FACE AND MASK

ROLE PLAY IN PORTRAITURE

Should Dieter Roth’s Self-Portrait as Hole be viewed as a portrait in the same way as Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Beret?

While one artist portrays his face in painstaking detail, the other uses a white ‘hole’to make his own disappear. Being unable to put a face to the person who is apparently seeking to depict an image of himself makes it impossible to determine his identity, let alone start a discussion about the degree of similarity or artistic accuracy. And yet the title of the portrait leaves no doubt: Roth’s self-ironic claim to be a ‘hole’ makes it clear that it is solely the artist’s intention that dictates whether or not that ‘hole’ is a self-portrait.

This exhibition bridges traditional portraiture and abstract likenesses. The transformation of common conceptions of similarity is a key theme that runs through many different pieces, allowing visitors to investigate the possibilities of describing identity and to sound out the limits of the genre. The distortion and deconstruction of facial features, portraits without faces, masks and role plays are part of the palette of modern portraiture, where the idea of creating a true likeness is just one of multiple options.

Curated by Michael Kuhlemann, this exhibition of twentieth-century portraiture is opened by a prologue of sorts: a series of Rembrandt’s self-portraits. The exhibitionstages an encounter between works from the Western European avant-garde and those from other cultural spheres, and from China in particular. Works on display include pieces by Max Beckmann, Alexej von Jawlensky, Lovis Corinth, Man Ray, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, Horst Janssen, Dieter Roth, Timm Ulrichs, Arnulf Rainer, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Katsura Funakoshi, Yue Minjun, Guo Jin, Qi Zhilong, Xue Song, Qiu Zhijie, Zeng Fanzhi and Zhang Xiaogang.

The intimate setting of a former residential home offers a uniquely appropriate frame for this genre of fine art and makes it possible to experience museum-quality pieces in an intimate atmosphere. The seventy works, all drawn entirely from the ahlers collection, are hung in a way that reflects how private and public collections normally display artist portraits: in a series of rows, one atop another, closely crammed in anywhere the room’s architecture permits.