joseph scissorhands: Visions of the Self: Rembrandt and Now

Rembrandt - Self Portrait with Two Circles, c.1665

To Gagosian once more for this survey of modern portraiture based around the above masterpiece of 17th C. portraiture by Rembrandt from Kenwood House in Hampstead. The curators have done a good job in gathering an interesting assortment of mostly well-known contemporary portraits which work really well together, although this show does seem a little safe and corporate in some respects. This said though, many of the biggest and talented names in art are represented. It's always good to see Bacon, Brown, Freud, and Saville, and it was particularly good to come face to face with that wonderfully intense Schiele portrait again, seen as recently as last year by myself whilst in Paris here. There are also a few interesting inclusions which make you question the nature of the portraiture genre, and the neccessity of artists having to make a faithful representation or likeness of a person such as the inclusions here by Hodgkin, Lichtenstein, Maar, Prince, Wool, and Freud's Hand Mirror in a Chair. Others such as the Brown, Koons and Sherman pieces have been chosen to emulate and evoke the Rembrandt portrait and its period stylistically and superficially in manner.

Surprises here for me were Urs Fischer's grey, life-size figure made entirely of wax, and Charles Ray's Male Mannequin, with a surreal twist- replete with the addition of disturbingly realistic genitalia, and Gerhard Richter's Spiegel, a Duchampian move in elevating a plain mirror to the status of art, forcing the viewer to confront their own image and having them take a good hard look at themselves, and then decide whether they like the hard truth of just what is mirrored back at them. Soul searching self-reflection in your reflection.

It is also interesting to note that the final room of the exhibition containing Rembrandt's Self Portrait with Two Circles has been carefully curated, and contains only the tried and tested greats of 20th C. art (a Picasso sketch is relegated to the next room) - Bacon, Freud, Warhol and a Mapplethorpe self-portrait photograph which can be read as a modern version of a Dutch memento-mori. Good as they all are though, the Rembrandt stands out. His face lined with the world weary expression and experiences of a life fully lived, and with only four years left in him before he would shuffle off this mortal coil. This really is a very good exhibition which is worth catching before it closes.