Self-portrait theme
That which stares back at me – maintains the stare – becomes aggressive.
What happens then when staring into a mirror?
In looking at my reflection I threaten myself.
“… Now I understood what old age was. Old age, which, of all realities, is perhaps the one of which we retain a purely abstract notion for the longest time, looking at calendars, dating our letters, seeing our friends get married, the children of our friends, without realising its significance, whether through dread or through idleness, until the day when an unknown effigy like M. d’Argencourt teaches us that we are living in a new world; until the when we, who seem to him like his grandfather, treat the grandson of one of our women friends as a comrade and he laughs as though at a joke. And then I understood what is meant by death, love, joys of the mind, usefulness of sorrow and vocation. For if names had lost their meaning for me, words had unfolded it. The beauty of images is lodged at the back of things, that of ideas in front, so that the first no longer cause us wonder when we reach them and we only understand the second when we have passed beyond them.”
M. Proust.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER - Keep up-to-date with exhibitions, news and events.