is drawn towards the visible but
freed from the domination of the eye. The hand is drawn forward to make
the first gesture and mark. The mirror allows the launching of this first
contingent mark that is freed from the self and also the world shared by the
self and the other. The genius of Rembrandt lies in holding onto one

irrational mark rather than onto another. Self-portrait is self-creation without

models.

Instead of models and mirrors, Francis Bacon used photographs to make

portraits and self-portraits. He photographed himself in photo-booths and
used those photograph to work on his self portraits. Why did he prefer
photographs to live models. Photograph claims to stay closer to reality than
painting. Even a bad photographer has had a closer brush with reality than a
good realist painting. The reality claim of the photograph is often traced to
its mechanical production. Despite framing and other intentional
interventions the accidental tracing of light on a mechanical device produces
the photograph. A digital photograph retains this claim despite the absence
of such direct contact with reality. There the reality effect is produced
strictly within technological process.

The relationship between the photograph and reality is neither causal nor
intentional. The photograph, as Foucault prescribed, keeps the relationship
between language and vision infinitely open. In the photograph these two
regimes of saying and showing establish an external and contingent
relationship. Barthes called the trace of this contingent relationship
punctum. It is an accidental mark upon which reality of the having been
of the sitter haunts the photograph. Punctum is not a point in space but a
pointing out. An X ray is a quintessential photograph. X ray does not
actually make the interior of the body visible. Instead it points out a fracture,
a rupture or a tumor. It shows the abnormality without showing the body as a
background. Beneath the figure it shows the armature that sustain it.
Pointing does not follow a code. Having dissolved the context it is not a
matter of interpretation either. This is not a Pipe painted on the
background of the figure of a pipe such is the paradigmatic gesture of
pointing. The this is not of the pointing figure rigidly refers while bursting
through all determinable contexts.

Imagine the duck-rabbit picture made famous by Wittgenstein.

Phenomenology teaches us that we do not see bare lines which we later
interpret as a duck or a rabbit. We see a duck or a rabbit. The rabbit picture
can dawn upon us from the duck picture. Imagine someone who sees the
duck but fails to see the rabbit. We can help him to see the rabbit by tracing
our fingers on the picture of the duck. What do our pointing finger point to?
When we see the duck or the rabbit we see those figures against some
background. However the tracing finger picks out fragments of the figure

and display them out of context. This tracing is not an invitation to the
viewer to transform his inner picture of a duck into a rabbit. The pointing
finger tries to establish real relations between fragments of the duck and
fragments of rabbit. These real relationships are virtual. They are actualized
as good figures in seen in appropriate contexts.

Phenomenology expects painting to render visible principle that generates

figures against background. Bacon abolished or limited the background and
painted the virtual relations between fragments of the figure. His selfportraits distort the figure beyond recognition. Distortion dissolves the figure
and the background and establishes relations of force torsion - between the
twisted fragments. In his triptych Self-Portrait 1971 the face is mauled by a
transparent cylinder. The geometric form does not set up a norm for the
figure. Instead it disfigures the face and renders visible the external relations
whose contingent configurations compose recognizable figures of the self.
For Merleu-Ponty the mirror draws my exteriority to its limits. However, the
mirror returns this exteriority to the enigmatic depth of a soul. With the help
of photograph Bacon cultivates his self in the very exteriority of accidental
marks.

Bacon says This is no longer my head, but I feel myself inside a head; I see
and I see myself inside a head. I can see myself directly and in an
impersonal manner in a head which is not necessarily my head. I am not
bound to my body that provides the invisible matrix of the visible. As
Wittgenstein said, I feel my pain in others body. My relationship to my pain
is not that of ownership. It is also not that I experience by emotions in a
special way whereas the others emotions are displayed for me. It is not
enough to say that my access to my feelings involves display of some sort.
Self and the other: not enough. I am an other: again not enough. Myselfother: perhaps, just enough.

