Dear Diary: Jo Hsieh’s self-portraits

By Huang Jing-Jung

　From the 1990s, Jo Hsieh embarked on an artistic path all of her own. Based on the concept of ‘None-Space,’ the Blue Series is her most representative and well-known set of paintings. Jo Hsieh also created a self-portrait series in a dedicated space of her UK residence, which she painted in order to document her everyday life. She is one of the few artists with such a large collection of self-portraits to her name.
　When it comes to self-portraits, one cannot help but think of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). He painted his first self-portrait with silverpoint in 1484, at the age of 13. In 1493, when he was 27, he painted himself dressed like a nobleman after his trip to Venice. In 1500, he painted another self-portrait with a strong expressive tension. John Berger (1926-2017) wrote an essay about the three self-portraits of Dürer, entitled Dürer: A Portrait of the Artist, in which he claims that Dürer's self-portraits and the costumes, facial expressions, and atmosphere present in his paintings closely relate to the artist's life experience and everyday existence. He also discusses the reasons why people paint self-portraits: how, from the perspective of the viewer and the owner, everyone wants a portrait of their own. "Portraiture is a kind of proof,” he said, “Evidence that might live longer than you, evidence that proves you have once lived in this world."  Although Jo Hsieh passed away from illness in 2017, her self-portraits became representations of her and her vitality  in a more diverse and enriching way, extending the value of her existence.
　Jo Hsieh used oil paints and pencils (sometimes accompanied by watercolors) to create self-portraits. Her earlier self-portraits possess some of the characteristics of Fauvism, containing rough brushstrokes and contours with bold, overlapping colors. She also applied drip painting and rapid impasto techniques, as well as the painting knife, to create an eerie and unsteady atmosphere characteristic of Expressionism. The paintings could be gloomy, doubtful, cheerful, or calm, and the alternation between passionate and apathetic emotions giving the impression of a restless body and soul.
　In some of her self-portraits, Hsieh also tried applying flat painting techniques with large amounts of colors, and transformed the shape of her face, her facial features, and the area above her chest and neck into various deformed geometries, mostly set against a background of red and violet. Red is one of the three primary colors, as well as being naturally occurring: the rock art discovered in South Africa’s Stadsaal Caves were painted in red. It is also the color of blood, and its inherent vitality provides a strong sense of presence, asserting its existence. Red also symbolizes power, desire, courage, warning, provocation, etc. Violet, meanwhile, is the color with the shortest wavelength in the visual spectrum.
　Johannes Itten (1888-1967), the Swiss Expressionist painter, Bauhaus teacher and color theorist, proposed several related theories on the form and characteristics of color in his book The Elements of Color.  Here, he states that dark purple stands in contrast to bright yellow, but the red that it contains gives it a slight tone of warmth when paired with a cold color palette. These two diverse and contradictory colors added an extra layer of fun to Hsieh's self-portraits, as she drew her facial features in a simplified style and constructed changeable expressions with exaggerated facial proportions, using quick, scribbled brushstrokes to build up the shapes, or simple lines to outline the features just like a cartoon character. Red adds emotional tension to the character in the painting, while violet highlights her more mysterious side. These two commonly used colors made Hsieh's avatar in her self-portraits more vibrant and changeable. In some pieces, Hsieh would use gray tones as well as interactions between hands and faces to express emotional tensions such as melancholy and ferociousness. These are enough to see Hsieh's outstanding ability for using color to express her feelings.
　Hsieh sometimes used simple lines to draw herself as an illustration or cartoon character. In these drawings, she seems to be experimenting with a ‘reductive’ form of creation, using just a few pencil lines and black lines to draw fluffy hair, textured skin tones, 3D facial features and so on. In this way, they are reminiscent of when Henri Matisse (1869-1954) stopped using colors, but the simple and pure lines he used instead actually brought out more of his emotions and feelings. 
