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Self Portrait with Life Masks

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Self Portrait with Life Masks

1976
photograph
8 in. x 9 15/16 in. (20.32 cm x 25.24 cm)
The Vallarino Photography Collection and Purchase Fund, 1984.60

André Kertész
American
1894–1985

Perhaps the first to fully realize the possibilities of the handheld camera, André Kertész raised the snapshot to the level of fine art. Born in Budapest in 1894, Kertész was still a child when he began photographing scenes from everyday life. As a young man, he followed in the business tradition of his family, becoming a clerk in the Budapest Stock Exchange. With the outbreak of World War I, Kertész entered the Austro-Hungarian army. Taking his camera with him, he made a memorable series of photographs portraying his fellow soldiers. On the conclusion of his military service, Kertész returned to his old job, but grew increasingly dissatisfied. By the mid-1920s he had abandoned both the stock exchange and Budapest and had left for Paris.

Kertész swiftly formed connections within the city's artistic circles and was soon gaining renown as a photographer. Intrigued by the potential of new and increasingly advanced handheld cameras, Kertész in 1928 purchased a 35mm Leica. Allowing for unusual vantage points and quick views made in the street, the small camera opened a range of possibilities that Kertész avidly explored. Despite the acclaim of critics, commissions in Paris grew scarcer during the 1930s. Acting on the invitation of the Keystone Agency, the artist went to New York City for an extended visit in 1936. The rise of Hitler and the advent of World War II left him effectively stranded, and as an enemy alien, Kertész found his options limited. He made his way as a freelance fashion and design photographer for many years, and, choosing to remain in New York, he lived quietly, almost forgotten, until his work experienced a resurgence of interest during the 1970s and 1980s. At the time of his death in 1985, Kertész was widely recognized as an innovator in the field of contemporary photography.

Self-Portrait with Life Masks dates from the last years of Kertész's career. Staying close to his New York apartment and studio, Kertész devoted himself to still-life compositions and street views taken from his windows. In the Currier photograph, he poses with an unusual series of life masks made by émigré sculptor Mihail Simeonov (b. 1929). Arrayed along the length of a mantelpiece, the four slightly distorted busts of Kertész wear serene expressions that form a sharp contrast to the artist's own amused visage, half-hidden as he peeks from behind the far end of the mantel. Focusing on the issues of likeness and uniqueness that portraiture raises, Kertész slyly questions the nature of the genre itself. Confronted with five representations of the artist, each purporting to record the truth, the viewer is faced with the disconcerting prospect of sorting out the "real" Kertész from the others. While he or she may be tempted to choose the photographic image of the artist over the plaster life masks, it is partially obscured, and -in fact- provides the least amount of empirical information. The irony is deliberate, and like many of Kertész's best photographs, the Currier's Self-Portrait seamlessly mingles humor and the surreal.

As Mihail Simeonov saw it, each of his four sculptures of Kertész expressed a particular aspect of the older artist. At the time the photograph was made, Simeonov was experimenting with what he called "collective portraits," groups of carefully distorted life masks that together expressed the overall character of his subjects. After making an initial mold, Simeonov made repeated casts in which he changed the shape of the head and the expression of the face. From the initial large group he then selected those pieces that complemented each other, bringing out the effect of the whole.

Self- Portrait with Life Masks was acquired by the Currier Museum of Art in 1984.

VSD

REFERENCES

Nicolas Ducrot, ed. André Kertész: Sixty Years of Photography, 1912-1972. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972.

Kerry Oliver-Smith. Ephemeral Moments: Photography of André Kertész and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Ex. cat. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, 1997.

Sandra S. Phillips, "Kertész, André." In Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. New York: Grove, 1996. Vol. 17, pp. 916-917.


Exhibition
1986 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "The Vallarino Photography Collection." Feb. 23 - April 6.
1989 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Revelations: Photographic Portraits from the Permanent Collection." July 11 - Oct. 1.
1998-1999 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Moments in Time: Master Photographs from the Currier." Oct. 10, 1998 - Jan. 4, 1999.
2000 Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, Keene State College, Keene, NH, "Moments in Time: Master Photographs from the Currier." Sept. 9 - Oct. 29.
2008-2009 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, "Artists by Artists." Oct. 1, 2008 - Jan. 2009.
2012 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, "A New Vision: Modernist Photography." Feb. 4 - May 13.
2014 Currier Museum of Art, "Exploring the Currier Inside and Out: Andrew Witkin, Among Others," Jan. 11 - May 11.


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