Name: Anne Collins Goodyear
Occupation: Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Residence: Arlington
Work: Douglas Gordon, Proposition for a Posthumous Portrait, 2004
“Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture” at the National Portrait Gallery
Through Aug. 2
National Portrait Gallery
8th and F Streets NW
Admission: Free
More information: (202) 633-1000; www.npg.si.edu
About this piece: Douglas Gordon’s “Proposition for a Posthumous Portrait” reflects the fluidity of identity recognized by Duchamp. Gordon is picking up on aspects of Duchamp’s self-portraiture, and of portraiture of Duchamp by others. With the star cut out of the back of the head, one thinks particularly of the “Tonsure” photographs of Duchamp [made by Man Ray] in 1921.
Gordon has chosen to present the skull from behind. That picks up on the imagery of the star “Tonsure,” and is also in line with the five-way portrait of Duchamp from 1917, in which the “real” image of Duchamp is the one seen from behind. Also present is a reference to Irving Penn’s photograph of Duchamp from the late 1940s, in which he tucks Duchamp into a corner.
The image of the skull has deep roots in the history of art. One thinks about the Momento Mori, and the implicit reflection upon the passage of time. This question of how one’s reputation will develop over time, particularly after one has moved on from this life, was very characteristic of Duchamp’s own thinking. When interviewed by James Johnson Sweeney in 1955, he said, “The public that really interests me is not an immediate public, but rather the public that will come 50 years or a hundred years hence.”
Like Duchamp, Gordon also recognizes the significance of the juxtaposition of words and images, and how a title might put into a play a work that people think they [already] understand. He doesn’t title this “Proposition for a Posthumous Portrait of Duchamp.” Nor does he specifically identify the work as a self-portrait. Instead, as one steps forward to examine the piece, the face of the spectator is reflected. By turning the mirror upon the spectator, Gordon seems to acknowledge, as did Duchamp, that artistic reputation and even the meaning of a work of art do not rely primarily upon the judgment of future audiences. Thus, this propositions for a posthumous portraitmay come to represent not just one individual, but the many who come to contemplate it.