Apart from models, mirrors and photographs Bacon also worked with the
self-portrait of another painter Van Goghs Self-portrait on the road to
Tarascon 1888. During 1956-57 Bacon painted several variations of this self
portrait some of which were titled Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh. In these
paintings Bacon opens up another painters self portrait for further work. As
we have seen self portrait makes visible the exteriorization which is
constitutive of the self and taken to its limits by the mirror. However, in the
self portrait this exteriority was sealed by the conjecture that in a self portrait
the model, the painter and the signatory are the same person. Bacon

questions this conjecture. The self that attains an image in Van Goghs
painting can be studied and elaborated by another. One can see oneself in
anothers self portrait. Van Goghs Self portrait on the Road to Tarascon too
has some unique features. The painter is catches himself on the road,
walking back home after a days work. He poses and looks up. The
background seems to be more prominent than the figure. The figure appears
like a cut out. More importantly, a new visual figure enters the scene of self
portrait shadow. Van Goghs shadow falls across the road extending to the
foreground. Van Gogh questions the transcendental presupposition of self
portrait Mirror.

Reflection and Shadow

Shadows figures in many of Bacans paintings. For him shadow has much
presence as the body. Shadow is not a reflection. Unlike the mirror image it
is faceless. The idea of recognition is meaningless the case of shadow.
Shadow immediately belongs to the object which casts it. The relationship
between the object and the shadow is causal. However, what is caused is an
absence.

As a visible phenomena shadow has an illustrious history. In pre-modern

times gnomon or sun dial used shadow for measurement of both space an
time. However, as Michel Serres has argued the gnomon is not a precursor of
telescope or time-piece. It belonged to a different regime of the visible. The
telescope belongs to a mode of knowing where the knowing subject projects
the transcendental conditions of perception onto the world. It presupposes
the eye of the viewing subject at the viewfinder contemplating, observing,
calculating, arranging the planets. However, the gnomon exists prior to the
invention of the subject. The role of the knowing subject is exhausted in
casting another shadow besides the gnomon. In casting the shadow the
world lends itself to be seen by the world that sees it. Since it avoids the
knowing subject, gnomon is an automaton. In this sense the shadow is closer
to the photograph than the painted images that are modelled on mirror
reflection.

Phenomenologyteachesusthatfrommymirrorimagemybodyacquiresa
depthwhichisintertwinedwiththatofother.However,myshadowhaunts
meinaunsubstitutablebutimpersonalmanner.Phenomenologyteachesus
thatIamanunsubstitutableperspectiveontheworld.Wecanseeobjects

fromnewperspectives.However,Iamunabletoopenupnewperspectives
on my mirror image. However, we have been told that this is not a
limitation.Inotherwords,thisunsubstitutabilityopensupthedepthofthe
worldwherewehaveroomandfreedomtotakefreshperspectivesonthe
objectsandonourselves.Theshadowdoesnotopenupsuchdepth.Instead
shadowsmaintainarelationshipofproportionalitywiththeobjects.Ifwe
knowtheratiooftheheightofaknownbodystandingnearthepyramidand
thelengthofitsshadowandalsothelengthofshadowofthepyramidthenI
cancalculatethepyramidsheight. Shadowisameasurewheretheworld
measuresitself.Heremeasurementisnottheactivityofaworldconstituting
subject.Measurementthroughshadowsdoesnotpresupposeameaningful
world.Itinvolvesratiosbetweendarkobjectsandtheirfacelessshadows.
Baconhastreatedmirrorreflectionsasshadowscaughtinthenarrowand
darkthicknessofmirrors.(PortraitofGeorgeDyerStaringintoaMirrorby
FrancisBacon,1967)

Bacons studies of van Gogh portrait give importance to the shadow and the
background. Bacon explores the figure in its relationship with the road and
the shadow it casts. The road takes an inclination emphasising movement.
Except in Study V, the shadow is carried along by the road that flows with
the dynamism of paints splashed on the canvas in a manner characteristic of
Bacon. The figure seems to be drained away by the shadow. Even on the
verge of dissolution the figure retains some marks for recognition a hat,
walking stick etc. Bacon does not resort to abstraction but stay with the
figure only to question the relationship between it and the background.
Everything in the background could potentially cast a shadow. The road is a
flux of molten shadows. In Study VI the road caves in taking along with it
the figure and the shadow. The road cuts through the figure. The road which
carries the shadow along takes up a meat-like quality. The figure of the
painter with its characteristics marks seems to be an eddy isolated within this
flow.