Some of Hsieh’s self-portraits are simple sketches. In some of these, contours were first outlined with a pencil, then painted over with watercolors to add a sense of volume and energy to the details; similar to the style of British watercolor paintings. With these almost-childish, simplified self-portraits, we can see Jo Hsieh showing the purest, cleanest and most transparent side of her soul, one that is free from the baggage and form of real life. Through these sketches, we can see her original devotion to pursuing art, and her heart that was full of childhood innocence and curiosity about the world.
Just like Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1968) recorded his life in Paris by painting his self-portraits with his cats, Hsieh’s cat makes an appearance in some of her self-portraits. In Why Look at Animals? For Gilles Aillaud, John Berger argues that the lack of a common language between animals and humans is what makes the two species distinct and incompatible. An animal’s life runs parallel to that of a person, and it can offer a kind of companionship that is different from that which is offered by human interaction. Humans may be seen as another kind of animal here, which in turn creates a feeling of sympathy. The pet may offer its owner a mirror to a part of themselves that is otherwise never reflected . Hsieh not only painted herself with her pet cat in her self-portraits, she sometimes even drew herself as a cat, in an attempt to look at the world from the perspective of a cat. In this way, she contemplates herself through this process of ‘transposition’ and conversion of the subjects. It can be seen that the cat served as a companion that brought Hsieh a sense of comfort.
Hsieh also used photography to document herself. In these self-portraits, she would make various clay objects – some with human face and body shape, some merely abstract shapes. She used a camera to photograph them, weaving together the media of sculpture and photography into a new page of her ‘diary.’
　From Hsieh's self-portraits, we can see her gaze and her depiction of herself, how she structured  her environment by adding and reducing expression and formal element such as lines and colors. These self-portraits represent Jo Hsieh's ‘diary’, in which she recorded her explorations of art and her thoughts on everyday life. Hsieh used self-portraits to epitomize the superego under the influence of its environment: she was looking for the  balance or imbalance of her self with each brushstroke, and gaze at herself to reflect her real self in the paintings.
　A diary is a record of a connection, from oneself to oneself, or oneself to the people and things encountered in the same time and space. It’s usually written in first person, like the process of muttering to oneself or self-talking. When writing a diary, you can usually recall your senses of sight, smell, taste, etc., or listen to your own voice with the sense of hearing. It is not only a condensation of the past, but also a reflection and a memory of the present. Jo Hsieh used colors, lines, and rich forms of self-expression to portray her true self in daily life, and in the process of painting, she was able to feel her emotions more strongly, question her heart, and stir her thoughts.
　Dear diary, Jo Hsieh's self-portraits, present her short-lived but meaningful expression of life. If life is limited in time, then her self-portraits have left us an unlimited space for imagination. Will her character reveal her clever, cartoonish and mischievous nature that day? Will her character fall into misery and worry about not having enough money for pigments and tools? Will she be thinking about the meaning of life and the value of living as time rapidly slips away? For Jo Hsieh, the question of how to surpass time, space, and even herself in this vast universe has been left behind and answered in her self-portraits. As John Berger said, the ‘look’ of an artist is preserved in the self-portrait, and the word ‘look’ carries two meanings: one is appearance and gaze, the other is the revelation of the hidden myth and mystery behind this idea4 . The look of the self-portrait will ask the viewer: Who stands before me? Who is trying to imagine the artist's life? The answer may only be found by pondering over the gaze, or by searching through both the known and unknown answers.

References

John Berger (Author), Hui-Yuan Liu (Translator), “Why Look at Animals: for Gilles Aillaud”, in About Looking. Taipei: Cite Publishing Ltd, 2017
Jo Hsieh, Non-Space: Jo Hsieh. New Taipei City: Chini Gallery, 2013
Jo Hsieh, Original, Source, Round. New Taipei City: Chini Gallery, 2013
John Berger (Author), Li-Chun Wu (Translator), “Dürer: A Portrait of the Artist”, in The Sense of Sight: Writings by John Berger. Translated by Li-chun Wu. Taipei: Cite Publishing Ltd., 2010.
Johannes Itten  (Author), Faber Birren  (Editor),  The Elements of Color: A Treatise on the Color System of Johannes Itten Based on His Book the Art of Color. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 1970.