Art in Context & Photography

Self-Portrait (Back with Arms Above) 1984 

John Coplans

  John Rivers Coplans was a British artist, art writer, curator and museum director, veteran of World War II and a photographer. 

At the age of 60 he started photographing his body. I noticed none of them had his face in them, focusing on his nude form.

He took images of himself, or his assistant, in sections focusing on a certain part of the body some were kept as a single image but others he combined in separate frames to make up a body a whole body.

Why i found his work so interesting is because it's so different to anything i have looked at before. 

''If I accept the cultural situation, I'm a dead man, So I'm using my body and saying, even though it's a 70-year-old body I can make it extremely interesting.''

First of all he is male, second of all he is an older male. The aging male body is something I have never taken time to really think about. 

The ageing body in general is not something I have really thought about. My own age is probably the reason for that but I don't think the idea of my body aging has ever really crossed my mind. 

That being said the older male body is not something I am shocked by, a few people in class said they had not seen a body like this before. Being a carer, I have seen men around this age and much much older. So the sort of shock factor a lot of people seemed to have to these is not something I share. 

Self-Portrait (Frieze No. 2, Four Panels)
1994

Self-Portrait (Hands Spread on Knees)
1985

I don't think i am able to fully connect with this work in the same way as someone male or someone older than me perhaps could.
 If i look at these as shapes and take away from it being a human form i find these images stunning. The black and white bring out all these deep dark shadows and lines you see, the texture of the skin the lines of his body are so interesting and really hold my attention.

 I really like the ones of his body in separate images and put together. They only kind of match up and there is something i like about that. It works well with the 'imperfection' of his body. 

Self-Portrait (Back No. 16)
1992

Self-Portrait (Torso, Front)

Male bodies do tend to be represented in media and art as very perfect or almost sculptural a lot of time, or what i have seen of it in adverts and on social media. I read that Coplans describes these images as 'body politics' because an older body is seen as a taboo. I really like how he is using his body as an object or a textural surface it seem so personal yet not at the same time as he doesn't show his face. 

Egon Schiele


Egon Schiele (June 12, 1890 – October 31, 1918) was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. he had a very brief career, bur his paintings are very well known today for his psychologically and erotically charged portraits.

I have looked at Egon Schiele's work before but i have never really looked into what influenced him to paint the way he did. Egon Schiele made a name for himself in Vienna under the influence of painter Gustav Klimt. I started researching that side of it and decided to do a separate blog post about Egon Schiele, Klimt and Vienna.

I wanted to focus on Schiele's self portraits.

Self-Portrait (1910) Black chalk, watercolor and gouache on paper - Leopold Museum, Vienna

When i first saw Schiele's work i remember being really taken aback by it. I had to fight the urge to have the sudden feeling of ' i hate this'. Since leaning about him and exploring the idea of beauty and what a 'good painting' should be over the last few years i have changed my mind. I like his portraits. His paintings have this air of sexuality around them, they are very direct in that way i think, But they also have so much emotion to them in this one to the right for example, how he is hiding his face and the fragility of his bones under his skin.

self-portrait-with-arm-twisting-above-head-1910

This one i find very interesting. I think it is so intense and a little bit scary. His eyes really keep your gaze for a long time. Again his face is a little hidden by his shoulder which takes away some of the anger, it makes me think of someone who is defence, paranoid or anxious.

The way he has used colour and line is also very interesting. The lines in his form are so angler  and twisted his body is pointed and curved at the same time. It reminds me a little of fashion illustrations. 

His skin the same as the background, which i have noticed he almost always leaves blank. using big amounts of empty space.

While researching i kept reading how beautiful these were, and i don't think i agree with that. While i think they are good, interesting and different i don't know if would use the words beautiful. I think they are portraits of himself, how he saw himself, how he felt or how he wanted to express himself. 

I think it is interesting to look at artists that question beauty, and it is pretty interesting to look at male artists commenting on male beauty. I think so much focus is on female beauty currently that it's something i defiantly don't think about very much at all. 


















Sources 

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-coplans-2353

https://www.solwaygallery.com/john_coplans_exhibition.html

https://bombmagazine.org/articles/john-coplanss-a-body/

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/arts/art-in-review-john-coplans.html

https://www.egon-schiele.net/

https://www.theartstory.org/artist-schiele-egon.htm

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/10/21/arts/21john_ready.html
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