Muybridges serial photographs of the human body in motion fascinated

Bacon. These serial photographs were precursors to cinema. The uniqueness
of cinema lies not in creating the illusion of motion but in the seriality of the
frames. The serial images capture the deformation of the moving body
which is under the propelling causes. A moving body is a body subjected to
forces. Bacons fascination for the photograph should be understood in the

context of its rejection by the phenomenologist. According to the

phenomenologist, the photograph of a galloping horse shows it leaping in
space whereas the painting can show it running. The photograph keeps the
instant open and does not let time pass. It freezes movement. It destroys the
overtaking, the over lapping, the metamorphosis of time. For Merleau
Ponty, moving images of cinema are no exception. The photographs
inability to capture movement has nothing to do with whether or not the
image is moving. The moving image is just as lifeless as the still one.
Merleau-ponty preferred Gericaults painted horses to Muybridges
photographed ones.

Bacon is fascinated by this arrested motion. The arresting of motion sends

shock waves through the body. Motion, primordially is the passage of waves
through the body. These waves also carry the body along. In Muybridge
serial photographs, the background changes from one frame to the other.
This change can be concealed by using a uniform background. This would
emphasize the continuity of motion. Bacon is interested in the dynamism of
the background. We can compare his approach to that of tracking shot in
cinema. The camera moves along with the moving object, keeping the latter
in focus while blurring the background. Road movies radicalize this
experience by keeping the camera inside a moving vehicle. The camera
isolates the interior of the vehicle where the story unfolds. The road remains
external to this island of narrative continuity. Its relationship with the
narrative happenings within the vehicle is mechanical or casual and hence
contingent.

Journey is known trope of autobiography. The self leaves home, travels

through new spaces and encounters others. This journey in the external
world is also a journey into himself. The narrative weaves the inner and
outer journeys into each other leading to self discovery and self
transformation. This is an extended play of identification and alienation
characteristic of mirror work. However road movies (and movies in general)
propose another approach to motion. Motion is not displacement of the body
in space. It is the spasm, deformation and rhythm which the body
undergoes. Images move through mirrors and shadows undergoes elongation
and mergers. (Cartoons films by retaining the discontinuity between frames
pursue this aspect of motion.)This motion is free from the sensory-motor
responses to an available world.

What does this conception of body-movement has to do with the self? Here

we can learn from Thomas Metzingers account of the deviant self models
and out of body experiences. In a railway station, sitting inside a stationary
train we experience the movement of the train on another platform as the
movement of our own train. We undergo the kinesthetic experiences of
movement without our body undergoing any motion. We experience
somebody elses motion in our own body. A marathon runner feels that she
was not looking through her own eyes but from a stand point above the road
and seeing herself running down there. In autoscopy people have the
experience of seeing their own body as detached from them. Metziger
proposes a concept of the self which can make such experiences intelligible.
For him there is nothing called a the self. There are only models of the self.
Often we are not conscious of the fact that we are self models running in our
brain. In other words we are transparent. First person stand point is a
window. However, we can walk out of that perspective and occupy other
self-models. I can walk through this being someone and look at myself
through another pair of eyes or head. Here we move from oneself as another
to oneself as no one. Bacon says, "One of the nicest things that Cocteau said
was: 'Each day in the mirror I watch death at work.' This is what one does
oneself"

