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Home » Foreign body in the eye? - Self-portrait and mirror

Foreign body in the eye? - Self-portrait and mirror

Since the twenties of the 19th century the art picks up more and more distinctly possibilities of transformation of invisible as well as unspeakable "contents" into pictures, which served to enrich and intensify a given most religious picture theme in earlier centuries. But when later photography had put the copy in contrast to reality, suddenly meanings were also released, which had now to be mastered in a different way as so far. Thus the art set off to lift symbolism into visibility. In this connection the "picture in the picture", the mirror and the eye play a special and characteristic role. A graphic print from Max Ernst from the "Histoire naturelle" (1926) is little known; "Le faux miroir" from René Magritte on the other hand became famous. It had been painted from a big photography of an eye made by Man Ray 1928. As well this picture shall not be shown here, but however it shall be described: "The wrong mirror is an intentional reduction of the natural function of an eye. The remarkable on it is that it doesn't really look at us, the observer of the work. That's the case because Magritte disregards here the active function of the eye - the looking - by showing only its reflecting function - the reflection of the sky and the clouds on the cornea. The reflection in the mirror is passive, dead, but the reflection in the eye gets into the centre, and just there, inside the eye, the picture comes off." Two decades later, soon after the end of the last war, the aquatint print "eye" was created by M. C. Escher, smaller than that painting, but still far larger-than-life. Between furrows and bulging lines the eyeball pushed out globelike mighty. Next to the moist shining, indistinctly dark corner of the eye the body of the eye stands out smooth and in its arch reflecting. In the white the surface of the ball is marked by fine veins. The iris surrounds radiating flared up the black hole of the pupil. However the whole appears to be moved away from the observer and to be transparently superimposed because of the sharp light reflex and the indistinct shimmer in the right area of the iris. Therefore for the time being it isn't obvious, whether the outline of a skull, which becomes recognizable in the centre of the pupil, is a reflection, or whether it forms itself out of the dark bottom of the eye. Over the row of eyelashes, which are singly standing out, and the colour area of the iris the look is drawn into the dark centre. What are we expecting there? - Certainly not the picture of the death. This appears here to be uncalled for, because one connects with seeing otherwise alertness, realization, overall view and the clarification of the outlook on the future. However the confrontation with the death in the eye appears as denial of everything, which one means to expect. With this statement the first impression is now sufficiently acknowledged. But concerning the picture, so it seems that nothing is yet said except that a certain astonishment at it is put in concrete form. But with the comment on a discrepancy between the subject of the picture and the expectation, which is shown in it, the question is put, which makes the appreciation for the picture possible. Escher drew the sheet from his own eye. To call it therefore a "self-portrait" is not yet convincing, particularly since one expects the representation of the individual looks in a self-portrait. The eye may probably have those. But it isn't after all the eye that is looking at us: what is looking at us is the death in the eye. But this one seems to be lacking the individuality. In order to clarify the problem raised here it is necessary to go far back. In his self-portrait the artist wants less "to portray himself" than "to make himself clear". This mostly takes place by way of setting off and leaving out, a simplification at simultaneous increase of expression by the direct look. With self-portraits, which just partially portray the person to be pointed out, the expression can appear even more concentrated. Early examples for this on religious works, for instance in a representation of the crucifixion are the quite rare self-portraits of the artist as a member of a group of people, from which he looks at the observer and which often covers himself to a great extent: He stands back in the crowd of people, he hides himself among them and yet he remains standing out as an recognizable person. Then this concentration becomes more distinct with simultaneous hiding in a self-portrait from Menzel, which shows only a part of the face. This has the appeal on the observer, as if the picture is moved so close to him that he has to look much more attentive almost under pressure at this part of a whole, than it takes place with greater distance or it is possible in the unit of the overall appearance. The importance of such a promotion of one image lies on presenting oneself even when in the fragmentary form of the sketch hiding oneself is expressed likewise powerful. Presenting oneself and hiding oneself - hiding oneself as a person in a crowd of people or even refrain from human nature and the relations by looking and by the mute dialogue of the eyes and turn to the visible, in general to the objects, to the seeming unchanging, to the variety of the world. The eye as a mirror - as "mirror of the soul" - or as mirror of the world? What someone sees, doesn't only appear as little picture conversely on the retina, but dark and sharp in the pupil, which carries its name into our languages from the dolly or the figurine, which one sees in the eye of the other, till one notices that it is the own moving mirror image - and everything, what's behind me - and so the other half of the world. An early example of such "objectification" of the look past the person opposite at the background is found in the work of the French architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux (1736 - 1806). Like in the eye of an enormous statue, so the theatre of Besancon is mirrored here, an example of the "revolution architecture", now built for major crowds of people: stone order and light. This is the outermost distance, which the eye as only sense is able to establish to the object of its perception: the fixing in the picture. Who shows himself in the self-portrait, makes himself clear to himself. As well for this the distance has to be enlarged. Who wants to look at himself, needs space. Only then he is able to see over himself - or at least to refrain from himself. Another tradition of pictures belongs in this connection: self-portraits like that from Böcklin with the death playing violin, or some prints from Corinth. In these cases the person of the artist appears by the side of someone else, the skeleton as representation of the death - "artist and death". This now traces back to the starting picture: Escher's eye. Here the person of the artist is only portrayed by the left eye, like it appears to him in the mirror, and the observer is literally pressed hard by powerful zooming to expose himself to the eye. Stressing as well as omitting takes otherwise place in the area of the represented - the round of the iris and the theatre at Ledoux; the face, only half of it, and the eye with the glasses at Menzel; the crouched figure of the artist, on which death had left its mark and next to this the skeleton at Corinth - so a comparable evaluation of the real conditions develops here as well as by the individual features as by the enlargement: the observer is faced with the eye like an unknown landscape, which is seen distorted at close range. The organic, the physical is stressed - the sight is of secondary importance. However we make the situation of the artist clear to ourselves, out of which he created the picture: who wants to look himself in the eye, uses the mirror for that purpose. Instead of the picture of the person opposite, which usually appears, or instead of the own picture in the living eye of someone else, the own face appears now in the own eye like an endless chain of simulations of a person opposite. But if the look by the own eye shall be a success, this face has to disappear. This is achieved here by looking likewise through the picture of the own face. But in that case the eye appears then, as if pulled out of all shores of the known, star-like strange. And in the black of the pupil the look feels confronted with infinity or void, but in any case with the incomprehensible. Mostly it seems, as if the fear is linked to the appearance of the death. The picture of the death in the eye is found unfamiliar, because it attracts fear. But what frightens, is actually less the death, which yet remains unrecognizable, than the only-being, which is always aimed for, which is also looked for and which is sensed in the self-portrait at times. In search of it, the edge of the own face is finally washed away. In place of it the picture of the skull appears which has apparently lost all individuality, as representation of the death, in which its actual uniqueness is in store for everyone. If that is correct, then the look in the own eye may probably be unfamiliar and worrying, but not the picture of death, which can shadowy emerge in it. "Sola hec con fallit imago" is the inscription familiar to earlier physicians on representations of the skeleton, which has its place as well on portraits of physicians as in an anatomic atlas. And the faith in progress of the 19th century may also have banished the death from the thoughts of sick persons and more from the physicians: since the First World War poets and philosophers dared to think mortality again, since the Second World War the steps occasionally into the picture - like here at Escher - in that aged form which preserves freedom and uniqueness for the human being even in the masses of artificial equality. Source: "Rheinische Splitter und Augenblicke" (published by Prof. Marlene Putscher, Research Department of the Institute for History of Medicine of the University of Cologne, Cologne 1976)