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Lot Essay
‘The apogee of Stingel’s work is reached with his recent series of self-portraits … the subject is not the artist himself, but the bipolar state of the subject of painting. To look at these self-portraits as a departure from Stingel’s earlier work is a mistake. This new work is one of the many parallel paths of his continuation of the autobiography of painting’
–Francesco Bonami
‘All work is autobiographical, so that’s why I decided to just paint myself ... there’s a big tradition of portraits, and lots of self-portraits too; each artist did it. This is very different than everything that I have done before ... I turn around 180 degrees and show the other side … I just want to go back to a more psychological platform, if you want; reconnecting because of my age and everything to my origins, somehow. It also seemed to me to be the bravest thing I could do’
–Rudolf Stingel
Spanning over three metres in height and two in width, Rudolf Stingel’s Untitled offers a monumental vision of the artist as a young man. A masterpiece of photorealist trompe l’oeil, it presents a meticulous greyscale reproduction of a black and white photograph, painstakingly rendered in oil paint. Executed in 2010, the work belongs to the series of self-portraits that, according to Francesco Bonami, mark ‘the apogee of Stingel’s work’. Begun in 2005, and based on different source images over the years, these canvases represent a grand culmination of the artist’s conceptual enquiries: namely, the way in which art is authored and received. Throughout his earlier oeuvre, his hand had been deliberately absent, transferring a great deal of creative propriety to the viewer. In the self-portraits, Stingel finally reveals the maker, only to recast himself as an impossible illusion. The ghosts of tradition hang heavy in the air: not only the great masters of the genre – from Dürer to Warhol and beyond – but the artists who, since the time of Rembrandt, have turned back the clock back to envisage their younger selves. Yet, in Stingel’s seamless transition from photography to painting, his visage becomes wholly impenetrable: uniform, smooth, devoid of gestural expression. Though posing as a window onto the soul, the image is merely an index of a body that has since disappeared, like the footprints in his Styrofoam works or his graffitied Celotex walls. As Bonami explains, a shift occurs: ‘the subject is not the artist himself, but the bipolar state of the subject of painting’ (F. Bonami, Rudolf Stingel, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2007, p. 20). The artist’s youthful likeness instead becomes the medium: a historically-charged vehicle through which to contemplate the nature of art-making.
Stingel came to prominence in the late 1980s, at a time when painting was on its deathbed. Throughout the 1990s, he sought to breathe new life into the medium by complicating its parameters. Viewer became artist, armed with a manual – authored by Stingel – on how to create his works. Floors, carpets and walls were reinvented as picture planes; painted surfaces came to resemble fragments of antiquated wallpaper. In the self-portraits, Stingel uses his own likeness to chart this process of rejuvenation. In the first series, based on photographs by Sam Samore, the artist presents himself in a state of melancholic decline: sprawled upon a bed in the manner of Mantegna’s Lamentation of Christ, smoking a cigarette or staring bleakly into a mirror. The second series, Untitled (Bolega), depicts Stingel in the throes of mid-life crisis, drowning his sorrows in front of a birthday cake. In the Alpino series, he reproduces his identification card from his time in military service – a selfportrait of a self-portrait. In many of these works, Stingel carefully reproduces the effects of weathering on the surfaces of the original photographs, placing the viewer at an even greater level of remove. Other visions of his past enter the fray: portraits of his friends, including the gallerist Paula Cooper after a photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, and landscape paintings based on images of his native Merano in the Tyrolean Alps. By the time of the present work, all external trappings are stripped away: the artist stares out of the canvas, radiant with youth, situated against a black void divorced from time and place. In counterpoint with the greyscale rendering of the image, Stingel also transformed the photograph into his first colour portrait, which crowns the series like a moment of revelation in a dream. If the artist offers his likeness as a cipher for painting, the trajectory of these works would seem to proclaim its triumphant rebirth.
At the same time, however, this tale of rehabilitation is held in tension with a pervasive sense of authorial doubt. Like Gerhard Richter’s before him, Stingel’s attempt to recreate photography in paint serves to debunk the myths surrounding both media. Photography, shown to be reproducible, can no longer lay claim to truth; paint, shown to be no more than a base material, can no longer conjure grand romantic fictions. In this vein, Stingel both invokes and rejects the shadows of the canon: from Rembrandt’s soul-searching gaze and Dürer’s face-on confrontations, to the dark existentialism of Francis Bacon and the deadpan mystique of Andy Warhol. The invention of the mirror changed our relationship with our own image; so too did the invention of photography. How, then, might our sense of self manifest itself in a post-painterly age? On one hand, Stingel fundamentally negates his own agency, working with a team of assistants to transfer the image, square by square, from a blown-up photograph to canvas. The subject, even, is partially disowned as a metaphor, whilst many of the selfportraits are at pains to acknowledge the artistic input of the original photographer. On the other hand, Stingel professes an almost vulnerable sense of self-exposure, claiming that he wanted ‘to go back to a more psychological platform … It also seemed to me to be the bravest thing I could do’ (R. Stingel, quoted at https://www.rbge.org.uk/the-gardens/edinburgh/ inverleith-house/archive/inverleith-house-archive-mainprogramme/ 2006/rudolf-stingel [accessed 25 January 2017]). By setting himself and his story in paint – a medium by turns wrestled with, shunned, parodied and subverted since the turn of the millennium – Stingel martyrs his own likeness to its cause.