Self-Photograph

We have heard Hegels comment on his portrait. In 1964, Adorno, a

profound adversary of Hegel and the author of Negative Dialectics was
caught in his self photograph by Stefan Moses. This was part of a series of
self portrait called Self in Mirror which Moses did with philosophers and
scholars. Adorno sat in front of a mirror and clicked his photograph using a
cable which was connected to the delayed shutter of a camera kept behind
him. Stefan also clicked a photograph of Adorno in the act of posing and
clicking his self portrait. In the first photograph we see Adornoss image in a
huge mirror placed in the center of a room. This reminds us of Bacons
mirror images. The image has moved into the thickness of the mirror and is
placed as an object in the room. Painting receives the mirror image by
putting a frame around it. This photographs removes the frame and places
the image on the same level as other objects in the room. The role of mirror
here is not to open up depth on our side. Instead it becomes a conduit
through which the image can goes over to the other side. In the second
photograph we see both the posing Adorno and his image. We can also see
the camera which clicked/clicking/will click the first photograph. In the far
right corner of the second one, we can see Mosess hand shooting this image.


Imagine Adorno holding the camera in front of him and clicking his own self
portrait. What more do Moses multiple photographs tell us the above self
portrait? Moses photographs reveal the mechanical system that produced the
image the cameras, the cable and the mirror. Adorno is posing for an image
and also creating the image. The mirror renders visible the contingent point
of conversion of these acts. The mirror image, like the duck-rabbit picture is
made up of the real relations that establish this contingent congruence. This
is Lewis Carrolss mirror through which Alice could fall into another world.
Moses enters the image in the form of a hand holding a camera. The camera
does not follow Adorno and frame him. Adorno while posing and clicking
enters the field of the static cameras. The cameras extracts the event out of
the continuity of movement of Adorno. The mirror image is an event
rendered visible. The event of the self.

Contemporary artists have resorted to photography as mode of self portrait.

The Hongkong artist Tseng Kwong Chi wore Mao suits and photographed
himself in front of clichd monuments and locations like Statue of Liberty,
Hollywood hills and Eiffel tower. He said he wanted to pose himself like a
Chinese tourist in front of these locations which American tourists often
visit. Tourist is the figure of the other in modern societies. The tourist culture
takes locations which are closest to its self image and makes them pose as
tourist locations for the alien tourist who visits them. The tourist poses
himself against this posed background. Chi enters these alien contexts
parading the regalia the west normally associate with the modern Chinese. In
the artificiality of the photograph both these posings are transposed on to
each other.

Self photographs of Cindy Sherman too do not aspire to lay bare the self or
to provide a truthful account. They do not fictionalize either. Sherman
dressed herself up as Hollywood actresses and photographed herself in filmy
locations. She does not portray herself truthfully or use the power of fiction
to explore meaningful differences. Instead she stereotypes herself. The
photograph extracts a contingent event from a stereo typical figure placed in
a clichd context. The other is a stereotype, a clich or a nobody. It is not
someone or other. It is self as nobody-other. Here self photography is the act
of becoming no one. Sherman once said "I feel I'm anonymous in my work.
When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits.
Sometimes I disappear.


The self is freed from the my own. Portrayal is freed from intentional
framing and ismechanized. These two make possible that self photograph
can be executed by others. We may get our autobiographies written by
competent authors and allow it to be published under their authorship. In
other words, the artist, model and the signatory all need not converge in one.

We shall not miss moral political nature of this practice of anonymity.

Kwong Lee as an Asian and Cindy Sherman as a woman belong to the
margins of American society. They could either assert their identity as an
Asian or woman. Or they could allow themselves to be assimilated to the
mainstream. Both these move would have ended up in succumbing to the
stereotypes. These artists know that they cannot fight stereotying by
invoking a true image or an authentic image. Self photograph image is a
critical engagement with the stereotyped image. As we saw in Bacons
figures or Metzingers out of body experiences the self enters the stereotype
and sustain itself as a contingent event. There begins a politics of rendering
oneself anonymous.