–Francesco Bonami
‘All work is autobiographical, so that’s why I decided to just paint myself ... there’s a big tradition of portraits, and lots of self-portraits too; each artist did it. This is very different than everything that I have done before ... I turn around 180 degrees and show the other side … I just want to go back to a more psychological platform, if you want; reconnecting because of my age and everything to my origins, somehow. It also seemed to me to be the bravest thing I could do’
–Rudolf Stingel
Spanning over three metres in height and two in width, Rudolf Stingel’s Untitled offers a monumental vision of the artist as a young man. A masterpiece of photorealist trompe l’oeil, it presents a meticulous greyscale reproduction of a black and white photograph, painstakingly rendered in oil paint. Executed in 2010, the work belongs to the series of self-portraits that, according to Francesco Bonami, mark ‘the apogee of Stingel’s work’. Begun in 2005, and based on different source images over the years, these canvases represent a grand culmination of the artist’s conceptual enquiries: namely, the way in which art is authored and received. Throughout his earlier oeuvre, his hand had been deliberately absent, transferring a great deal of creative propriety to the viewer. In the self-portraits, Stingel finally reveals the maker, only to recast himself as an impossible illusion. The ghosts of tradition hang heavy in the air: not only the great masters of the genre – from Dürer to Warhol and beyond – but the artists who, since the time of Rembrandt, have turned back the clock back to envisage their younger selves. Yet, in Stingel’s seamless transition from photography to painting, his visage becomes wholly impenetrable: uniform, smooth, devoid of gestural expression. Though posing as a window onto the soul, the image is merely an index of a body that has since disappeared, like the footprints in his Styrofoam works or his graffitied Celotex walls. As Bonami explains, a shift occurs: ‘the subject is not the artist himself, but the bipolar state of the subject of painting’ (F. Bonami, Rudolf Stingel, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2007, p. 20). The artist’s youthful likeness instead becomes the medium: a historically-charged vehicle through which to contemplate the nature of art-making.
Stingel came to prominence in the late 1980s, at a time when painting was on its deathbed. Throughout the 1990s, he sought to breathe new life into the medium by complicating its parameters. Viewer became artist, armed with a manual – authored by Stingel – on how to create his works. Floors, carpets and walls were reinvented as picture planes; painted surfaces came to resemble fragments of antiquated wallpaper. In the self-portraits, Stingel uses his own likeness to chart this process of rejuvenation. In the first series, based on photographs by Sam Samore, the artist presents himself in a state of melancholic decline: sprawled upon a bed in the manner of Mantegna’s Lamentation of Christ, smoking a cigarette or staring bleakly into a mirror. The second series, Untitled (Bolega), depicts Stingel in the throes of mid-life crisis, drowning his sorrows in front of a birthday cake. In the Alpino series, he reproduces his identification card from his time in military service – a selfportrait of a self-portrait. In many of these works, Stingel carefully reproduces the effects of weathering on the surfaces of the original photographs, placing the viewer at an even greater level of remove. Other visions of his past enter the fray: portraits of his friends, including the gallerist Paula Cooper after a photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, and landscape paintings based on images of his native Merano in the Tyrolean Alps. By the time of the present work, all external trappings are stripped away: the artist stares out of the canvas, radiant with youth, situated against a black void divorced from time and place. In counterpoint with the greyscale rendering of the image, Stingel also transformed the photograph into his first colour portrait, which crowns the series like a moment of revelation in a dream. If the artist offers his likeness as a cipher for painting, the trajectory of these works would seem to proclaim its triumphant rebirth.
At the same time, however, this tale of rehabilitation is held in tension with a pervasive sense of authorial doubt. Like Gerhard Richter’s before him, Stingel’s attempt to recreate photography in paint serves to debunk the myths surrounding both media. Photography, shown to be reproducible, can no longer lay claim to truth; paint, shown to be no more than a base material, can no longer conjure grand romantic fictions. In this vein, Stingel both invokes and rejects the shadows of the canon: from Rembrandt’s soul-searching gaze and Dürer’s face-on confrontations, to the dark existentialism of Francis Bacon and the deadpan mystique of Andy Warhol. The invention of the mirror changed our relationship with our own image; so too did the invention of photography. How, then, might our sense of self manifest itself in a post-painterly age? On one hand, Stingel fundamentally negates his own agency, working with a team of assistants to transfer the image, square by square, from a blown-up photograph to canvas. The subject, even, is partially disowned as a metaphor, whilst many of the selfportraits are at pains to acknowledge the artistic input of the original photographer. On the other hand, Stingel professes an almost vulnerable sense of self-exposure, claiming that he wanted ‘to go back to a more psychological platform … It also seemed to me to be the bravest thing I could do’ (R. Stingel, quoted at https://www.rbge.org.uk/the-gardens/edinburgh/ inverleith-house/archive/inverleith-house-archive-mainprogramme/ 2006/rudolf-stingel [accessed 25 January 2017]). By setting himself and his story in paint – a medium by turns wrestled with, shunned, parodied and subverted since the turn of the millennium – Stingel martyrs his own likeness to its cause.